Taylor Swift's lyrics may become a problem for her ex that he can't fix

The owner of the London pub The Black Dog hints at a special “regular” customer believed to be Joe Alwyn after a reference in a new Taylor Swift song.

The Tortured Poets Department was arguably the most anticipated album of 2024, yet even then, nobody could have predicted the sheer level of discourse surrounding the album ahead of release day. Taylor Swift unveiled an extended double album version that contains a whopping 31 tracks. Fans moving past the standard 16-track edition will be met with the seventeenth track, The Black Dog, which has transformed the London pub it’s named after into an unlikely music mecca for Swifties.

Taylor Swift name-drops London pub in The Black Dog song

In the brand-new album track The Black Dog, Taylor begins recounting the story of an unspecified ex heading into a bar, finding out his whereabouts because he forgot to turn his phone location off.

“You forgot to turn it off,” the lyrics explain. “And so I watch as you walk into some bar called The Black Dog, and pierce new holes in my heart.”

“I just don’t understand…” she goes on, “how you don’t miss me in The Black Dog. When someone plays ‘The Starting Line’. And you jump up, but she’s too young to know this song.”

Many Swifties speculate the track is about her ex Joe Alwyn, an English actor she was with from 2017 up until early 2023. The pair lived together in London.

Fuelling speculation, the owner of The Black Dog pub in London (on Vauxhall Walk), Lily Bottomley, has opened up during a chat with Sky News. “I don’t want to give too much away,” she said. “We do have a certain blond regular who frequents, let’s just say that.”

With Joe fitting the description of “blond regular”, lots of fans are convinced that the song is definitely about him.

However, after the song has been hyped up with fans – Joe may not want to pop back to his regular watering hole now. Especially if it’s full of Swifties singing lyrics which may or may not reference his part of the celebrity couple.

The Black Dog pub owner ‘loving’ attention from Swifties

“We’re just loving it,” Lily said of the exposure it’s given her establishment when speaking with the BBC. “It’s been so fun. All of the attention has been pretty overwhelming but we can’t be happier.”

The owner also addressed that Taylor herself once popped in for a drink there. “We’ve had [the album] on non-stop in the pub,” Lily added. “We’ve had singalongs from fans. It’s been amazing.”

With themed cocktails and food, Tay’s fans have been flocking in droves to The Black Dog, taking selfies and discussing the lore the song is stoking.

Interestingly, despite so many Swifties convinced the song is about Joe, some are arguing that the lyric which references the band The Starting Line is a direct nod to Matty Healy, The 1975 frontman whom Taylor dated last year after her break-up with Joe.

The Starting Line is one of Matty’s favorite bands, and The 1975 even covered one of their songs, The Best Of Me, at a concert.

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