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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
John Dunne and Tina Campbell

Taylor Swift’s love Joe Alwyn gushes about how proud he is of their lockdown music

Joe Alwyn has opened up about writing music with girlfriend Taylor Swift during lockdown

(Picture: Getty Images)

Actor Joe Alwyn has said he is proud of the music he and girlfriend Taylor Swift wrote together in lockdown.

The Brit star, 31, has been dating singer-songwriter Swift, 32, since at least 2017, but the pair have remained very private about their relationship.

Alwyn will next be seen in a BBC series adaptation of Sally Rooney’s debut novel Conversations with Friends which airs on BBC Three and iPlayer from May 15.

He worked with the Shake It Off hit-maker on her surprise eighth studio album Folklore, writing under the pseudonym William Bowery, and co-wrote a number of songs on the follow-up album Evermore.

Recalling to GQ Hype how they ended up collaborating, he said: “It was really the most accidental thing to happen in lockdown. It wasn’t like, ‘It’s three o’clock, it’s time to write a song!’

“It was just messing around on a piano and singing badly and being overheard and then thinking, you know, what if we tried to get to the end of it together?”

In explaining why he had decided to use a pen name rather than his own, Alwyn said he had wanted people to focus on the music rather than who wrote it.

Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift (pictured) are believed to have been dating since around 2017 (Getty Images for The Rock and Ro)

He said: “The idea was that people would just listen to the music rather than focus on the fact that we wrote it together.”

And while he was pleased at the reception the co-written tracks received, he said he has no plans to write more music.

“It was fun to do it together, and I was proud of it. It was nice getting such a positive reception,” he added to the publication.

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