It seems none of Taylor Swift ’s exes can escape her song lyrics – no matter how brief their relationship was.
On her new album The Tortured Poets Department, out today – and released just two hours before a secret album dropped – Taylor, 34, takes aim at a heartbreaker whose tryst with her only lasted a fortnight – yet still turned her into a “functioning alcoholic” when they broke up.
Other lyrics see her take direct swipes at a very specific person – one wears a “Jehovah’s Witness suit” and “rusted a sparkling summer”, so it is easy to see why fans have leaped to the assumption that she could be talking about her brief fling with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy, son of soap stars Denise Welch and Tim Healy.
She also details the trauma of painting a smile on her face for her tour performances, in I Can Do It With A Broken Heart: “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting more,” she sings over deliberately jarring, upbeat 80s-style synthpop.
Yet it is – astonishingly – some of her most vocal supporters who seemingly get the brunt of her most scathing lyrics, when she hits out at “vipers dressed in empath’s clothing” in But Daddy I Love Him.
Taylor fumes at apparent concern for her wellbeing while dating a notorious “wild boy” – who, again, it figures Swifties have suggested is a reference to an online storm that surrounded her relationship with Matty, though Taylor does not make any specific references to him lyrically.
God save the most judgemental creeps who say they want what’s best for me,” she seethes defiantly. “Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see / Thinking it c
But as Taylor is a fan of drip-feeding clues to her eagle-eyed supporters, some have taken the viper as a tongue-in-cheek hint that she will soon be releasing her own version of Reputation, which has a snake theme throughout – though that could be an optimistic interpretation, with her complaining “my good name / It’s mine alone to disgrace.”\
She certainly does make fun of herself in the lyrics to I Can Fix Him (No, Really, I Can) with self-deprecating acknowledgment that she is dating a “revolting” joke-teller of a man, as she ironically claims: “Your good lord doesn’t need to lift a finger, I can fix him no really I can,” before ultimately accepting: “Oh, maybe I can’t.”
Yet Swifties have been wrong in their interpretations before. This album had been widely assumed to hit out predominantly at actor Joe Alwyn, whom Taylor dated and spent six years living with in London before a seemingly acrimonious breakup at the start of last year. It is hard to see So Long, London as anything but a sad farewell to their relationship, with its lyrics: “I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free.”
It certainly appears she had visions of the pair tying the knot, as she continues: “You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof.”
Joe, 33, even contributed to her last album, Midnights, which has reportedly earned him £2million. However, she seems more upset to be leaving the UK’s capital city, blaming her beau’s “bluest days” for the breakup, and raging: “I’m just mad as hell ‘cause I loved this
