In the days before Taylor Swift released The Tortured Poets Department, there were some album leaks and people could not believe their ears, especially when they figured out that there were references to Matt Healy all over the album. While Healy does not come across as a good guy in TTPD, he really hasn’t gotten the Full Taylor’s Ex Treatment. My opinion is that the Swifties aren’t pouring scorn on him now because they’re genuinely happy that Taylor and Healy are over and that she’s gotten all of it out of her system (hopefully). Over the past month, we’ve heard a little bit about how Healy feels to have so much of Taylor’s musical energy devoted to their rather short relationship. He was reportedly relieved because it could have been a lot worse, but he’s still “uncomfortable” with all of the attention, especially given that he’s also in a new relationship. Well, now that TTPD has been out for a month, does he feel differently? Apparently, he’s weirded out that Taylor’s lyrics are all about marriage and weddings and they really weren’t all that serious.
It’s been over one month since Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, which many fans think was partially inspired by Matty Healy. The 1975 frontman, 35, has mixed feelings about the record, a friend of his reveals in the new issue of Us Weekly.
“He loves the attention it’s brought to him, [but] he also thinks it’s hilarious because at no time [were they] ever serious,” the friend claims.
Healy’s pal adds that the musician was “completely blindsided” by TTPD’s “lyrical content,” especially Swift’s allusions to her and a love interest discussing marriage and children.
“For her to be saying things about baby carriages … and living together — he says it had never even come up,” the friend says. “He’s taking it in stride.”
Swift, 34, sings about unfulfilled promises of domestic bliss on several TTPD songs. “You s–t-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles,” she sings on “Loml.”
On “The Manuscript,” which is seemingly about a relationship with an older man, Swift sings, “He said that if the sex was half as good as the conversation was, soon they’d be pushing strollers / But soon it was over.” In the title track, Swift recalls someone taking a ring off her middle finger and placing it back on “the one people put wedding rings on.”
While Swift is not one to confirm or deny who her songs are about, her fans have found lyrical clues suggesting that several TTPD songs are about her whirlwind 2023 romance with Healy on the heels of her split from Joe Alwyn. (Swift and Healy were first linked in 2014 but didn’t confirm the romance rumors at the time.)
“Was any of it true? Gazing at me starry-eyed in your Jehovah’s Witness suit,” Swift sings on “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” seemingly taking aim at the suit and tie Healy often performs in.
Swift also recalls public backlash to a relationship on TTPD, seemingly clapping back at those who criticized her for dating Healy after he made problematic comments about Ice Spice. (Ice Spice, 24, later told Billboard that Healy had apologized “a bunch of times” for his remarks.)
“God save the most judgmental creeps who say they want what’s best for me / Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see / Thinking they can change the beat of my heart when he touches me and counteract the chemistry,” she sings on “But Daddy I Love Him.”
I think two things concurrently. One, Taylor does this with all of her relationships, she turns them into this potential for a white-picket-fence fantasy even when the relationships are just a few months long and not all that serious. At least, that’s what she does lyrically as she’s analyzing her relationships, she makes mountains out of molehills (and Healy is absolutely a molehill of a man). Two, I also think she did a lot of conflating between her three relationships in 2023 – Joe Alwyn, Matt Healy and Travis Kelce. She clearly thought Joe would marry her, and she was clearly all-in with what was (frankly) an ill-conceived rebound/affair with Healy, and lyrically, she’s drawing from both of those relationships. Also, I totally believe that Healy was making some gestures to make Taylor think that they were soulmates or whatever and that’s just his “game.” That’s just his thing. She got conned by a charming douchebag. It happens.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.
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- New York, NY – Taylor Swift and her boyfriend Matthew Healy leave Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Pictured: Taylor Swift, Matthew Healy BACKGRID USA 15 MAY 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Taylor Swift and her boyfriend Matthew Healy leave Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Pictured: Taylor Swift, Matthew Healy BACKGRID USA 15 MAY 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Taylor Swift and beau Matthew Healy exit Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Pictured: Taylor Swift, Matty Healy BACKGRID USA 15 MAY 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: BlayzenPhotos / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Taylor Swift and beau Matthew Healy exit Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Pictured: Taylor Swift, Matty Healy BACKGRID USA 15 MAY 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: BlayzenPhotos / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend at Camperdown Park. Featuring: Matty Healey, The 1975 Where: Dundee, United Kingdom When: 27 May 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend at Camperdown Park. Featuring: Matty Healey, The 1975 Where: Dundee, United Kingdom When: 27 May 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend at Camperdown Park. Featuring: Matty Healey, The 1975 Where: Dundee, United Kingdom When: 27 May 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend at Camperdown Park. Featuring: Matty Healey, The 1975 Where: Dundee, United Kingdom When: 27 May 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
Wouldn’t you rather be celibate than date a guy like this?
For sure. That guy has so many red flags, he IS the red flag.
During the brief time Swilly Heaft were a couple we had a front row seat to his Nazi salute and his stomach-churning taste in porn. He looks like he’s unwashed and rolls around in ashtrays. Didn’t he use an old fashioned typewriter as well and brought it to Taylor’s place or am I misremembering that?
Anyway, while I’m not entirely certain TS is always a reliable narrator (reader, she willingly dated this douche), I’m fairly certain that he’s the kind of guy who says something nasty and then says he was just joking.
Yes! I absolutely would rather be celibate than date him.
Celibate always with a guy like that! Also, if a dude ever talks about us being ‘soulmates’ at the beginning of a relationsip/dating….run, don’t walk!!!
It’s all BS and he’ll move onto another person/relationship within days/weeks/months. Real soulmate, hun!?
I’d rather eat my own spleen than date this guy.
The word charming should never be used in the same sentence as Matt Healy, even when followed by dirt bag and/or douche.
@Hillaryisalwaysright, Yes !! @Shoegirl77, 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Matty himself hasn’t said anything so I take the “friend” with a grain of salt. And its typical gaslighting.
The lyric about him taking the ring off her finger and putting it on the wedding finger and telling his friends he’d k*ll himself if she left him doesn’t sound “not that serious.” I fully believe he was love bombing her.
Sadly, there are men who will happily love bomb a woman knowing full well it’s “not serious” for him. So in a way they can both be telling the truth.
…and women who love bomb men. See Tom Hiddleston.
His friend was probably his mother who had been feeding The Scum this stuff for over a year
If you do not know he is a Nepo Baby Junkie whose mother is on the UK version of The View and was giving out all the Phoebe/Pete stuff because she had worked with both her and her mother (they were both married to the same guy in Corrie) and his dad was on Auf Wiedersahn Pet with 2 of the generational writers of the UK finest sitcoms and then on a sitcom for 8 years
Honestly I look at him completely differently now that I know who his mother is!
Ughhhhh. Douchebags gonna douchebag. Of course this is how he’s responding. He is just so gross.
Also, I don’t think The Manuscript is about Matty. There are a bunch of songs that are probably about him in some form or fashion (TTPD, Fresh Out the Slammer, probably parts of But Daddy I Love Him, maybe LOML, Peter, ugh too many), but I do not think The Manuscript is one of them. That one is probably about Jake Gylenhaal or John Mayer.
Agree- there’s a theory that it’s about a bunch of her past relationships but I def get Jake / John vibes from it.
The Manuscript is def Taylor reflecting on her relationship with Jake while filming the ATW short film.
I’m not convinced any of them are totally about one person or another. I think she draws inspiration from other art, so for all we know these songs are about movie characters. Only one that for sure is about someone in her life is So Long London.
@Nicole, I think you’re right. But she did write “Back to December” about Taylor Lautner. They both admitted the song was about him. It’s a beautiful song.
THANK YOU!!!!The Manuscripts in- particular is so obviously about Jake and all her SONGS and giving them to the fans. Like dude for a musician that shouldn’t have been hard to follow.
Anymore, I feel she just dramatizes things and makes everything into these speculative fantasies and different outcomes in parallel universes because it makes for better songs, lyrically. Who doesn’t love a break up song of woe or heartbreak they can drunkenly belt out/a dark night of the soul song, or a song about falling in love? What else is there to write about really that’s as universal to the human experience and as interesting or convoluted as love and fantasies of loss or perfection? I’m not convinced she buys it always so much as it’s her brand now and she knows a thing or two about that these days. This was the vibe I got with her latest album.
I also remember before the album was out, he made a warning from the stage that something like I got all the receipts, don’t play with me. So, safe to say, he was expecting a lot worse. Maybe, he thought, she was gonna play it like, she didn’t know any of his dirty laundry. Instead, she went after her own fans for going after him. I bet, he is so happy.
I am convinced you did not listen to the album.
You would be wrong. I also listened to all Taylor’s albums since her debut. I even remember the times she was faking country accent. lol.
she literally calls him the smallest man who ever lived, a coward, multiple references to him being a drug addict, that he didn’t measure up to any measure of a man, that he deserves prison, etc. it’s not a nice album to him.
she does go after her “fans” but only the sort of fans that did things like sign petitions for her to dump Matty.
I honestly think Matty was a douche to her so she used him as the expected subject for her heartbreak songs. My theory is that the breakup with Joe was more mutual and less acrimonious. The fans expected songs about breakups so she gave them breakup songs without going too hard on Joe.
I agree with you, I think Matty was a jackass and gave her material and I also think she doesn’t give a flying fig (won’t swear) about him. But Joe matters so she won’t do anything to truly hurt him. He knew there would be a song and he got three truly beautiful ones on the album that are 100% about losing him ( so long London, black dog, how did it end) but in all of them they are sort of just sad and resigned to the fact they aren’t meant to be.
Matty those ones she isn’t sad they aren’t together but she is mad at how she was treated especially the timing.
Exactly this, imo. She grieved the ending of her life with Joe and that it didn’t end up the way she wanted, but she doesn’t hate him and he didn’t screw her over. It just didn’t work out. Although she mentions his depression obliquely, I think she (rightly) knew it would be a horrible thing to discuss his mental health as a factor in their breakup. She cares for/about him being healthy and happy, in a way that Matty did not earn.
Such a typical douchebag move after creating-imploding a relationship due to self-destructive small dick energy: claim it was never serious, thereby implying that she imagined it. She’s crazy, ya know?
Didn’t he leave because his family and bandmates were getting death threats from the swifties? I remember reading that. He was also getting his own threats, but I think when it reached to other people’s safety, he pulled the plug.
In Taylor’s world, she is consistently victimized by crappy boyfriends. It takes two to be in toxic relationships–if Matt and Harry and Jake and Tom and John, etc are such douchebags, what’s that say about Taylor’s vetting skills?
Yeah, I mean Matty may be a major douche, but from what I read, there seems to be a consistency in the narratives suggesting she’s always the one getting screwed over in these relationships. Framing things in such a one-sided way seems unhealthy. But she’s the one with the pen and the audience, so she ultimately gets to control the narrative.
Have you read the essay from the 23yo about her experience with Jake. It is upsetting to read. I believe the essay is called “the movie star” about being a young intern on a play who’s lead is a movie star. about said movie star’s actions and all other people in power’s actions basically encouraging her to keep him calm and agreeable so they could get the play done.
Chilling.
I read that article and it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. He met that girl during a production, began texting etc, nearly had sex but didn’t,then it fazed out.
A stereotypical love bomber/ ghoster. Unfortunately they are everywhere these days.
February Pisces, there was a blow job situation she felt pressured to agree to because everyone on set wanted her to keep him happy, and then Jake treated the intern like she didn’t exist or something like that. And everyone was like whatever, he is happy and we got the job done, so…
I do remember them doing stuff and her stopping because she was a virgin and didn’t want to tell him, and wasn’t sure about losing her virginity to him. But she gave him a blow job. She didn’t actually say it was forced so please be careful about spreading misinformation about sexual assault.
Like I said he was a asshole for love bombing/ ghosting. She was young and inexperienced and I understand where she’s coming from. To be showered with attention from a movie star everyone wants, to feeling non-existent, especially after she got cut from the production.
Well you are wrong here. She actually never said anything negative about Harry Style in any of her songs, they have all been pretty positive and given the impression that they were just not able to handle the relationship and the fame (both of them).
John Mayer was a 32 year old man dating a 19 year old girl but yep keep defending that one 👍.
Jake actually got a mix bag of songs.
Also these songs are from her perspective. Anyone of these people can and outside of Jake have written songs from their perspectives.
she also clearly apologized to Taylor Lautner, and acknowledged in multiple songs that she used Tom Hiddleston to exit her relationship with Calvin (getaway car, gorgeous, long story short, high infidelity).
Nope. That’s the sound of a self-centred love-bombing little man trying to regain some control by gaslighting and mutilating his prey / toy.
Are all of her songs directly autobiographical or is it possible that she’s embellishing a storyline for a song?
I read that Champagne Problems from a few albums ago was about Rory & Logan from Gilmore Girls, so anything is possible.
It seems likely that she’s using artistic license here. This guy needs to get over himself.
I’m not a Swiftie fan, but from what I read about her (mostly here), her fans at this point expect the songs to be autobiographical. She obliges because it sells like crazy and now she is cornered into this position where whatever she puts out will be bent into shape to what fans know about her life. She did start it, but she can’t get out of it now, I believe.
Midnights was her breakup album about Joe, we just didn’t know it since they hadn’t formally announced their split. But that one is all about being more in love with someone than he is with you feeling like you’re being suppressed (for lack of a better word), not being yourself for the sake of your partner. There are a few songs about Joe on TTPD (and I totally agree in several songs she’s conflating different relationships) but on the whole, TTPD is about Healy.
She and Healy were officially together for a short period but there was a decade-long slow burn starting in 2014 when she wore a The 1975 shirt and he wore a 1989 shirt. There was massive flirting but he didn’t bite in the way she wanted and then Calvin Harris came along, and then Joe. But all along she had a thing for Healy and since they weren’t together, she built him up in her mind to be this amazing guy with whom she had crazy chemistry.
Flash forward, she’s in this long term relationship that is very boring (not a dig on Joe – I think he saved her at a time when she was at her lowest and is genuinely a good person who treated her well), Joe always shunned the spotlight and kept things super private which is just not her nature. Healy is still there in the background and now he’s telling her things like ditch this guy, he’s not what you want, I would show you off to the world if you were mine, etc so she dumps Joe thinking finally, after all this time it’s going to be real with Healy and he’s saying all the right things to her, totally love bombing her, no one likes the relationship so there’s the excitement of scandal and forbidden love etc……and then he ghosts her.
I can totally understand what that was about – I think many have a similar experience with someone who “no one else gets but he confides in ME, he’s the only one who really understands me” and how delicious that feels when you’re truly mad for someone – and mad is the right word, there’s an element of not facing reality when you’re in that deep and you ignore all the signs and reasons why when you know it’s not a good idea.
So of course now he’s going to gaslight her and say haha wtf it wasn’t that serious. I’m sure she elevated it in her own mind to a degree but I also think he absolutely did all the things she describes in her lyrics and even if he wasn’t really thinking rings and cradles, he absolutely did and said things to make her think he was.
Sorry this is long – I’m blown away by this album every time I listen to it because it hits home 😳
Sounds like cheating. It is unfortunate that Joe got all the social media bullying and death threats until we learned the album was about Matty because Taylor made a point to name the album similar to one of Joe’s group chat names. So, he got cheated on, got dumped, and everyone assumed the worst of him because of the new album’s marketing. Poor guy.
Yeah, that wasn’t chique of her at all. It annoys me that she doesn’t curtail the worst impulses in her fans ever.
The tortured poet title I finally got in conjunction to MH just now. His wiki page is clearly written by a fan—I remember some really sh!tty stuff about him—and it includes the pretentious names of his albums: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matty_Healy
I agree 100% with all that you have written here, from Midnights to the album hitting home!!
Co-sign all of this Atticus.
I think she’s already had the Joe breakup album – midnights. I think the sad songs on TTPD are about Joe (unless they’re just sad in general) and the mad ones are about Matty. I also think it’s not exactly biographical about one person or another—I think she plays with some artistic license.
Not a Swiftie, I just read the stuff here for entertainment purposes. But I wonder, based on what I’ve read here….if TS was alone for a while, absolutely no relationship, hook ups, etc, but really by herself, would she be able to write music or just recycle? She seems to me another one that should learn that being just with herself is enough (along with Jennifer Lopez and others)
Likewise, what will happen if she eventually finds a stable, calm relationship and settles down. Will she write about something else?
I think the problem Taylor has is her fans now expect her music to be autobiographical. They were literally salivating at the thought of her dishing the dirt on joe before this album came out. The biggest talking point her fanbase has is when her music coincides with a real life narrative so they can follow the drama in real time. So a peaceful, single or happy life isn’t profitable for her.
This is not true two of her most highly regarded albums aren’t autobiographical. Also in her SIX year relationship she wrote five albums. So I think she’ll be fine.
I swear people just talk and make stuff up.
@HeatherC
I can see what you mean in a way – it might appear that she has nothing to write about except relationships but there’s always some new list coming out that shows she’d be fine even if she stayed single for the rest of her life.
https://taylorswift.fandom.com/wiki/Taylor_Swift_songs_that_are_not_about_boys
Taylor is like JLO – in love with love and the bigger the grand gestures the more she likes it. She is still stuck in high school where she thinks a guy piggybacking her is romantic . But it sounds like she got off that Healy was her bad boy and 100% built it up to be more than it was
How did she think they could be a couple! He could never play her game for too long. He would’ve been the ultimate challenge. It would’ve took him along time to “get in the groove”.
This guy’s talent and charisma must be off the damn charts!
I dated a ‘sleeper’ like this once, and I couldn’t have been any more disinterested.
He ended up totally breaking my heart 😩
@Lindsay
Yeah, those creepy little guys are like mould or a fungus – they grow on you.
Either Matty or his “friend” is an idiot with no musical literacy or a pathetic narcissist because not EVERY song is about him. And like Kaiser said a lot of the songs on TTPD weave in between relationships.
There are some very clear Matty songs, and some very clear this is only about Joe songs. Then there is the this is clearly very about Kim song. And of course we have two very obviously slap you in the face this is about Travis songs. But then there are a lot that are about her life and her experience with fame, the fans, and various relationships. Hell she has one song this is just about her thinking she is unloveable.
Also if you listen to the lyrics of all the very clear Matty songs, and the very clear about her and only her songs, not to mention read her poem. She knows they weren’t serious but he played that game and used the fact that she just got out of the 6 year relationship with the person she thought was IT, and love bombed her so she built the relationship up to more. It is very clear in the album.
I’m actually still on the fence about thanK you aIMee being about KK. When she sings about « changing the names » and hiding the clues…it doesn’t work. I think the title is a misdirect. One thing I love about TTPD is how TS plays with the idea of the unreliable narrator and destroys all notions we had about her. I’m going back to her previous work and seeing it in a new light. People tend to forget that she’s very tongue in cheek now (compared to her beginnings) and has actually written many songs where she states that the blame is shared for whatever happened. She plays with the « victim » reputation. She knows people have their opinion so she might as well have fun with it.
Mel – I totally agree – now that I’ve listened to it a few times, I think it’s about how people in her high school mocked her aspirations and at times downright bullied her. She relayed a memory of inviting her friends to the mall but they all said they couldn’t go, so she went with her mom only to find all of those same girls at the mall – they all went without her. I think it’s about someone named Amy or maybe a different Kim but she definitely played up something that everyone would attribute to Kim Kardashian
This is a very generous interpretation.
I read Elvis Costello’s memoir and he said that most of his songs are about more than one thing. Writing lyrics is complicated because it has to fit together with the music, and sometimes more than one inspiration makes sense. Elvis actually keeps a notebook with lines and fragments that he comes up with which he can combine or expand upon later. I think a lot of songwriters do this, especially the ones who write complex songs. So that part I agree with. I’m sure a lot of her songs are like this.
I don’t necessarily agree that she has enough self reflection to be trolling but who can say.
I am in no way a Swift fan, but consider yourself lucky if you never dated a fuckboi. A fuckboi will promise you the world one moment and then be “lol no” the next. I fully believe he did the most when he was with Taylor.
I am not a Swiftie, but I have a 10 year old who is and I appreciate this douche and Taylor for giving me opportunities to explain toxic behavior to my daughter, in age appropriate ways with examples.
And this f*ckboy/manipulator/narc is sure covering an ego sting. He was never serious, so she’s crazy, and isn’t it hilarious she thought he was for real.
Almost none of the swift songs I’ve heard describe healthy relationships or outlooks, so I’ll just keep pointing it out to my girls.
Matt Healy didn’t only make problematic comments about Ice Spice. 🙄
I’m so tired of the John Mayer narrative. It was 20 years ago, he had a run of relationships that he was immature about (Love Hewitt, Aniston, TS) and people bitched him out then. It took him a few years, but he did publicly state that he’d been a jerk to the women in his life and regretted it. People CAN learn in life. Then he starts playing with some Grateful Dead members, and with their philosophies, he was bound to grow as a person … you don’t tour with deadheads and not learn things about life and how to treat people well.
Matt looks like a poet with those glasses and his dreamy eyes.