“It was really the most accidental thing to happen in lockdown,” he told the publication. “It wasn’t like, ‘It’s three o’clock, it’s time to write a song!’ It was just messing around on a piano and singing badly and being overheard and then thinking, you know, what if we tried to get to the end of it together?”
Using the pseudonym William Bowery, Alwyn received two co-writing credits on “Folklore” and three on the followup album to that one, “Evermore.”
The couple kept it a secret, he said, because “the idea was that people would just listen to the music rather than focus on the fact that we wrote it together.”
But word got out — and the pair, who are known to be very private about their relationship, ended up scoring some Grammys thanks to their collaboration.
He doesn’t mind talking about the music, but of course he’s not willing to discuss his relationship with Swift.
Alwyn, whose TV series “Conversations with Friends,” premieres this month, is aware of his rep for playing things close to the vest.
“I’m sure I’ve come across as guarded in the past,” he said. “And it’s a mix of me being British and having a private life. But I don’t want to be going into these things guarded.”