Taylor Swift’s ‘Long Story Short’ Lyrics Reveal How Joe Alwyn Has Changed Her 4 Years into Dating

Like folklore, Taylor Swift’s new album evermore continues her work creating songs that are a blend of fact and fiction. But while almost all of evermore‘s songs are more fiction than fact, telling the stories of characters she created, she did include one track that seems to be explicitly about her own life and relationship with Alwyn.

The song “long story short” sums up Swift’s own four-year journey getting to where she is now after Kim Kardashian’s Snapchat takedown “canceled” her in 2016 (see lyric: “And I fell from the pedestal”). It alludes to her highly-publicized roller coaster summer 2016 fling relationship with Tom Hiddleston (“Clung to the nearest lips/Long story short, it was the wrong guy”) right before Alwyn and Swift started dating, then details how Swift has changed since making more of her life private while quietly dating Alwyn over the past four years. In just the post-chorus alone, Swift captures just how their relationship has reshaped who she is (“Now I’m all about you/I’m all about you, ah”).

In the bridge, she makes it clear she isn’t interested in any of her past celebrity feuds anymore, the way she was when she was younger. Her focus is their relationship outside of work. As she put it lyrically, “No more keepin’ score/Now I just keep you warm (Keep you warm)/No more tug of war/Now I just know there’s more (Know there’s more)/No more keepin’ score/Now I just keep you warm (Keep you warm)/And my waves meet your shore/Ever and evermore.”

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The song comes after Swift spoke with Paul McCartney earlier this year for Time magazine about how dating Alwyn changed her priorities. Swift was discussing her song “Peace” from folklore. That song “is actually more rooted in my personal life,” she said. “I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living. I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.”

McCartney asked Swift, “So how does that go? Does your partner sympathize with that and understand?”

She responded, “Oh, absolutely.” Then she gave detail on how Alwyn has changed her, saying, “But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids. Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture—the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song ‘Peace’ is taking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave?”

Her new track “long story short” continues giving details about her feelings about that process. You can read the lyrics below, via Genius, with references to Swift’s life annotated and listen to the song here too:

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Verse 1
Fatefully
I tried to pick my battles ’til the battle picked me

This line alludes to Kardashian and Kanye West’s takedown of Swift on social media following their public drama over West’s song “Famous” and its lyrics about Swift.

Misery
Like the war of words I shouted in my sleep

Refrain
And you passed right by
I was in the alley, surrounded on all sides

Swift and Alwyn were both at the 2016 Met Gala together. But that night, Swift ended up dancing with Tom Hiddleston and ultimately having a summer fling with him. Alwyn and Swift would start dating in fall 2016, after her and Hiddleston’s relationship ended.

The knife cuts both ways
If the shoe fits, walk in it ’til your high heels break

Chorus
And I fell from the pedestal
Right down the rabbit hole
Long story short, it was a bad time
Pushed from the precipice
Clung to the nearest lips
Long story short, it was the wrong guy

[Post-Chorus]
Now I’m all about you
I’m all about you, ah
Yeah, yeah
I’m all about you, ah
Yeah, yeah

Verse 2
Actually
I always felt I must look better in the rear view
Missing me
At the golden gates they once held the keys to

Swift disappeared for a year after the 2016 drama, no longer being photographed by paparazzi or updating her social media. She came back and released Reputation. She has since been more private than she was during her 2015 squad days, using social media to give fans periodic updates about her life (usually containing easter eggs about future music) and to promote her work. She is not a celebrity street style or celeb gossip fixture anymore, living more of her life in private than public.

Refrain
When I dropped my sword
I threw it in the bushes and knocked on your door
And we live in peace
But if someone comes at us, this time, I’m ready

Swift also spoke to The Guardian in August 2019 about why she doesn’t talk about her relationship with Alwyn in interviews as a way of protecting it. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she said with a laugh. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it—but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”

Chorus
‘Cause I fell from the pedestal
Right down the rabbit hole
Long story short, it was a bad time
Pushed from the precipice
Clung to the nearest lips
Long story short, it was the wrong guy

Post-Chorus
Now I’m all about you
I’m all about you, ah
Yeah, yeah
I’m all about you

Bridge
No more keepin’ score
Now I just keep you warm (Keep you warm)
No more tug of war
Now I just know there’s more (Know there’s more)
No more keepin’ score
Now I just keep you warm (Keep you warm)
And my waves meet your shore
Ever and evermore

Swift makes it clear she’s done feuding with people (“keepin’ score”) and is focused on fostering her and Alwyn’s relationship for the longterm with that energy.

[Verse 3]
Past me
I wanna tell you not to get lost in these petty things
Your nemeses
Will defeat themselves before you get the chance to swing

Advice to Swift’s former 2016 self who often made headlines for her feuds and drama with other celebs (usually through blind-item lyrics, like now-friend Katy Perry in “bad blood” most notably). 2020 Swift is not that person, though the Kimye takedown affected her profoundly. As she told Vogue in September 2019 about being “canceled” then, “A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience. I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly. When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, Kill yourself.”

“I realized I needed to restructure my life because it felt completely out of control,” she continued. “I knew immediately I needed to make music about it because I knew it was the only way I could survive it. It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so humiliating.”

Refrain
And he’s passing by
Rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky
And he feels like home
If the shoe fits, walk in it everywhere you go

Chorus
And I fell from the pedestal
Right down the rabbit hole
Long story short, it was a bad time
Pushed from the precipice
Climbed right back up the cliff
Long story short, I survived

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