Did Taylor Swift Just Admit to Denying ‘Red Flags’ During Her Relationship With Joe Alwyn?

Many Taylor Swift fans are convinced that her upcoming album will document her breakup with Joe Alwyn—and her latest promotional tool will only add fuel to that particular fire.

Ahead of the release of The Tortured Poets Department on April 19, the 34-year-old pop star curated five Apple Music playlists, categorizing her own catalog into “the five stages of heartbreak,” namely denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. While Swifties are no doubt searching the lists for Alwyn-related Easter eggs, they won’t have to dig very far. The very first list is called “I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life,” and it contains a big one.

“This is a list of songs about getting so caught up in the idea of something that you have a hard time seeing the red flags, possibly resulting in moments of denial and maybe a little bit of delusion,” Swift tells fans in a personal message right before the top track, “Lavender Haze.”

Swifties have already noticed that a bunch of the songs on this playlist were written while she was dating Joe Alwyn, but choosing “Lavender Haze” for song number one feels like a particularly pointed choice. In fact, Swift already caused a stir by deleting an explanation of the song from her Instagram following their breakup in April 2023.

Prior to the release of Midnights in October 2022, Swift all but confirmed “Lavender Haze” was inspired by her six-year relationship with Alwyn. “If you were in the lavender haze, then that meant that you were in that all-encompassing love glow, and I thought that was really beautiful,” she said in a since-deleted Instagram Reel.

Swift went on to explain how the world often tries to “weigh in” on other people’s relationships, especially in the era of social media. “Like my relationship for six years, we’ve had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it,” Swift said. “And so this song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff.”