The lyrics to Taylor Swift’s new song “Cardigan” seems to be an inside look at her three-year relationship with boyfriend Joe Alwyn, and the music video is just as magical.
We’ll start with the lyrics from the first track from her latest Folklore album, which was released on Friday, July 24. “And when I felt like I was an old cardigan/Under someone’s bed/You put me on and said I was your favorite,” the refrain reads.
It would not be surprising for the Miss Americana star, 30, to talk about Harriet actor, 29, especially because many tracks off her seventh album, Lover, — like “London Boy” and “Cornelia Street” — are about the English actor. While “Paper Rings” talks about a new romance blooming, “Cardigan” shifts their relationship to a more comfortable and solid place.
The verses in “Cardigan” also document some ups and downs — from being young and “dancing drunk under a streetlight” to “running” away from the romance “like water.”
Taylor and Joe have kept their longtime romance extremely private and publicly dish very few details about each other. Although it’s hard to say if the scenario of “chasing two girls” and what appears to be a brief split actually happened to the A-list pair in real life, the point is they always made their way back to each other.
“I knew you’d miss me once the thrill expired/And you’d be standin’ in my front porch light/And I knew you’d come back to me,” the last verse reads.
Taylor wrote and directed the “Cardigan” music video and did her own hair, makeup and styling. The video, which followed social distancing and safety guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic, showed the “Bad Blood” artist climbing into a piano in her cozy cottage. She’s then carried to a green and lush forest where she continues to play on a waterfall before being transported again to the middle of a raging river with nothing to hold on to except her piano. She eventually comes home, and the video ends with Taylor wrapping up in her cardigan sweater sitting on the piano bench.
Some fans theorized this as the “Blank Space” artist saying music saved her, but Joe makes her feel safe.
An even more interesting theory is that the Christmas Carol actor actually cowrote some songs on Folklore. Taylor credited William Bowery as the cowriter for “Betty” and “Exile.” However, the mysterious musician doesn’t have any social media, and it’s believed the “Out of the Woods” singer and Operation Finale actor first met at the Bowery Hotel in New York City after a Kings of Leon concert.
The song “Exile” uses the term “crown” to describe a lover, which could be a nod to Joe’s big role in The Favourite. “Betty” is written about a high school crush that ended poorly — could this be a story from Joe’s past or something out of the Grammy winner’s arsenal?
As always, Taylor keeps us guessing and wanting more!