Earlier this week, Taylor Swift left her followers gagged when she announced that she would be releasing brand new music in just a couple of days, and it hasn’t disappointed.
In case you missed it, Tay first posted about her song “Patient Zero” on Tuesday, writing: “I’ve been impatiently waiting to tell you that my brand new single 'Patient Zero' will be out on September 25 (!!!!!!!!!!!!) and it’s available to pre-order now on my website for 24 hours. 0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣”
The next day, she followed up by sharing that “Patient Zero” is actually just one of four new tracks being released as part of the Encore version of her divisive 2025 album, The Life of a Showgirl. She wrote: “About a year ago, you guys did a truly unfathomable thing. Something that completely blew my mind… You gave The Life of a Showgirl the biggest first week for an album in history. I took a trip to Sweden to celebrate with Max and Shellback, my two collaborators on this album. Really we just wanted to reflect and take in how grateful we were for the moment we were in, but there was a studio there and we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs. I hope you love them, because they were born out of pure gratitude for your exuberance for and celebration of the album we made. The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore including four new songs is out on Friday and available to pre-order and save now ❤️🔥”
In addition to “Patient Zero,” the new songs are “Cleveland!,” “Pink Clouding,” and “Babylon,” and, as with most of Taylor’s typically autobiographical music, they’ve already sparked a whole ton of discourse — particularly “Patient Zero,” which some have interpreted to be a jab at her ex Joe Alwyn.
For reference, these four songs are Taylor’s first releases since she got married to NFL star Travis Kelce back in July. The two first started dating in 2023 — just months after she sensationally ended her six-year romance with British actor Joe, which was immediately followed by a weekslong fling with the 1975 frontman, Matty Healy, after what appeared to be a nine-year on-again, off-again situationship of sorts.
Taylor and Travis started dating just two months after Matty seemingly ghosted her, and only three months after her split from Joe. While she is thought to have shared her emotions toward the Matty situation at length on her 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department, Joe appeared to get off more lightly. In songs that are interpreted to be about him since their split, Tay has mostly just chastised him for not wanting to get married. Notably, in her pre-breakup music, Taylor appeared to suggest that he had effectively dulled her sparkle — wanting a more regular life in contrast to the glitz and glamor of her fame.
But now, fans believe that Taylor is directly contradicting this narrative in “Patient Zero,” with some assigning at least part of the song’s lyrics to her relationship with Joe.
At this point, it’s worth mentioning that while lyrical interpretation is, of course, entirely subjective, Taylor has always actively encouraged fans to connect clues and Easter eggs to the subjects of her music. In this instance, fans have noticed that in the cover art for “Patient Zero,” Taylor is wearing a dress that is identical to one that Sarah Pidgeon wore when she played Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in American Love Story earlier this year; Joe and Sarah were pictured together in June — one month before Taylor and Travis’s wedding.
Anyways, “Patient Zero” is ultimately a song from Taylor’s POV after a woman that one of her exes is dating gets in contact with her. She sings: “When the toxins take their hold, you'd rather die than let it go / But if you're sick of him, I got you / I was patient zero / I've gotta be honest / I've been expecting your call / No, it's not a bad time at all / I heard somebody saying there's trouble in paradise.”
Admittedly, some of the lyrics do not directly align with what we’ve previously been led to believe about Taylor and Joe’s relationship — for example, in “Patient Zero,” she sings: “I bet he even said ‘I love you’ first,” while her 2019 song “Cruel Summer” implies that she told Joe that she loved him before he told her. However, many fans have theorized that while the song may be inspired by multiple muses, the bridge is a swipe at Joe.
“He charmed your family and friends / And you thought 'cause he loves you but / It's 'cause he loves how everybody else loves him / It seems like he shines so bright, but he's bathing in your reflected light, on a free solo social climb,” she sings. “Take it from somebody who lost his games but won the race / Take it from someone who said all of this to his face / Someone who knows she's more than just the chaser / Someone who had him and walked away.”
“I’ve been there / Felt the reeling, done the healing, said the curses and prayers / When the fever turns a dreamer into a pathetic ghost / If he's killing you, I see you / I was patient zero,” Taylor concludes.
So, why do people think this could be about Joe? Well, in addition to the apparent Sarah Pidgeon reference, Tay makes it clear that this is inspired by somebody she chose to leave, which rules out Matty. There are also strong implications that the ex in question wasn’t as famous as she was, and Joe is arguably the best fit among her past boyfriends, given that he was a relatively unknown actor before they started dating.
The concept of the ex turning her into “a pathetic ghost” also aligns with how she is thought to have previously characterized this particular relationship, too, with songs like “Bejeweled” making it apparent that she feels as though she’d become a muted version of herself toward the end of their romance. In “Midnight Rain,” which appears on the same 2022 album, she explicitly says: “He wanted it comfortable / I wanted that pain / He wanted a bride / I was making my own name / Chasing that fame / He stayed the same.” And this is exactly why people are side-eyeing these new lyrics.
You see, one of the biggest criticisms that Joe has faced within the Swiftie fandom — inspired by Taylor’s own lyrics and interview quotes — is that he, in short, “didn’t let her be bejeweled,” in the sense that the two always kept their relationship incredibly private when it came to media appearances and interviews, and were rarely even pictured together during their six-year romance.
Speaking to Time in 2023, Taylor praised Travis for the seriously public way that their romance unfolded in what was perceived to be a thinly-veiled swipe at Joe. She said at the time: “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care… The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone.”
Alluding to her low-key lifestyle during the years that she and Joe dated, she added: “Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years — I’ll never get that time back.”
These comments, the frustration she expressed over her relationship keeping her from stardom in her past songs, and the overwhelming differences between that era and her much more PDA-heavy relationship with Travis after splitting from Joe naturally led to fans vilifying him, and accusing him of actively keeping their relationship — and, by proxy, Taylor — out of the spotlight against her will.
But while Joe never indulged in the limelight that being with Taylor gave him, the idea that she was completely MIA while they were dating is actually far from the truth. In fact, throughout the course of their relationship, Taylor embarked on a six-month, 53-date global stadium tour, released five new albums, two rerecordings, and appeared in two movies — Cats and David O. Russell’s Amsterdam. She also directed and released her All Too Well short film, received an honorary degree from New York University, and made multiple TV chat show appearances. In addition, Taylor had another 34-date global tour, Lover Fest, scheduled for 2020, which was only canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
So, while Joe didn’t actively use his high-profile girlfriend’s status to boost his own profile, he hardly kept her locked away in a house for years.
It’s also worth noting that the more private personal life that being with Joe afforded Taylor is actually the foundation on which their relationship was first built; when they started dating in 2016, Taylor had made the active decision to step away from the spotlight, retreating from the public eye amid her infamous feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West earlier that same year.
At the time, Taylor’s image was at its worst, with the star being branded a “snake” by critics and inundated with hateful comments. And over the years, Taylor’s music has suggested that it was the very fact that Joe didn’t care that she was Taylor Swift, superstar, that made her fall in love with him. In her 2017 song “Delicate,” which is widely believed to be about the early days of their relationship, she sings: “My reputation’s never been worse, so you must like me for me.”
And in “…Ready for It,” Taylor seemingly admits that she finds Joe’s nonchalance toward her star status refreshing with the lyric: “Some boys are trying too hard, he don’t try at all though.” Even her 2022 song “Lavender Haze” appears to reflect on how unfazed Joe was by the unflattering discourse surrounding her when they met in 2016. She sings: “I’ve been under scrutiny / You handle it beautifully / All of this is new to me.” She later adds: “They’re bringing up my history / But you’re not even listening.”
Amid this initial attraction, Taylor and Joe’s romance ended up blossoming in total privacy, with her music suggesting that, during the very early days, she would sneak into dive bars through back entrances that Joe had already scoped out in a desperate bid to avoid being spotted.
And, contrary to the revisionist narrative surrounding Taylor and Joe, the privacy and low-key nature of their relationship was actually what made it so "sacred" to her. Speaking in her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, Taylor said of her public downfall: “I was falling in love with someone who had a wonderfully normal, balanced life. We decided together we wanted our relationship to be private. I was happy. But I wasn’t happy in the way I was trained to be happy. It was happiness without anyone else’s input. We were just happy.”
In addition, in a conversation with Paul McCartney for Rolling Stone, Taylor reflected on “carving out a human life within a public life” as she acknowledged Joe’s “grounded” and “normal” way of living.
This mindset is also reflected in Taylor’s music, with Joe seemingly serving as a much-needed wake-up call after almost a decade in the spotlight. In contrast to the glamor of her career and past relationships with super-famous celebrities, Joe seemingly helped Taylor embrace the little things in life and enjoy a relationship built on normalcy.
This is particularly evident in Taylor’s 2017 song “King of My Heart,” where she finds joy in “drinking beer out of plastic cups” and realizes that she no longer has a need for “fancy stuff.” And it is echoed in her 2022 song “Paris,” where she suggests that being with Joe helps her find luxury in things that are far from luxurious, like make-believing “cheap wine” is champagne, and that their everyday environment was actually the exhilarating city of love, Paris.
With Joe, Taylor enjoyed finding romance in the mundane intimacy of cleaning up after a party with the person that you love, painting a wall for his younger brother together, and spending quality time with one another’s inner circles. She swapped showbiz events for watching rugby in the pub with Joe’s friends, and several songs suggest that domesticity was a key factor in their relationship. In “Lover,” Taylor revels in affection expressed through seemingly inconsequential moments, like having friends stay over and creating new traditions in their shared home.
Another common theme in Taylor’s love songs that seem to be about Joe is her acknowledgment that the showbiz nature of her life might end up proving to be too much for him to handle. This fear is at its most exposed in her 2020 song “Peace,” where she warns that she will never be able to give anybody a peaceful life due to the publicity that surrounds her.
In the poignant track, Taylor also questions whether her devotion is enough when there is so much outside of her control. Notably, she goes on to suggest that she is on the same page as Joe and equally willing to keep their love as private as possible, singing: “All these people think love's for show / But I would die for you in secret.”
And while it is entirely possible, not to mention valid, that as the years went on, Taylor realized that this type of relationship no longer served her, that doesn’t mean that Joe did anything wrong by not feeling the same way. All of this wider context also makes the revisionist history seemingly being made in “Patient Zero” all the more confusing — and even if Joe didn’t inspire the lyrics, that hasn’t stopped Taylor’s most dedicated fans from piling on him as a direct response to the song, having picked up on what they believe to be clues.
One popular tweet reads: “Taylor calling Joe Alwyn a devil disguised as an angel, an emotional parasite who uses women's shine to climb socially … she presents herself as patient zero, the first victim of that disease.”
"now it's a JOKE to say that j*e alw*n didn't climb from d-list to b-list because of taylor, literally the first 'important' role that I remember watching in the theater and saying 'look, taylor's boyfriend' in his career was in The Favourite (2018) lmao," another popular tweet reads.
And now, others are pushing back. One person referenced Travis’s recently flourishing career outside of the NFL as they tweeted: “this made-up narrative that joe used her for fame and access is just so ridiculous cause if anything, he did the complete opposite. the only one who’s used her celebrity to boost himself is the guy she’s currently married to.”
Somebody else wrote over on Reddit: “it just seems so petty. like why are you writing this?? you’re married now. you’ve gotten everything you’ve ever wanted. and you’re writing a song about how you and your ex fizzled out over the course of 7 years instead?? alright girl, whatever. you can’t both claim that he used for clout and then complain that he was never public with you. that doesn’t make any sense.”
Another added: “They're calling the one guy who's never turned Taylor's life into a cheap reality show spectacle a social climber. You all chase the guy for something you made up and try at all costs to make him the villain so Taylor can be a victim forever.” One more tweeted: "her fans love to be mad at joe for not being public enough about their relationship and then also for supposedly using her to advance his career. can't have it both ways, sorry!"
"The biggest proof that Taylor didn't help him get roles is that she's already released 44 songs since the breakup and hasn't mentioned it in any of them," somebody else mused, while another tweet notes: "Something deeply funny about her fans thinking she got Joe roles with acclaimed auteurs but she could only get herself Cats and Amsterdam and her brother nothing."
"I can't stand it when one minute you say he's unemployed and the next you say he's advanced in his career," one more said of Swifties. Somebody else echoed: "Swift just needs to learn to stick to one narrative. Either Joe Alwyn is a social climber or he hated that they mentioned her name—the two together just don’t add up!"
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