"So Phoebe will be on this album": Paul Mescal and Joe Alwyn group chat revelation sparks wild Taylor Swift album speculation

On February 4, at the 66th Grammy Awards, Taylor Swift won the Album of the Year and the Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights. During the acceptance speech for the latter, the Time Magazine Person of the Year 2023 announced her upcoming album, titled The Tortured Poets Department.

In the wake of this revelation, fans of Taylor Swift are now speculating that her new album is a savage response to her former boyfriend Joe Alwyn’s WhatsApp group, reportedly called “The Tortured Man Club” with his friends Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott.

In this regard, an X user with the handle @AFRA1DOFHE1GHTS commented under @lovr23_’s tweet predicting that Phoebe Bridgers will be collaborating with Taylor Swift on her upcoming album, hinting that the former is not only one of Swift’s home girls, but also that Phoebe’s ex, Mescal, is friends with Taylor’s ex, Alwyn.

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Fans of Taylor Swift speculate her new album is a dig at ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn

Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, which is slated to release on April 19, has already begun garnering enough traction online, for its unusual title.

Swifties have even united to speculate that the LP is a direct reply to her ex-boyfriend and English actor Joe Alwyn’s men-only WhatsApp group chat called “The Tortured Man Club,” with his buddies, Irish actors Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal.

In fact, Alwyn and Mescal shared the same with Variety Actors on Actors during a 2022 special interaction and said how it was founded by Scott. Mescal even joked at the time, saying how Andrew was “just on it every day… by himself” and Alwyn added, “Just messaging himself good mornings.”

Before that, the Conversations with Friends star told GQ UK that the name of his exclusive boys' WhatsApp group was “a reflection on Connell and Nick,” the latter being the role he played in the 2022 Hulu series, and the former being the role Mescal played in Normal People.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift revealed during her Grammys 2024 speech that she kept her upcoming album “under wraps” for over two years, which her fans say overlapped with her not-so-public relationship with Joe Alwyn. Swifties also believe that the songstress will be “spilling tea” about her romance with Alwyn, which she couldn't do during their time together as he was allegedly shy.

“[The way I can celebrate] is by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the past two years, which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19th. It’s called The Tortured Poets Department and I’m going to go post the cover right now backstage,” she said.

Here are some of the wild reactions surrounding the title of Swift’s forthcoming release from X.

For those unaware, Taylor Swift dated Joe Alwyn from 2017 to the spring of 2023, during which the latter collaborated on 10 of her songs released between 2020 and 2022. It included her hit eighth studio album Folklore, for which they jointly received the Album of the Year at the 63rd Grammy Awards.

Earlier, media outlets including Page Six reported that Swift and Alwyn broke up as their relationship “ran its course,” as revealed by an insider source and there was nothing “dramatic” about it.

While nothing is known about Joe Alwyn's relationship status as of now, the Blank Space singer has been dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end and NFL icon Travis Kelce since September 2023.