Taylor Swift is opening up about her very private relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn. In a new cover story for Rolling Stone, Swift sat down with Beatles legend Paul McCartney to interview one another about their respective music careers. During their conversation, the Pennsylvania-born singer-songwriter talks about her song, “Peace,” off of her album from earlier this year, Folklore.
“‘Peace’ is actually more rooted in my personal life,” Swift says to McCartney. “I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living.”
She continued, “I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.”
That’s when the music legend asks Taylor if her partner can “sympathize with that and understand.”
“Oh, absolutely,” she replies.
She went on to add, “I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids.”
Prior to her current relationship, which began in 2017, Swift has been linked to fellow A-list stars including Jake Gyllenhaal, John Mayer, Harry Styles, and Tom Hiddleston. In her life with Alwyn, Taylor shares that many of her decisions are made with the goal of maintaining the privacy in their relationship.
“Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture — the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy,” she notes. ”That’s what that song ‘Peace’ is talking about.”
McCartney goes on to acknowledge that Swift is known for “writing break up songs like they were going out of style.” Luckily for fans, while she might never have one to write about her own relationship any time soon, she draws inspiration from elsewhere.
“I was, before my luck changed,” she replied. “I still write breakup songs. I love a good breakup song. Because somewhere in the world, I always have a friend going through a breakup, and that will make me write one.”
