If you had told me in early 2023 that Taylor Swift would write an entire album about being madly in love with Matty Healy, and angry at the world we didn’t support that forbidden love, well, I would have told you that she could never.
It just goes to show you can never know the person from the artist because here we are—an entire, emotionally raw album seemingly about Matty f-ing Healy, frontman for The 1975. I cannot.
That’s right, Swift’s eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, is all about that f-ing guy. You’ll recall they were linked publicly last year but soon ended, and forgotten about. Only not, because it turns out Swift is big mad at the world over the relationship, if the album is any indication.
Let’s dissect that, should we? This is a man who has proudly given the Nazi salute at one of his shows. He’s a gross idiot. I’ve dated unemployed men who would get mad at me when I went clothes shopping because their hobby was to make doll’s clothing and wouldn’t I be more considerate to invite them to see the latest women’s fashion so they could be re-created it for the dolls?! However, I’ve never dated a man who I have known to give the Nazi salute, so clearly, I have better standards than Swift, and I have terrible standards.
So doing the Nazi salute alone is enough to end things but with someone like that, there’s always more, isn’t there? Healy has proudly said—with his whole chest— that he happily watches degrading pornography that involves Black women being treated atrociously, discussing it during a podcast!
As if that’s not enough to dump his ass faster than you can say “Taylor’s Version,” it came out that he appeared on a podcast of other obnoxious edgelords who had previously bashed Taylor’s mom’s appearance, calling her “Miss Piggy.” What? I’m sorry, but if you willingly associate with someone who said that about my mother, we’re going to have a real f-ing problem. I certainly wouldn’t be singing that our relationship “happens once every few lifetimes” like she seemingly does in “The Alchemy” or calling it “screeching tires of true love” going on to sing “I know he’s crazy / but he’s the one” as she does in “But Daddy I Love Him.” My version would be more akin to “you better run if you see me/ because one of us is going to jail tonight” on a song titled “Matty Healy is the WORST.”
Look, no one said I had the same caliber of songwriting artistry as Taylor Swift, but clearly, I have better taste in the terrible-decisions-for-men-department. (It doesn’t quite have the same ring as The Tortured Poets Department, though.)
I don’t understand releasing an entire album about a failed relationship with a genuinely bad person and declaring to the world it was true love—even more, announcing that the real reason you broke up is that he left you: “they just ghosted you/now you know what it feels like” (“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”) and that you’re angry at everyone in your life who tried to save you from him: “they slammed the door on my whole world/the one thing I wanted”; “I tell you something right now/I’d rather burn my whole life now/ than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning/ I’ll tell you something about my good name/ It’s mine alone to disgrace/ I don’t cater to all these vipers dressed in empath’s clothing” (But Daddy I Love Him.) I tell you, the way the FBI could torture me and I’d never admit to that.
The whole album is … a choice. Not one I would make, but Swift has made it clear she doesn’t give a f**k. On the one hand, I admire it. It’s rare a mega star just takes a massive, brutally honest swing for the fences with their work. On the other hand, that swing is for Matty Healy, so … I guess my real takeaway here is that when those celebrity gossip mags try to tell us “Stars! They’re Just Like Us!” we should all point to this album and say “no they’re not.”
(featured image: Ashok Kumar/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management; Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
