Taylor Swift Doesn’t Kiss and Say It, But Lyrics From Her New Album The Department of Tortured Poets could offer fans a glimpse into her relationship with Matty Healy.
On Tortured poetsreleased on April 19, Swift chronicles different stages of love, from the excitement of a new romance to the devastating end of a relationship with eternal potential.
Although the Grammy winner, 34, does not name-check the 1975 frontman, a number of songs on the record appear to reference the star, who Swift dated for several months in the spring of 2023, nearly ‘a decade after sparking their first romance. rumors.
On “Guilty as Sin?” Swift – who dated actor Joe Alwyn for six years before their breakup was made public in April 2023 – sings about her strong romantic feelings and “fatal fantasies” for someone from her past while she is in relation to someone else.
The song contains several overt references to Healy; in the first line, Swift sings about the object of her affections sending him the 1989 synth-pop song “The Downtown Lights” by Scottish band The Blue Nile.
Healy, 35, called The Blue Nile his “favorite band of all time” and said in several interviews that the 1975 song “Love It If We Made It” was inspired by “The Downtown Lights.”
“‘Love If We Made It’ is based on a Blue Nile song called ‘Downtown Lights.’ This is another song where I wanted to reference this song; I didn’t want to stop myself from referencing it,” Healy said. Weekly Entertainment in 2018. “I wanted it to be obvious to people who know.”
Later, in “The Black Dog,” Swift shouts out another of Healy’s favorites in the pop-punk band The Starting Line. The 1975 covered the group’s 2002 song “The Best of Me” in concert in April and May 2023, days before Swift and Healy were first seen holding hands. “The Best of Me” tells the story of two lovers who spent time apart, but eventually found each other after “missing each other too much to have to let go.”
“I just don’t understand how you don’t miss me/In The Black Dog when someone plays The Starting Line/And you jump, but she’s too young/To know that song/That was woven into the magical fabric of our dream,” Swift sings.
On “Guilty as Sin?” Swift sings about “remembering things we never did” and “long[ing] for our dates,” wondering if she could be considered guilty of cheating if she’s never been physically with the person she’s thinking about.
Then on “Fresh Out the Slammer,” Swift — who is currently dating NFL star Travis Kelce — sings about feeling ready and able to dive into a long-term connection with someone after leaving a relationship different that held her back and made her feel trapped.
The song contains lyrics about “coming home” to someone and being “on the starting line” of something new – and also hints that his new love interest is not American, as she sings that she is returning “to the one who says I am the girl of his American dreams.” (Healy and Alwyn are both British.)
Healy and Swift first met in fall 2014, and rumors that they were a couple circulated after Swift attended several concerts in 1975 and rocked the group’s merch (Healy also wore a shirt on stage which represented her). 1989 album cover). They began a romance that went public in May 2023 — and although they broke up in June, the fling was not well received by some Swift fans due to controversial comments Healy made and which Healy made fun of, then apologized for. podcast.
Swift appears to respond to fan criticism on songs like “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” (on which she convinces herself she can change the ways of the man she loves despite his “revolting” jokes) and the critics of the world). certainty that he’s bad news) and “But Dad, I Love Him”, on which she says she doesn’t pay attention to the haters in the midst of her “true love” with a “wild boy”.
The title song, “The Tortured Poets Department”, also appears to be a reference to Healy, and its title appears to be a joke aimed at him for bringing a typewriter into his apartment in the vein of famous poets like Dylan Thomas.
“You left your typewriter in my apartment/Straight from the tortured poets department/I think about some things I never say/Like, ‘Who uses typewriters anyway?’ “, she sings.
The fact that Healy has previously spoken about his affinity for typewriters lends credence to the theory that the song is actually about him; in 2018 he said GQ that he “really” enjoys working on typewriters and putting pen to paper – and has even hinted that he has crushes on anonymous “pop stars”.
“The thing is, with typewriters, and writing with pen on paper, there’s a sort of element of commitment that comes with the ceremony… It requires you to concentrate a little bit better,” did he declare. “So I think it’s important to have a [note]book. So it’s mostly stories I write about my dreams of being in love with other pop stars.
In the song, Swift sings about her partner smoking, then eating “seven bars of chocolate,” which could be a reference to The 1975’s 2013 breakthrough hit, “Chocolate.” She also calls him a “tattooed golden retriever” and Healy is heavily tattooed.
The song suggests that the relationship is not without its downsides, but that ultimately Swift would be happy if it ended in marriage (“[You] wake up in fear, nails driven into your head/But I read this one where you come undone/I chose this cyclone with you,” she sings).
Later, she sings about a moment when the object of her affections told a mutual friend named Lucy that “you’ll kill yourself if I ever leave” — and Swift had said that to another mutual friend named Jack, which made her feel to feel “seen”. .”
It’s unclear if the names were chosen at random, but Jack Antonoff co-wrote the song with Swift and also produced The 1975’s fifth album. Being funny in a foreign language. Lucy Dacus, meanwhile, is a member of the trio Boygenius with Phoebe Bridgers, and Bridgers opened for Swift on the Eras Tour and is also close friends with Healy.
“At dinner, you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on/And that’s the closest thing to my heart exploding,” Swift sings on the track.
The joy felt in the lyrics of “The Tortured Poets Department” seems to be short-lived, however. On “Loml,” Swift sings about rekindling an old flame, only to watch the relationship disintegrate as quickly as it began.
The song’s lyrics tell the story of someone who “comes back” into his life after first meeting him as a “kid”, and how he told her that she had “reformed” him and that she was the love of his life. The promises were empty, however, and she calls the subject of the song a “con artist” who sold “a fool a plan to get love fast” with “counterfeit” love.
“It was legendary/It was momentary/It was pointless/I should have let it stay buried,” she sings about returning to the old flame. “Oh, what a valiant roar/What a bland goodbye/The coward pretended he was a lion/I comb through the braids of lies/’I’ll never leave’/’It doesn’t matter.’”
In “Down Bad,” she sings about feeling “blocked” by the person she loves, and in “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart,” Swift tells the world how hard it was to perform every evening of the Eras tour with a smile on his face despite his sorrow.
In “The Littlest Man Ever,” Swift lashes out at a romantic partner for leading her on and making her believe they were in love, then leaving without a trace and ruining her summer.
“It wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden/I would have died for your sins/Instead I’m just dead inside,” she sings. “And you deserve jail but you won’t have time/You’ll slip into inboxes and slip through bars/You ruined my party and your rental car/You said normal girls were ‘boring’/But you were gone in the morning.”
The song refers to a man in a “Jehovah’s Witness costume” who “tried to buy pills from a friend of friends of mine”; while touring with The 1975, Healy wears a suit on stage and he has also spoken openly about his past struggles with drug addiction. Healy has said in interviews that he went to rehab to treat a heroin addiction in 2017.
In “The Alchemy,” Swift seemingly references these past struggles with the lyrics: “He jokes that it’s heroin/But this time with an ‘e.’
In June, a source told PEOPLE that Swift and Healy were “no longer romantically involved” and that while their relationship was “a good time,” it “ran its course.” Swift began dating Kelce, 34, in the summer of 2023, while Healy has been dating model Gabbriette Bechtel since September.