The owner of London’s The Black Dog gave Taylor Swift fans a telling hint that her song “The Black Dog” is about Joe Alwyn.
“I don’t want to give too much away,” the bar owner told Sky News on Monday, April 22. “We do have a certain blond regular who frequents. Let’s just say that.”
Swifties have been trying to uncover the subjects of all the tracks on Taylor’s album The Tortured Poets Department ever since it was released on April 19. “The Black Dog” features some of the most specific lyrics on the whole record, including the line, “I am someone who, until recent events you shared your secrets with and your location, you forgot to turn it off, and so I watch as you walk into some bar called The Black Dog.”
The Black Dog’s owner said that the establishment has received its highest increase in foot traffic ever since the song’s release. The lyrics feature Taylor, 34, singing about a failed relationship and wondering why the subject of the song isn’t still pining for her in the same way.
“I just don’t understand how you don’t miss me in The Black Dog when someone plays The Starting Line and you jump up but she’s too young to know this song that was intertwined in the magic fabric of our dreaming,” she says in the chorus.
The reference to The Starting Line had fans wondering if the song was actually about Matty Healy, another one of the singer’s exes who seemingly inspired a majority of the songs on the record. Matty, 35, and his band The 1975 have covered The Starting Line in concert and he is a fan of the group.
However, another telling lyric that hints the song is about Joe, 32, is when Taylor sings, “Six weeks of breathing clean air, I still miss the smoke.” After TTPD’s release, Jack Antonoff shared some photos and videos from the recording process, including a clip of Taylor recording “The Black Dog” in the studio. Fans matched her outfit up to paparazzi photos that were taken in May 2023, exactly six weeks after news broke that she and Joe had split.
The Black Dog’s owner confirmed that Taylor has visited the bar in the past, likely amid her six-year relationship with Joe. “The Black Dog is a beautiful neighborhood pub,” the owner told BBC. “It’s really small and really cozy so I can imagine the neighborhood feel, the community, would appeal to her. Obviously, being as famous as she is, [it’s] maybe a nice break.”
Taylor spent a lot of time in London while she was dating Joe, which she sang about on another TTPD song called “So Long, London.” Once again, she mourns the end of a relationship, but this time it’s in relation to how she’ll no longer be living in the city she’d come to love.
“I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free,” Taylor sings, referring to the several years in her 20s when she dated the actor. “For so long, London, stitches undone, two graves, one gun, I’ll find someone.”
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