Taylor Swift's 'Evermore': Which Songs Did William Bowery, aka Joe Alwyn, Help Write?
Taylor Swift released her surprise ninth studio album, Evermore, on Friday -- revealing several more songs co-written by her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn!
Last month, Swift confirmed the fan theory that Alwyn was in fact the songwriter "William Bowery," who was credited on several tracks on her newly GRAMMY-nominated album, Folklore, which was released in July. And it seems the couple continued to work together on Folklore's "sister," Evermore.
Swift told fans in a YouTube chat prior to the album's release that she worked with William Bowery on three Evermore songs, and track credits reveal those songs to be the dreamy, nostalgic "Champagne Problems," Swift's collab with The National "Coney Island," and the title track, "Evermore," which features Bon Iver.
Swift revealed the truth about William Bowery, during her new Disney+ concert film, Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions.
"There's been a lot of discussion about William Bowery and his identity. He's not a real person," Swift tells Folklore and Evermore collaborators Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in the film. "William Bowery is Joe, as we know. And Joe, Joe plays piano beautifully, and he's always just playing and making things up and kind of creating things."
The couple first teamed up for "Betty" -- a song for which, Swift revealed, Alwyn wrote the chorus -- and also worked together on her Bon Iver duet, "Exile."
"I just heard Joe singing the entire, fully formed chorus of 'Betty' from another room. And I just was like, 'Hello,'" Swift recalls in the film. "It was a step that we would never have taken because why would we have ever written a song together? This was the first time we had a conversation where I came in and I was like, 'Hey, this could be really weird and we could hate this, so could we just, because we're in quarantine and there's nothing else going on, could we just try to see what it's like if we write this song together?'"
A source told ET earlier this month that Alwyn has been a "constant" for Swift amid a tumultuous year -- which has included not just the coronavirus lockdown, but also her mother Andrea's health battle. Swift first shared Andrea's cancer diagnosis in 2015. After the cancer returned in 2019, the singer shared in a January 2020 interview with Variety that Andrea's doctors had found a brain tumor.
"She was going through chemo, and that’s a hard enough thing for a person to go through," she said at the time. "While she was going through treatment, they found a brain tumor. And the symptoms of what a person goes through when they have a brain tumor is nothing like what we’ve ever been through with her cancer before. So it’s just been a really hard time for us as a family."
"Joe has provided such a great support system for Taylor. He is the one constant in her life that she can truly rely on," ET's source said. "Joe has helped Taylor with her music, inspiring it. She is so grateful for him and in love with him. He is her cheerleader and rock. They have spoken about their future together and they love celebrating the holidays together and are looking forward to that."
See more on the couple's collaboration in the video below. Evermore is out now.
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