Taylor Swift has referenced her former partner Joe Alwyn for the first time during her Eras Tour. The pop singer, 34, and the Kinds of Kindness actor, 33, first met in 2016 and dated for six years, with Swift writing the 2019 song “London Boy” about him. Alwyn co-wrote tracks on her Folklore and Evermore albums under the pseudonym William Bowery.
Swift and Alwyn broke up in April 2023, after which rumours emerged that she was dating The 1975 frontman Matty Healey. In September, the Grammy-winner started a highly public relationship with American football star Travis Kelce.
Swift shocked fans when she made a surprise addition to her Eras Tour setlist at her Wembley show in London on Friday night (16 August), adding “London Boy”. “I’ve never played this on the Eras Tour before,” Swift told the crowds in the stadium before launching into the song.
On “London Boy”, Swift sings about how Alwyn introduced her to pastimes like watching rugby in the pub, as well as Camden Market, nights in Brixton, drinking in the afternoon in Soho, and walks in Hampstead Heath. “She’s singing London Boy?” one fan wrote on X/Twitter in response to the surprise performance. “Yeah, she’s officially healed… I’m crying.”
The singer then moved over to the piano to sing a mix of “Dear John” from Speak Now and “Sad Beautiful Tragic” from Red, the lyrics of which both reference the breakdown of a relationship. “Singing ‘you know I love a london boy’ and then ‘I’m shining like fireworks over your sad empty town’ at Wembley is crazy,” one fan noted on X/Twitter of the setlist, referencing the lyrics to “Dear John”.
The track “So Long, London” on Swift’s album, The Tortured Poets Department, is also rumoured to be about her split from Alwyn.
When asked by The Sunday Times’s Style Magazine in a new interview if he has listened to the album, Alwyn said: “I would hope that anyone and everyone can empathise and understand the difficulties that come with the end of a long, loving, fully committed relationship of over six and a half years. That is a hard thing to navigate.
“What is unusual and abnormal in this situation is that, one week later, it’s suddenly in the public domain and the outside world is able to weigh in.” He continued: “So you have something very real suddenly thrown into a very unreal space: tabloids, social media, press, where it is then dissected, speculated on, pulled out of shape beyond recognition.
“And the truth is, to that last point, there is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said. I have made my peace with that.” Swift is back in Wembley for her second stint of shows, following an earlier run of three dates in June.
