Taylor Swift’s dating history: from Joe Jonas to Travis Kelce
Taylor Swift, a pop star who boasts a career that has now spanned nearly 20 years, celebrates her 34th birthday today. A 12-time Grammy winner, the singer-songwriter has released more than 200 tracks, with many believed to be about her former boyfriends. Who has Swift stepped out with during her time in the spotlight? We look back over her dating history.
Joe Jonas
Swift dated musician Jonas for just a few months back in summer 2008, but it is a relationship that nonetheless made its mark in the public consciousness – chiefly because of how they split up. In an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Swift revealed that Jonas dumped her in a phone call that lasted 25 seconds.
Together with the Jonas-inspired 2008 song “Forever and Always”, it’s rumoured that her 2010 tracks “Last Kiss” and “Better Than Revenge” are about her break-up with Jonas.
Taylor Lautner
Swift went out with the Twilight actor from October to December 2009. “Back to December”, which came out in 2010, is thought to be about Lautner.
Lucas Till
Swift and Till dated briefly after he appeared in the video to the 2009 song “You Belong With Me”.
John Mayer
Another of Swift’s best-remembered boyfriends is the singer Mayer, largely because of the age difference between them – and his rumoured response to her lyrics. They were together from late 2009 to early 2010, when she was 19 and he was 32. It’s speculated that Swift wrote the 2010 song “Dear John” about him, while his 2013 track “Paper Doll” is said to have been composed in reply, although he has denied this.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Is Gyllenhaal in possession of that mysterious scarf? Swift’s relationship with the movie star, another man who is significantly older than her, is also among her most talked-about relationships. Swift and Gyllenhaal, who at the time were 20 and 29, respectively, dated between autumn 2010 and early 2011.
‘Swifties’ believe several songs from her 2012 album Red are inspired by her time with Gyllenhaal. They include “We Are Never Getting Back Together” and “All Too Well”, a track that features the much-commented line “I left my scarf there at your sister’s house, and you’ve still got it in your drawer, even now.”
Conor Kennedy
Swift dated Kennedy, the grandson of Robert F Kennedy, during summer 2012. Many of the singer’s fans are convinced that the 2012 song “Begin Again” is about the start of their relationship.
Harry Styles
The pair went out from October 2012 to January 2013. It’s believed that a number of songs – “Out of the Woods”, “Style”, “All You Had to Do Was Stay”, “I Wish You Would”, “How You Get the Girl”, “This Love”, “I Know Places”, “Clean” and “Wonderland” – are inspired by Swift’s relationship with the former One Direction star.
Calvin Harris
One of Swift’s longest-term and most public boyfriends was Harris, whose real name is Adam Wiles. She dated the DJ for 15 months, between January 2015 and March 2016.
Tom Hiddleston
Who could forget Hiddleston’s “I ♥ TS” vest? Swift had a summer romance with the actor in 2016, before they went their separate ways that September. It’s thought that the song “Getaway Car”, released the following year, is about their short time together.
Joe Alwyn
To date, Swift’s longest-running relationship has been with Conversations With Friends star Alwyn, who she began dating in late 2016. In April this year, it was confirmed that the pair had split after some six years together.
Speaking to the celebrity-gossip magazine People, a source close to the former couple revealed that Swift and Alwyn’s break-up had chiefly come about as a result of “differences in their personalities”.
Travis Kelce
In September, Swift was in the stands to watch NFL player Kelce in action for the Kansas City Chiefs – the first of several Chiefs games that she has taken in this autumn and winter. Although that was the first time that she and Kelce were seen together in public, Swift has since said that, by that point, her relationship with her current beau had already reached boyfriend-girlfriend status away from the gaze of the watching world.
“We actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other,” she told an interview with Time this month, after being named the magazine’s Person of the Year. “By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple.”
