Joe Alwyn got credited as William Bowery for the song writing work he did on Taylor Swift‘s 2020 albums, ‘folklore’ and ‘evermore’. The music superstar guested on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ on Monday, December 14, 2020, and was asked to reveal the reason for her boyfriend’s pen name.
Swift, gracefully declined to answer and asked the guest to ask Alwyn since it is his “story”. William Bowery also got writing credits alongside Swift as a songwriter on the upcoming album ‘Midnights” penultimate track, ‘Sweet Nothing’. This marks the sixth song that he has co-written with her. Know more about why Joe Alwyn is called William Bowery.
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What Did Taylor Swift Say About Her Boyfriend’s Pen Name?
Taylor Swift guested on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ on December 14, 2020 and Kimmel wanted to know the backstory behind her boyfriend, getting credited as “William Bowery”. “Your boyfriend wrote some of the lyrics to some of the songs under a pseudonym, William Bowery,” Kimmel said. “Who chose that name? Did you choose that, or did he?”
Taylor took a beat before answering, as it appeared that she was hesitant to divulge anything about the mysterious pen name. Ultimately, she replied, “He did.“ Jimmy then did his due diligence by asking if there is a meaning to that specific name choice.
“You gotta ask him because it’s really more his story than mine,” she demurred. The 31-year-old Grammy winner was then about to add to this by starting to say, “But yeah, he does a lot of …” but she couldn’t finish the sentence before the host cut her off with a joke.
Read More: Top 5 Taylor Swift Vengeful Songs
What Did Joe Alwyn Say About His Pseudonym?
In a May 2022 interview with GQ Hype, Alwyn said that he chose to use a pseudonym on Swift’s songs so their relationship doesn’t distract from the music. “The idea was that people would just listen to the music rather than focus on the fact that we wrote it together,” he said. He expanded on his pen name on ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show‘, confirming theories that it was inspired by his great-grandfather William and the New York street.
“My great-grandfather — who I actually never met — was a composer. He wrote a lot of classical music and wrote a lot of film scores,” he explained. “Bowery is the area in New York that I spent a lot of time in when I first moved over there.” Alwyn AKA William Bowery is credited with co-writing ‘exile’ and ‘betty’ on ‘folklore‘, along with ‘champagne problems‘, ‘coney island‘, and the titular track on the recently released ‘evermore‘.
The couple’s creative endeavours paid off on the first try. After ‘Folklore‘ won the Grammy for Album of the Year, Swift sweetly thanked Alwyn in her acceptance speech. He was added as a producer for four more tracks from ‘Folklore‘. This gave him the amount of contributions required for him to be recognized alongside Swift and her co-producers Antonoff and Aaron Dessner. This also means that Alwyn is now a Grammy winner.
