JOIN USTaylor Swift fans grapple with breakup reports
To quote Taylor Swift’s own lyrics, “The rumors are terrible and cruel, but honey most of them are true.”
Fans of Swift spent much of the weekend grappling with the possibility that the “Midnights” singer and her longtime boyfriend, British actor Joe Alwyn, had broken up, after reports from Entertainment Tonight and People magazine said the couple was through.
ET was vague about how it had come by the information, saying in its story on Friday afternoon only that it had “learned” that Swift and Alwyn had split. A few hours later, People matched the report with a story of its own citing an unnamed person close to the pair as its source. Both outlets said the breakup had occurred weeks ago.
With no comment from Swift, Alwyn or their representatives, fans of the singer were not sure whether to trust what they had read. Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine, did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this article.
“I think it’s a poorly written, unconfirmed article,” Brittany Browning, a 30-year-old writer who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, said of the ET story.
She added that she didn’t believe the pair had really split up and predicted that Alwyn would make an appearance at Swift’s next concert stop, in Tampa, Florida, “out of spite.” (Alwyn has not been sighted at any of Swift’s tour stops thus far.)
Another fan, Tiffany Hammer, a tarot card reader from Puyallup, Washington, was also skeptical. “I won’t believe it’s true until I hear something officially affiliated with Swift, whether that’s Tree or whether that’s her mom mentioning it casually in an interview a year from now,” Hammer, 37, said, referring to Swift’s longtime publicist, who has become a celebrity in her own right among fans. “As respectfully as possible, it’s none of our business until we know what she wants us to know.”
Hammer noted that some Swifties have gone into an online frenzy as they try to digest the unconfirmed report.
“On Reddit, people are combing through her lyrics about this supposed breakup and grieving something that’s not even confirmed yet,” she said. “It’s like, your poor parasympathetic nervous system. Give yourself a breather until you know everything.”
Other fans accepted the reports as truth, albeit with caution.
“I think that media literacy is really important, and I have the benefit of having a few more years on some of these newer Swifties or younger Swifties,” said Katherine Mohr, a 31-year-old project manager from Madison, Wisconsin. “I’ve been through the wringer on celebrity gossip before and know who you can trust and who you can’t.”
Mohr said she had not been quick to believe earlier gossip items concerning Swift, including those about marriage, pregnancy and some recent online speculation on why the singer had made a change in her set list, replacing “Invisible String,” a love song believed to be about her relationship with Alwyn, with a different number. But the articles from Entertainment Tonight and People were enough to persuade her that the breakup news was legit.
“There is a seriousness factor to this that there wasn’t with any of those rumors, and we need to be able to tell the difference,” Mohr said. “Otherwise, we’re never going to be able to survive in celebrity culture knowing what’s true and what’s not.”
Morgan Chadwick, 27, recalled meeting Swift at an event years ago and chatting with her about how the two women had been dating their boyfriends for the same amount of time. Chadwick, a graphic designer in Chicago, said she would often joke to her boyfriend, who is now her husband, that each new love song Swift wrote was about them.
“He would always roll his eyes,” she said.
“It’s sad, but also I’m an adult,” Chadwick added.
She said she wasn’t sure what to make of the breakup reports. “They’ve been so private in their relationship that I don’t know that there’s going to be any sort of confirmation other than, like, she might make some comment at a show, or he’s going to show up at a show” Chadwick said.
Katie Devin Orenstein, 23, a recent college graduate living in New York, said she is counting down the days until she gets to see Swift at one of her concerts in New Jersey in May. She is, however, rethinking her outfit, which she had planned to wear as a nod to Invisible String: a teal shirt and yogurt shop employee uniform in homage to the line “teal was the color of your shirt when you were 16 at the yogurt shop.”
She added that she’ll be looking to Swift for the final word on her relationship status.
“Every single thing she does onstage, especially those surprise songs, everyone’s going to analyze it like it’s the damn Torah,” Orenstein said.