Dear Gossips,

Today is the fifth anniversary of one of the biggest gossip stories of the last decade – and I would make you guess but we always need a feature photo to go with every post so the image that’s attached to this has already given it away. But yes… five years ago today, it was a Wednesday, late in the afternoon, this happened:

Those pictures went around the world, FAST. If you want to revisit the whole set, click here. Five years later and I’m still impressed at the quality of these shots.

Let’s rewind and set the scene: these photos were taken at Taylor Swift’s property in Rhode Island, where she used to host #Taymerica, her then-annual Fourth of July celebration, which she has suspended, at least publicly, for the last five years. In fact, 2016 #Taymerica was so epic she hasn’t done it again since. Because, of course, two weeks after #Taymerica was the Day of the Receipts. The gossip that Taylor generated that summer was WILD. But this is not the anniversary we are observing. Today we are observing Taylor + Tom Hiddleston. Swift + Loki. SWOKI!

It started a month prior at the Met Gala. They hung out all weekend and danced all night:

But Taylor was dating Calvin Harris at the time. Two weeks before Taylor and Tom’s Rhode Island pictures were taken though, Taylor and Calvin broke up and Calvin, hilariously, tried to get his story out there first, that he was the one who ended it because he’s a private person and Taylor was too public. Well. As she told us later in her song “Getaway Car”:

“I wanted to leave him

I needed a reason”

And suddenly Calvin went from “I was the one who broke up with her” to “I feel so betrayed!”

While Calvin kept sulking, this Rhode Island moment kicked off a whirlwind Swoki international love tour from Nashville to London to Rome to LA to Australia. Here they are at Selena Gomez’s show a week after it was blown open to the world that they were together:

Taylor and Tom, obviously, did not make it past the summer. But for a while, they were the story, the biggest story. This moment in Gossip Nostalgia has been brought to you by 2016.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Calvin Harris Gossip

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