COVID-19 quarantine was tough for everyone, even Taylor Swift!
During her Eras Tour concert in Melbourne, Australia, on Saturday, February 17, the superstar reflected on the lockdown when she was writing her 2020 album Folklore.
“[I was] imagining that, instead of being a lonely millennial woman covered in cat hair drinking my weight in white wine, I was a ghostly Victorian lady wandering through the woods with a candle in a candlestick holder,” the 34-year-old said, despite supposedly spending the time at home with her then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn.
“And I wrote only on parchment with a feathered quill. That was in my mind, what I thought I looked like, writingFolklore…So that’s all that matters: the delusion,” she concluded before singing her song “Betty” from the award-winning album.
In an interview from December 2020, Swift spoke on how she passed the time, sharing some insight into how she and the Conversations With Friends actor apparently passed the time together.
“I wasn’t expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night,” the pop star told Entertainment Weekly. “I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth before. One night I’d watch that, then I’d watch L.A. Confidential, then we’d watch Rear Window, then we’d watch Jane Eyre.”
She explained, “I feel like consuming other people’s art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, ‘Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven’t I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?’”
As OK! previously reported, Swift and Alwyn’s split was announced in April 2023 after six years of dating.
Neither party has publicly commented on the relationship’s fallout, however, the 34-year-old’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, is rumored to be about Alwyn.
Fan speculation began shortly after Swift revealed she would be releasing the project at the Grammy Awards on February 4. Many believe the album’s name is a nod at the 32-year-old, as a 2022 interview resurfaced of Alwyn, where he revealed he and pals Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott have a group chat named "The Tortured Man Club."
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Additionally, track names from the record seem to point to the British star, including, “So long, London,” “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” and “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can).”
