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Taylor Swift shared the secrets behind the songs on her album Folklore in her new movie for Disney+, Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, which came out on Nov. 25. While discussing the track “Exile”, Taylor finally addressed the fact that the song was co-written by someone named William Bowery. When the album first came out, fans guessed that William Bowery was a pseudonym for Taylor’s boyfriend, Joe Alwyn — and, it turns out, they were right!
“So William Bowery is Joe, as we know,” Taylor said. “And Joe — Joe plays piano beautifully. And he’s always just playing and making things up and kind of creating things. Joe had written that entire piano part [in “Exile”].” The 29-year-old is also listed a co-writer on the song “Betty.”
Taylor has actually written under pseudonym herself in the past. She penned Rihanna and Calvin Harris’ 2016 hit, “This Is What You Came For,” under the alias Nils Sjoberg. When Tay wrote the track, she was dating Calvin, but after their split, he revealed that she was the song’s mysterious writer. Earlier this month, Taylor opened up about using the pseudonym for the first time.
“I think when a pseudonym comes in is when you still have a love for making the work, and you don’t want the work to become overshadowed by this thing that’s been built around you, based on what people know about you,” Taylor told Paul McCartney when they interviewed each other for Rolling Stone. “And that’s when it’s fun to create fake names and write under them. I wrote under the name Nils Sjoberg because those are two of the most popular names of Swedish males.”
This week has been pretty incredible for Taylor. In addition to dropping Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, she also found out on Nov. 24 that she was nominated for SIX Grammy Awards for the show in 2021. One of the nominations is even for Album of the Year, which she missed out on for her previous two albums, Lover and Reputation. Tay has already won Album of the Year twice (for Fearless and 1989), so even just scoring this nomination again is already quite an honor!
