Taylor Swift is again writing about what she knows best, with songs about love and revenge—and her romance with Joe Alwyn—on her 10th studio album, Midnights, which dropped on Friday, October 21.
READ: Joe Alwyn's £7 million London townhouse with girlfriend Taylor Swift revealed
The Grammy winner, 32, appeared to address engagement rumors on the album's opening track, "Lavender Haze," singing, "I'm damned if I do give a damn what people say / the 1950s s**t they want from me / I just wanna stay in that lavender haze / All they keep asking me is if I'm gonna be your bride / the only kinda girl they see is a one night or a wife."
Taylor Swift opens up about her relationship with Joe Alwyn
Taylor teased the track on Instagram earlier this month, saying, "I happened upon the phrase 'lavender haze' when I was watching Mad Men, and I looked it up because I thought it sounded cool. And it turns out that it's a common phrase used in the '50s, where they would just describe being in love."
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"If you were in the lavender haze, then that meant that you were in that all-encompassing love glow, and I thought that was really beautiful," she added. "I guess theoretically when you're in the lavender haze you'll do anything to stay there and not let people bring you down off of that cloud."
Taylor and Joe are rumored to have met at the Costume Institute Gala in NYC in 2016
"And I think a lot of people have to deal with this now, not just like 'public figures,' because we live in the era of social media," Taylor continued. "And if the world finds out that you're in love with somebody, they're gonna weigh in on it."
She then specifically referenced her romance with Joe: "Like my relationship for six years, we've had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it. And so this song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff."
The Catherine Called Birdy actor, 31, is also featured elsewhere on the album—he has a songwriting credit (under the name of William Bowery)—his sixth—on the love song "Sweet Nothing."
Fans predictably went wild over the album, and Taylor's references to her boyfriend, with one listener on Twitter writing, "joe alwyn is a MUSE and that's ENOUGH." "I love the fact that joe alwyn is part of the writing process in taylor's albums," another wrote.
But it wouldn't be a Taylor Swift album without a bit of bite, and the "Bad Blood" songstress also revisits themes of revenge on "Vigilante S**t" and "Karma."
"Karma is my boyfriend / karma is a god / karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend / karma's a relaxing thought / aren't you envious that for you it's not?" she croons, possibly in reference to her feud with music exec Scooter Braun, who bought her back catalog in 2019. She also defiantly announces, "Ask me why so many fade, but I'm still here."
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