we NEED to talk about joe alwyn AGAIN before tortured poets

some other videos that are essential for this tea:

NEW EVOLUTION OF A SNAKE EPISODE: The Tortured Playlist Delusions

Divas....divas....here we are again; it is me, your loyal messy boots on the ground reporter, back with yet another dispatch about Joe Alwyn, the heirloom turkey. Taylor Swift has just released a series of playlists with Apple Music, organizing her own music around the five stages of grief. These playlists give us some essential clues and context leading into her brand new album, The Tortured Poets Department, which comes out in a fortnight. Get into this DEEP DIVE into all the Taylor Swift, Joe Alwyn, and Joever breakup lore that you NEED to know before you spin this record for the first time...

Don't be a stranger!

0:00 - 2:33 the playlists
2:33 - 8:57 important lore
8:57 - 12:25 why TTPD is unique
12:25 - 21:07 reputation
21:07 - 28:28 lover
28:28 - 40:53 folkmore
40:53 - 43:48 renegade
43:48 - 51:30 midnights
51:30 you're losing me

you don't get to tell me about sad, I love you it's ruining my life, am I allowed to cry?, I can do it with a broken heart

[MelodieRoehrig]

I’m still not over her going from “Something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire” on Folklore to “Where's that man who'd throw blankets over my barbed wire?” On Evermore. Such a huge breakdown in a short amount of time. Should have known.

[BrnntToast]

Your response time is actually so wild. These playlists basically just came out and you’re already boots on the ground and done.

[karenav]

I also wonder if staying in that relationship for as long as she did had something to do with her desire to have a successful relationship. She’s mentioned it several times that she has this need to prove people wrong. And one of her biggest criticisms from the general public has been the inability to have a stable relationship. Part of me wonders how much longer she stayed in that relationship because she was afraid of having a public break up again.

[katlantas]

I can't stop laughing at the fact that LOVER is on the denial playlist. Somehow to me, that is the biggest clapback she's ever done. She isn't saying (yet) "man, this guy hurt me", she's just like "all that shit I said before about the end of all the endings, I was delulu and you can forget about it" lmao

[New.Romantics_]

I clicked on this video faster than you could say sabotage

[Augustine]

honestly betty on the denial playlist makes sense - she has always maintained that the apology works and betty takes him back and imo thats denial

[Elizabeth-ezcl]

In my opinion, hits different, is not fictional. It is 100% about the breakdown of their relationship and how there were huge fights, she thought he was leaving and had no idea how she was going to get over him but he would come back. “catastrophic blues. Movin’ on was always easy for me to do. It hits different cause it’s you.” The reference to blue is a dead giveaway away it is about Joe and it used to be so easy for her to move on and date a new man, but with Joe it is very hard to leave. Also the line, “I used to switch out these Kens” referencing how long their relationship was together. The end of the song the man comes back and she hears him put his key in the door, but this relationship has made her so crazy she thinks potentially it is someone coming to put her away in a mental institute. She also mentioned in the song that she is his “argumentative antithetical Dreamgirl.” Literally calling out that they are incompatible. Conveniently, this song was also on the target edition, and was only available on the CD for months. I think this was a move to not bring much attention to the breakdown of her relationship, but was still putting it out there.

[chrystalnyan-]

folklore & evermore were never fictional, i always thought it was weird how everyone just accepted that they were, ofc she told the public that, and i would go as far as to say that the folklore love triangle probably has feelings and a true story behind it, sure she exaggerates and uses metaphors but it will mostly always come from an emotion and experience by her. like who honestly listened to songs like peace, tolerate it, the lakes and did not think she was communicating feelings she felt with joe in quarantine. also i kinda like how midnights makes more sense with the additional information.

[juliagee]

Just speaking as someone who has been in a similar relationship (ugh), I think it's definitely possible, and actually very likely they were together when Midnights was coming out. The message I get from these songs is that the relationship was an ongoing battle, and I think it was probably punctuated by periods where they fell apart and then ended up getting back together. She was probably writing Midnights during one of these turbulent points in their relationship ('The Great War' maybe?), but then at some point while putting the album together they end up working it out. And so a song like You're Losing Me gets taken off the album and put in the vault where the public can't see it, and a song like Labyrinth is put in. In Labyrinth she begins the song in immense pain, seemingly going through a break up ("I'll be gettin' over you my whole life"), but in the chorus it's "oh no, I'm falling in love again" and "I thought the plane was going down/how'd you turn it right around?". She thought he'd lost her, but he turned it around somehow and won her back. But when you're in these cyclical relationships there is both the joy of starting over again, but also the dread and fear of 'oh no, is this truly a fresh start or am I just restarting the same cycle?'.

[hibaabdulla]

“A single thread of gold has tied her to the most perfect turkey on the farm “ ohhh zack 😂😂

[Danielle-efed]

“Well he’s chuckling, and you’re not recognising” 😭💀

[alexbebout]

The Netflix movie Taylor referenced is actually “Someone Great”, a movie about a woman reflecting on the demise of her 9 year relationship with an emotionally avoidant man that finally ends when she chooses her career 😬

[pavilova]

“Snap out of a low period getting a new man. A pattern that is still repeating itself” TEA 💀

[gaylenwoof]

My prediction for TTPD is this: The themes will be more nuanced, complex, and mature than anything we’ve seen so far. It won’t be “I hate Joe; he’s a bad guy; he did me wrong…” I’m expecting more like “This was fated to fail – like a Shakespearean tragedy – neither of us could give what the other needed; for various reasons, the seeds of our discontent were woven in from the start.” Some songs will capture moments of bitterness where she blames him for his contributions to the tragedy, others will capture moments where she blames herself for her part but, hopefully, the overarching theme will be something that will surprise me – and everyone – something that only poetry can evoke – but I’ll take a stab at it and suggest (in words/concepts that she almost certainly won’t use, but I suspect might be operable in some weird way) “Jungian shadows, archetypes, unconscious meaning-seeking, individuation…” forces playing themselves out. I have no reason to think that she has any academic understanding of any of that, but I think she feels these types of “psychic dances” occurring and understands them in her own way – which is where the poetic expressions will kick some ass.

Bottom line: It won’t be “Joe=bad guy” but more like “I learned some deep and crazy shit from my experiences with Joe.” Of course, I could be completely wrong. Maybe he cheated, abused, etc. and things will take a more stereotypical “he done me wrong” turn, but my intuitions are suggesting these more “mystical” dynamics, so I’ll go ahead and put my money on the table, just for the thrill of it.

[nightingale]

the way I SCREECHED!!! BOOTS ON THE GROUND REPORTING THANK YOU ZACH!!

[justink]

I think Hits Different is very obviously about Joe!!

She has dated him for 6-7 years, of course some part of her will feel devastated when this integral part of her life is over. Hits Different is about being very acquainted with a breakup - "old familiar body ache", as you pointed out - but how fundamentally different it feels when you have shared your life with that person for so long. In comparison to Joe, every other relationship in her life was basically a fling.

"This is why they shouldn't kill off the main guy" - he was the main character in her life, her muse, and he left a gaping hole when he left.

"I heard your key turn in the door" - a hint that this song is about somebody that she lived together with - again, that's only Joe. (Is this a hint that Joe continued to live in her home even after they broke up? Like he couldn't find a place on his own? LMAO 😭)

"I could still melt your world, argumentative, antithetical dream girl" - this describes again perfectly the exact same relationship dynamic that you laid out in this video!

"They say that if it's right, you know / each bar plays our song, nothing has ever felt so wrong" - hints that she has long thought about if breaking up with him would really be the right thing to do, and finally decided YES it is, but when it actually is over, she still feels conflicted because such a huge part of her life has suddenly broken away

I could go on and on!!! Hits Different is one of my favourite songs off Midnights, especially after I understood that it was about the Joever breakup, the most complex breakup in the taylore! It is also so campy and fun and not self-serious. It's honestly so great.

[daniellelevine]

“if I were Joe, I would call the cops” 🤣 I love your one liners you just casually slap in there

[annabanana]

“The rain is always gonna come if you’re standing with me” to “I was midnight rain” like :( she really said “I AM the rain now”

[delfi__arts]

I think the "maybe it was her" in the great war also speaks volumes about "insisting that friends look at each other like that". Even if there wasn't cheating involved, I bet there were moments where taylor wasn't feeling seen, but felt jealous of his interactions with another woman or women. I've also been thinking about illicit affairs being a way for her to express her feelings about having to hide her relationship from the world and how bad that made her feel, hidden in the lens of being the other woman

[jasmindheureux]

Bejeweled really was the clue for me that sth was wrong with her relationship. The band asking if she had a man and answering with 'I can still say, I don't remember' really got me thinking. So when they eventually annonced the break-up I wasn't that surprised...