William Bowery may not be a real person, but Joe Alwyn is a real GRAMMY winner.
Joe is officially being recognized by the Recording Academy for his contribution to his girlfriend Taylor Swift’s album, Folklore, under the pseudonym William Bowery.
Folklore won Album of The Year at the 2021 GRAMMYs last month – and Joe’s name has now been added to the GRAMMY Awards website. He also shares the award with producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, as well as several engineers and mixers.
When TSwift dropped Folklore last year, the name William Bowery was credited as co-writer of two songs, “Exile” and “Betty” and co-producer of those songs, along with “My Tears Ricochet,” “August,” “This Is Me Trying” and “Illicit Affairs.”
Fans theorized that William Bowery is Joe – there were pictures of Joe and Taylor at the Bowery Hotel in New York when they first started dating; fans also discovered that Joe’s grandfather is composer William Alwyn.
Taylor has since confirmed his identity in her concert film Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about William Bowery and his identity. He’s not a real person,” Taylor told collaborators Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in the film. “… William Bowery is Joe, as we know. And Joe, Joe plays piano beautifully, and he’s always just playing and making things up and kind of creating things.”
She also talked about how quarantine gave them the opportunity to finally team up.
“It was a step that we would never have taken because why would we have ever written a song together?” she said. “… I came in and I was like, ‘Hey, this could be really weird and we could hate this, so could we just, because we’re in quarantine and there’s nothing else going on, could we just try to see what it’s like if we write this song together?'”
She also opened up about their collaboration some more in another interview: “I say it was a surprise that we started writing together, but in a way it wasn’t because we have always bonded over music and had the same musical tastes, and he’s always the person showing me songs by artists, then they become my favorite songs.”
When she accepted her Album Of The Year award, Taylor sweetly gave her beau a shoutout, sharing how “Joe is the first person that I play every single song that I write, and I had the best time writing songs with you in quarantine.”
Aww…
Congrats on the GRAMMY, Joe!
