For Matty Healy to shade Taylor Swift displays a lot of gall.
As much as Swifties would like to forget it, Taylor dated Matty Healy for a hot minute. Between her breakup with Joe Alwyn and getting with Travis Kelce, she had a brief “dirtbag summer.” (Don’t let the term fool you; it began and ended in the spring of 2023)
When The Tortured Poets Department came out, it became clear that Taylor had poured her heartbreak over the Matty Healy debacle into her lyrics.
Now, Matty sounds like he’s dismissing what they had together entirely.
Is Matty Healy insulting Taylor Swift and dissing their erstwhile fling in the process?
On Wednesday, October 23, Matty Healy spoke on Joshua Citarella’s Doomscroll podcast.
He acknowledged that his past romances have been “an obvious thing to draw from” when he is writing songs for his band, The 1975.
“Last year I became a way more well-known public figure for loads of different reasons,” Matty described vaguely. “The only reason that I was interested in is kind of, like, what I was doing.”
Let’s be serious for a moment. Matty Healy became “a way more well-known public figure” in 2023 for one reason. It’s the same reason that most people know who Travis Kelce is. Matty became much more famous because he and Taylor Swift were spotted together.
This began about a month after she and Joe Alwyn ended their long-term relationship. Taylor and Matty had been friends since 2014, and things blossomed into something new — and worse.
Matty Healy’s rise to the spotlight caused many of Taylor Swift’s fans to learn about his various controversies.
Was Taylor Swift just a ‘casual romantic liaison’ to Matty Healy?
“So, I think that a lot of artists, they become very interested in their lore,” Matty Healy continued during his recent podcast appearance. “Or they become interested in the things that have happened outside of their art that people know about. And they want to address that, and fair enough.”
The frontman acknowledged that he “used to write about relationships a lot more” earlier in his career. But not anymore, it seems.
“But honestly I would kind of just be lying if I made a record about, I don’t know, all the stuff that was said about me,” Matty Healy said slyly. “Or my casual romantic liaisons, or whatever it may be.” He characterized these as things “that I’ve kind of become known for just because I was famous.”
“I think that that’s an obvious thing to draw from and I’m just not interested in it,” Matty Healy claimed. “And I think the maintenance of the status quo is something that I always like fight against.”
He continued: “So, the idea of making a record about something that personally happened to me, that by the time I put it out is gonna be, like, two years old, I see people doing that as well, and it’s not interesting.”
Some believe that he’s saying that singing about the Matty Healy, Taylor Swift mistake could put him in Swifties’ crosshairs. And that’s true. Most have forgotten him, or tried to. But it sounds less kind than that.
Is that a snub?
After hearing Taylor Swift pour her heartbreak over dating a dumpster fire of a human being who ghosted her, it’s weird to hear Matty Healy push that he had a “casual liaison” in 2023.
Maybe that’s how he saw it, and those different views are part of why they didn’t work out. Perhaps he didn’t realize how seriously she took things until The Tortured Poets Department.
Or possibly this is a snub — pretending that their hookup didn’t matter when Taylor has spent the past year living her best life with her new boyfriend.
Sometimes, people insult their exes because they’re bitter and wonder what might have been.