Do you remember when Taylor Swift released folklore back in July and eagle-eye fans noticed that her songs 'exile' featuring Bon Iver and 'betty' had a co-writer that they had never heard of before: William Bowery.
A quick Google search for William Bowery songwriter did not come up with a list of previous credits, either. And being that it's not exactly like Taylor to write with some unknown songwriter out of the blue - especially in the middle of a pandemic where she made the album entirely isolated and virtually from her collaborators - fans, who know Taylor loves a good Easter egg, got to work.
Soon after the album was released, people began speculating that William Bowery was none other than Taylor's long-term boyfriend Joe Alwyn. This was speculated because Joe is the great-grandson of composer William Alwyn, and fans recall that one of Joe and Taylor's first public sightings was at a Kings of Leon concert at The Bowery Hotel.
In Taylor's Disney+ special, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, she finally revealed exactly who William Bowery is.
And, as it turns out, the fans and their theory were correct!
In the special, which is out now, Taylor explains exactly how that came to be while talking with her other collaborators from the album, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner from The National
She said: "There's been a lot of discussion about William Bowery and his identity, because...it's not a real person... So, William Bowery is Joe...as we know."
She explained that this came to be because Joe is an excellent piano player.
"Joe plays piano beautifully and he's always just playing and making things up and kind of creating things... And 'exile' was crazy because Joe had written that entire piano part."
She explains in the special that he was playing the piano and singing the first verse of the song when she asked if they could continue to write that song. And the rest is history!
I loooove that they worked on music together while in isolation, it's so sweet! Maybe we'll get a full album co-written from Joe at some point...
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