The actor said he didn’t expect to collaborate on music, but ‘it was a lot of fun.’
Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift have managed to keep their 5-year relationship out of the spotlight for most of the time. A couple that collaborates and wins Grammys is hard to keep low key. Alwyn opened up (a bit) in an interview with The Guardian about why he does not well on the intense interest in their love lives and how it felt to write songs with one of the most beloved pop songwriters of our time.
“That was a surreal bonus of lockdown… That’s an understatement,” Alwyn said about collaborating. Swift collaborated with Alwyn on the Folklore songs “Betty” and “Exile.” Alwyn was belatedly awarded a Grammy in 2021 for his work as co-producer on six songs from the album, which won album of the year at the 63rd Grammy Awards.
Alwyn said the musical mind-meld was never the official plan. “It wasn’t like, ‘It’s five o’clock, it’s time to try and write a song together,’” he explained. “It came about from messing around on a piano, and singing badly, then being overheard, and being, like, ‘Let’s see what happens if we get to the end of it together.’” The key, Alwyn said, was that there were no expectations of pressure on the collaboration.
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“I mean fun is such a stupid word, but it was a lot of fun. And it was never a work thing or a ‘Let’s try and do this because we’re going to put this out’ thing. It was just like baking sourdough in lockdown,” said the actor who played “a bit of guitar awfully” in a school band called Anger Management when he was 12. “The Grammy was obviously this ridiculous bonus.”
As for what it’s like to be dating one of the most famous singers on the planet, Alwyn said he tries not to dwell on it. “It’s not something I think about, unless I’m in situations like this, and someone says, ‘What’s it like?’ and I have to think about what to say about it,” he said, adding, “It’s [the relationship] just not for other people.”
And while he’s “aware” of the sizable interest in their private goings-on, Alwyn swore that it’s not something he spends time pondering. “It’s just not something I particularly care about or have much interest in feeding, I guess, because the more it’s fed, the more you are opening a gate for intrusion,” he said. “I think that’s just my response to a culture that has this increasing expectation that everything is going to be given. If you don’t post about the way you make your coffee in the morning, or if you don’t let someone take a picture when you walk out of your front door, is that being private? I don’t know if it is. So I just don’t really feed that.”
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