Taylor Swift writes of being ‘shattered’ during Eras Tour

Taylor Swift writes of being “shattered” during her Eras Tour in one of the songs on her latest headline-making album.

It wasn’t the stuff of her wildest dreams.

On Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, which dropped Friday, the pop star, 34, seemingly admits that she was more emotionally wounded from her break-up with British actor Joe Alwyn than it seemed at the time.

In her song I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, the 13th track on the album, Swift says that she was only pretending to be happy following their split, which hit headlines just days after she started her Eras Tour last year.

Taylor Swift released her new album last week. Picture: Octavio Jones/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

Lyrics supposedly about the Conversations With Friends star include: “Cause I’m a real tough kid, I can handle my s**t / They said, ‘Baby, gotta fake it till you make it,’ and I did / Lights, camera, bitch, smile, even when you wanna die / He said he’d love me all his life.”

Swift, who has since moved on to NFL player Travis Kelce, 34, also says in the song that she was “shattered” while crowds chanted “more” from her.

Swift kicked off her blockbuster Eras Tour in late March 2023. Picture: John Medina/Getty Images

The singer writes of performing through heartbreak following her break-up. Picture: Ashok Kumar/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

Swift dated Alwyn, 33, for six years, from 2016 to 2023.

Their relationship was more low-key and private than her relationship with past famous exes, such as Tom Hiddleston, 43.

Neither Alwyn nor Swift has publicly spoken much about the other, but this song appears to offer a peek behind the curtains.

And the view it gives is a sharp contrast to a statement that Swift made in May last year. During an Eras tour stop in Massachusetts, she told the crowd, “I’ve just never been this happy in my life — in all aspects of my life — ever before. And I just want to thank you for being a part of that. I don’t know. It’s not just the tour. My life finally feels like it makes sense.”

This isn’t the only track where Swift talks about Alwyn.

Another song called So Long, London is a goodbye to the city where the pop star once lived with the actor.

To demonstrate how deep those Swift Easter eggs can be hidden, that track is 9 minutes and 28 seconds — which happens to mirror when the exes are rumoured to have started dating in 2016: September 28.

Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn dated for six years. Picture: Robert Kamau/GC Images

Alwyn is also rumoured to figure into the album title, which may be a snarky spin on the name of a group chat, the Tortured Man Club, that he had with actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott.

Alwyn and Mescal, 28, opened up about their group chat during a 2022 interview with Variety. It was founded by Scott, 47.

“[Scott is] just on it every day. He’s just on it by himself,” Mescal told the outlet, with Alwyn joking that the Fleabag actor is “just messaging himself good mornings.”

In an interview with GQ UK, Alwyn added that the chat name was “a reflection on Connell and Nick.” Alwyn played the character Nick on Conversations With Friends, while Mescal played Connell on Normal People. Both TV series were adaptations from books written by Irish author Sally Rooney.

Further lyrics by Swift say, “I was grinning like I’m winning, I was hitting my marks, cause I can do it with a broken heart / I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday every day. I’m so obsessed with him but he avoids me like the plague / I cry a lot but I am so productive, it’s an art.”

This story originally appeared on New York Post and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as Taylor Swift writes of being ‘shattered’ during Eras Tour