With a single Instagram Story, Jack Antonoff has despatched Taylor Swift followers right into a tizzy in regards to the timeline surrounding her cut up from ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn.
Contemplating Swift and Antonoff are long-time collaborators—he has manufacturing credit on her final six studio albums starting with *1989—*and pals, it isn’t shocking to see Swift pop up in a throwback picture on Antonoff’s Instagram story in honor of the discharge of her tune “You’re Shedding Me (From the Vault).” The monitor hit streaming companies Wednesday in celebration of Swift being the highest streamed artist globally on Spotify this yr (beforehand, the tune had solely been accessible by way of her on-line retailer and as a restricted CD at her Eras Tour present in East Rutherford, New Jersey).
No, the shocking a part of the snapshot Antonoff shared, a candid of Swift centered very intently on sorting raisins on a woodblock countertop, is his caption: “you’re dropping me is out at the moment,” he wrote. “a really particular monitor from the midnights periods that’s lastly st[r]eaming! written and recorded at dwelling on 12/5/21 proper after taylor ate these raisins.”
Now’s when your double main in Swiftology and Forensic Investigation is useful: Why embody such a selected date, not to mention a random Sunday in December, if it’s not essential? Right here’s the place the lyrics of this “very particular monitor,” and the theories followers have drawn from them, are essential.
In “You’re Shedding Me,” Swift drops such devastating strains as “I wouldn’t marry me both / A pathological folks pleaser / Who solely wished you to see her” and “How lengthy may we be a tragic tune / ‘Til we had been too far gone to carry again to life?” She wonders, “Do I throw out every part we constructed or maintain it? / I’m getting drained even for a phoenix / All the time rising from the ashes.” The lyrics appear to reference a long-term relationship on the decline, the narrator considering the sunk value over time and the way forward for the romance, whether or not it’s one thing to (carry on attempting to) salvage.
Now to crunch the numbers. Information of Swift’s cut up from Joe Alwyn broke in April of this yr. She was within the early months of her Eras Tour on the time, and shortly earlier than these headlines, had changed the tune “Invisible String”—which tells a narrative of soulmates staying related—with the breakup tune “The 1.” Eagle-eyed viewers, nonetheless, might discover that April 2023 is considerably later than December 2021. If “You’re Shedding Me” is in truth about Alwyn, as followers have speculated, then it being written in 2021 factors to hassle between Alwyn and Swift a lot sooner than beforehand thought. Swift is thought for maintaining quiet about her romantic life, and Alwyn is thought for not commenting in any respect, so previous to the breakup information (which was attributed to “sources”), the very best proof of the 2’s relationship got here within the type of Alwyn importing a photograph of considered one of Swift’s cats and his sock toes to his Instagram account in early 2023.
