{Shout out to u/KanoSk for the inspiration. Check out their post if you haven't already. I was also inspired by this post.}

Speculation

One thing we snarkers have in common with Swifties is apophenia. We both tend to overestimate Swift's intellect and assume intent where no implication may have been intended. We can't create narratives in our heads and call them facts. Going by the precedent set by Swift and her team, her Easter Eggs are always obvious.

We don't know much about Joe or what his relationship was like with Taylor. All we have is her perspective through songs. I don't know who either of them are as people in their personal lives; I don't know if Joe is a liar or bad person, and I only believe Taylor is a liar because of the discrepancies with narratives over time: innocuous examples include Scott Swift's email proving Taylor never worried about "Kitchen table bills" and that she in fact did live on a very rich property that I and many others would call a mansion; Taylor losing her country accent when she made a genre switch to Pop; and Ronnie Cremer saying that he was a Guitar teacher hired to by the Swifts to teach Taylor, and not a computer tech who only taught Taylor a few chords. Of course there's the Scooter Braun thing as well, but I won't get into that.

For all we know, every song on TTPD could be a mix of muses. Or it could be that songs people assume is about one muse is actually about another. We don't know. I do think we shouldn't downplay Joe's influence on the album and assume he only got a song or two; let's not forget where the name Tortured Poets Department comes from.

10 year love story/fling?

Let's tackle a narrative that has come out with TTPD: Taylor and Matty are star crossed lovers at best, or were in a 10 year situationship at worst. This is partly promoted by Taylor with certain lines on the album: some songs people assume are about Matty talk about reuniting. But where they ever actually "together"?

Taylor met Matty for the first time in November 2014, a few weeks after 1989 was released. Comically, there are some people who try to attribute songs like Style to Matty, which would mean Taylor looked into her crystal ball and knew she would meet him.

In a radio interview released November 26th 2014, Matty says he wouldn't be against dating Taylor.

January 16th 2015, Matty calls the idea that he had been dating Taylor "ridiculous". He says it's fake and they exchanged numbers in the way many people in the celebrity world do. To quote Matty: "There is no relationship or anything happening".

In March 2016, he describes his relationship with Taylor as a flirtation, but says it would be emasculating to date her. He later clarified:

"I didn't even date Taylor, but the media's incessant and brutal obsession with her has meant that even a guy who DIDN'T DATE HER has been so battered by their never-ending questions that he's inevitably said something that can be lifted and molded into something that resembles 'shade'. It's really sad."

What's confusing is that from the time Taylor gets with Calvin to the time Taylor starts working on Midnights, it seems like Matty disappears from her life. Did his "emasculating" statement make her mad? There is no evidence they were in contact with each other between that time, unless, again, you're claiming they secretly signaled to each other (apophenia) . Was he just not around for those 6 years?

Taylor genuinely seemed happy with Calvin until the "This is what you Came For" fiasco. (Personally, the song sounds more like something Calvin would write rather than Taylor. I'm not sure what happened there). Then she paraded around Tom and did everything with Tom that she did with Calvin.

Is it possible Taylor and Matty had an affair while making Midnights? Sure. But I don't know where "10 years" came from.

I've heard it said The 1975 and Taylor Swift's music are interlinked? I'm not familiar with The 1975, but Taylor's music is also interlinked with Avril Lavigne, Lana Del Rey, Matt Nathanson, and Hilary Duff, so I'm not sure what the point is.

Trusting the unreliable narrator

As mentioned earlier, Taylor Swift and her team tend to rewrite history.

Folklore and Evermore were written in seclusion, because of Covid. Joe was involved in the writing process. Apparently, it was Joe who wrote the chorus for Betty.

the singer revealed that "betty" had basically come to Alwyn out of thin air. “I just heard Joe singing the entire, fully formed chorus of ‘betty’ from another room. And I just was like, ‘Hello,’” Swift said. “He was singing the chorus of it and I thought it sounded really good from a man’s voice, from a masculine perspective, and I really liked that it seemed to be an apology,” she added. This unfortunately debunks our beloved theory that James, the fictional character in folklore's teen love triangle who's dedicating this song to Betty, is not a queer woman. Sigh.

Yet when Taylor dedicated Cardigan to Matty in May 2023, a song from the album she made with Joe, it was said that Cardigan was written about him and Matty is August, Joe is Betty, and Taylor is James....what? Does this mean End Game and Mary's Song were about Travis, because she dedicated it to him during Eras? I know this is a bias thing to say, but as we know Taylor's analogies tend to be specific and realistic, I don't think she'd think to write herself as a 17 year old boy.

Part of Taylor's rewriting history includes her refusing to give Joe credit for Folklore and, according to some Swifties, reclaim songs such as "Hey Stephen" (it was supposedly Matty's favorite) for Travis; the "50 reasons" line is meant to refer to the 50 women on Catching Kelce. I don't know about any of this.

Could there have been songs on Midnights, the album Matty worked on, about Matty? Sure.

Taylor's ritual of devaluing her current lovers

Because of TTPD, people laugh at Travis, but I don't think Travis's humiliation is special. This has been a ritual with Taylor. I don't want to go too far back in Swift lore and talk about how she was singing about so and so while with another guy, so let's start with Joe. Despite meeting in May 2016 and being linked in October, they weren't rumored to be dating until May 2017. But I think it's safe to say they were together for at least year (probably longer) when Reputation was released.

Yet, despite being in a relationship for a year, she writes Getaway Car. In her Look What You Made Me Do music Video, she references Tom and Calvin. Then, on Lover, she writes I Forgot You Existed (allegedly about Calvin), and Afterglow, which seems like an inappropriate track for an album called Lover and shows there were cracks in the relationship as early as 2019. Among the fictional narratives on Folklore and Evermore, the 1, seven, this is me trying, illicit affairs, hoax, happiness, and not to mention a lot of the fictional stories center on wanting infidelity, longing for exes, and being unhappy. Supposedly, she wrote You're Losing Me in December 2021.

In 2021, she makes All Too Well 10 minutes long and adds lyrics,insinuating Jake was her twin flame. Then she made a short film based on the song about her relationship with Jake.

I'm sure in the month she was with Matty, she was writing and recording about Joe, since the logistics of her writing and recording within a one month interval between relationships seems unlikely, and I'm sure she wrote and recorded music about Matty while with Travis.

Is it "longing" or "petty revenge"?

If Jake Gyllenhaal knocked on her door, would she take him back? She's been singing about him for 12 years, so one would think she's in love with him.

I think it's safe to say she knows her fandom pretty well, and unfortunately so do her exes. When she sung This is What You Came For at the Eras tour, Calvin temporary disabled his twitter to avoid harassment.

She called the TTPD of eras "female rage" and, as it's been mentioned, it seems like she sees her exes as part of her brand.

I know I've spoke about apophenia so I might sound crazy, but I wonder if it was a calculated move for her to invite these people to her VIP tent: Paul Mescal on one night and Andrew Scott on another (Joe's Tortured Men's Club chat); Katy Perry (Mayer's ex) was there the same night as Rita Ora (Calvin's ex); Reese Witherspoon (Jake's ex); Ashley Tisdale (Martin Johnson's ex). And I wonder if these mash ups were to appease subsections of her fandom:

• It's Nice To Have A Friend x Dorothea during pride month for the Gaylors ("Friends of Dorothy")
• Is It Over Now? x Out of the Woods for the Hetlors
• The Alchemy x Treacherous / Begin Again x Paris for Tayvis stans (though I think the last two songs were inspired by Conor?)
• Dear John x Sad, Beautiful, Tragic seems like it's for John?
• I Don’t Wanna Live Forever x imgonnagetyouback was for Maylors
• I Forgot That You Existed and Sweet Nothing is likely Calvin
• And of course the final mash up was for Joe Alwyn stans, but she had to end the tour with a "Karma is the guy on the Chiefs" just to win back Tayvis stans

To conclude, I'm not trying to rain on Maylors parade, but it seems like Matty was just album fodder and just like Gaylors, Joe widows, Tayvis stans, and Hetlors, people bought into it.