In her film “Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions,” Swift revealed that her cowriter William Bowery is a pseudonym for Alwyn.
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Following numerous theories about William Bowery, the mysterious cowriter credited on “Folklore” tracks “Exile” and “Betty,” Swift revealed the moniker was a pseudonym for Alwyn.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about William Bowery and his identity ’cause it’s not a real person,” she told her collaborators Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in “Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions.”
“William Bowery is Joe,” she said, continuing, “Joe plays piano beautifully, and he’s always just playing and making things up and kind of creating things.”
The musician explained that the British actor wrote the piano portion and first verse of “Exile” on his own.
After Swift heard Alwyn singing the fourth track, she knew it should be a duet.
“I was entranced and asked if we could keep writing that one. It was pretty obvious that it should be a duet ’cause he’s got such a low voice and it sounded really good sung down there and in that register,” she said.
Alwyn had also already written the entire chorus of “Betty” by the time Swift heard it for the first time.
“I just heard Joe singing the entire fully formed chorus of ‘Betty’ from another room. And I just was like, ‘Hello,'” she recalled.
Because the couple was quarantined together during the pandemic, Swift suggested they try writing music together. And when they worked on “Betty,” she realized that she “thought it sounded really good from a man’s voice, from a masculine perspective.”
“I’ve written so many songs from a female’s perspective of wanting a male’s apology that we decided to make it a teenage boy’s perspective apologizing after he loses the love of his life because he’s been foolish,” she explained.