What Taylor Swift seeming reveals about relationship with Matty Healy on ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ (2024)

Taylor Swift doesn't talk about her personal life; she sings about it.

“I don’t talk about my personal life in great detail. I write about it in my songs, and I feel like you can share enough about your life in your music to let people know what you’re going through,” Swift toldGlamourin 2012.

So who, exactly, might she singing about in her latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department”? The title of the album alone had fans drawing comparisons to the "Tortured Man Club" once referenced by actor Joe Alwyn, Swift's boyfriend of six years. News of their split first broke in April 2023.

But upon initial listens to the album at midnight on April 19, Swifties think she may be singing about Matty Healy, the lead singer of The 1975, on the album.

Revisit our live coverage of the release of "The Tortured Poets Department."

Swift and Healy appeared to be in a short-lived romance in the spring of 2023, following her split with Alwyn. She confirmed neither her breakup with Alwyn nor her relationship with Healy.

Since then, she has begun dating Travis Kelce. Both Kelce and Swift have spoken openly about their relationship.

What happened between Matty Healy and Taylor Swift?

Rumors of a romance between Swift and Healy blossomed in May 2023, weeks after Swift and Alwyn were said to have broken up. It wasn't the first time, either: Headlines speculating the two musicians were together date back to 2014.

But last spring's pairing was more overt. They were spotted holding hands in New York in May. Swift and Healy also appeared to be communicating to each other onstage, per a TikTok compilation of two concerts.

During a May 3 concert in Manila, Philippines, Healy looked into a camera and seemingly mouthed the words, “This is about you, you know who you are. I love you.”

While performing in Nashville days later, Swift looked into a camera and seemed to mouth the same message. Healyhappened to be attending that show, standing in the crowd with opening act Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, who also sings with Bridgers in the musical group Boygenius.

Swift also attended The 1975's concert on Jan. 12, 2023, in London, per Billboard, singing "Anti-Hero" and a cover of The 1975's "The City."

Healy's divisive status in the pop culture world came under scrutiny while he was linked to Swift. He is known to kiss fans onstage, and his other antics include eating raw meat during shows.

Then, after Ice Spice collaborated with Swift on a remix of “Karma” in May 2023, Healy's past comments about the rapper came to light.

In February 2023, Healy laughed and joined in on racist jokes about Ice Spice in a since-deleted episode of “The Adam Friedland Show.”

Healy publicly apologized to Ice Spice at a concert in New Zealand in April. In September 2023, the rapper told Variety that she and the rocker are "good" after he apologized "a bunch of times." Healy's representative didn't respond to NBC News' requests for comment at the time.

Healy doubled down on his provocative nature in a May 2023 New Yorker profile, admitting to "baiting" fans "a little."

"Nobody is sitting there at night slumped at their computer, and their boyfriend comes over and goes, ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ and they go, ‘It’s just this thing with Matty Healy.’ That doesn’t happen,” the musician said. “If it does, you’re either deluded or you are, sorry, a liar. You’re either lying that you are hurt, or you’re a bit mental for being hurt. It’s just people going, ‘Oh, there’s a bad thing over there, let me get as close to it as possible so you can see how good I am.’ And I kind of want them to do that, because they’re demonstrating something so base level,” he said.

Is 'The Tortured Poets Department' about Matty Healy?

Healy, the frontman of The 1975, has been said to sport a “tortured,extrafrontman caricature.” But is there lyrical evidence to support that he's the tortured poet in question? Here's what fans have pointed to so far:

'Tattooed golden retriever'

In "The Tortured Poets Department" titular song, Swift describes someone falling asleep next to her "like a tattooed golden retriever." Healy, notably, has many tattoos. Alwyn has no visible tattoos.

Typewriters

Typewriter imagery abounded in the rollout of "The Tortured Poets Department." Swift teased lyrics on typewriters. Then, days before the album came out, a pop-up library installation in L.A. featured books, typewriters and typed-out lyrics.

Lyrics from "The Tortured Poets Department" also mention typewriters —and a person who loved them.

Swift sings, "You left your typewriter at my apartment, straight from the Tortured Poets Department / I think some things I'll never say ' Like who uses typewriters anyway?"

In a 2018 interview with GQ, Healy mentioned typewriters while speaking about 10 things he "couldn't live without."

“I really like typewriters ... the thing is with typewriters, and writing with pen to paper, there’s an element of commitment that goes with the ceremony of it. It requires concentration a bit better,” he said.

Carrying on, he also explained why he always carries around a notebook: "It’s mainly stories I write about my dreams about being in love with other pop stars,” he said, showing off the black notebook.

A 2016 profile of Healy in The Guardian mentions his typewriter in the second paragraph: "An Olivetti typewriter is perched on the living room table, a series of 20th-century clocks on the wall. It really does feel as if it could be 1975 at Healy’s home in east London."

Lucy and Jack

The chorus of "The Tortured Poets Department" mentions two first names: Lucy and Jack. Both Swift and the subject of the song confided the same sentiment to those friends.

She sings, "Sometimes I wonder if you’re going to screw this up with me / But you tell Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave / And I had said that to Jack about you so I felt seen / Everyone we know understands why it’s meant to be / ‘Cause we’re crazy."

Could they be Lucy Dacus, singer-songwriter and member of Boygenius, and Jack Antonoff, the producer and collaborator Swift calls a friend?

Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith

In "The Tortured Poets Department" song, Swift undercuts any comparisons between herself and the greats that came before her when she sings, “I laughed in your face and said, ‘You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel / We’re modern idiots.”

Patti Smith is an American singer-songwriter and memoirist. Dylan Thomas was a Welsh raconteur and poet who died in 1953. Both lived in the Chelsea Hotel at one point, a hotel in New York that also counted artists like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jack Kerouac and Lou Reed among its guests.

Chocolate

In "The Tortured Poets Department," Swift sings, "You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate."

One of The 1975's most famous tracks is "Chocolate." In the song, chocolate is a euphemism for marijuana.

Is ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ about Matty Healy?

“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is inspiring strong reactions among listeners. The song on Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets department” is an eviscerating post-breakup song in which she sings lines like, "Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?"

“If Taylor Swift ever wrote a song called The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived about me, I’d go into witness protection,” one commentator wrote on X.

The song describes a man who "ghosted" and left: "In public showed me off / Then sank into stoned oblivion / Cause once your queen had come / You treat her like an also-ran.

Height

Healy’s height is an inside joke among The 1975 fandom, as fans theorize he is actually 5 foot 5. In a video posted to TikTok, he argues with fan who confronted him about his height. “I am a big boy,” he says, saying he is 5 foot 11.

Buying pills

The song opens with this image: "You tried to buy some pills / From a friend of friends of mine." Healy has spoken extensively about drug use and addiction.

'Sparkling summer'

"I just want to know / If rusting my sparkling summer was the goal," she sings. Their relationship ended around June of 2023.

'Died for your sins'

Swift seems to mention the other person's "sins" or controversies when she sings, "I would’ve died for your sins / Instead, I just died inside." She appeared to be willing to put up with his PR image — instead, she was left.

"You said normal girls were boring / But you were gone by themorning," she sings.

Is ‘But Daddy I Love Him' about Matty Healy?

"But Daddy I Love Him" is an allegory of one woman making her own romantic choices in the face of scrutiny.

The target, however, is fans and other judgmental people scrutinizing her decisions.

“God save the most judgmental creeps / Who say they want what’s best for me / Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see / Thinking it can change the beat of my heart when he touches me,” she sings.

Is 'Fresh out the Slammer' about Matty Healy?

This song describes a person who exits one relationship and enters another, so it could be about her frame of mind when she began dating Healy.

The old relationship is described as being "gray," words she uses in "So Long London," a song thought to be about relationship with Alwyn.

"Gray and blue and fights and tunnels, handcuffed to the spell I was under," she sings. Later on, she says, "Years of labor, locks and ceilings / In the shade of how he was feeling."

Now, things are different. "Pretty baby, I’m running back home to you / Fresh out the slammer I know who my first call will be to," she sings.