Taylor Swift’s most devoted fans went into a tailspin on Wednesday evening when her forthcoming new album, The Tortured Poets Department, allegedly leaked in what appeared to be its entirety.
“You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth / should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep / Like a tattooed Golden Retriever,” one fragment distributed by Swifties reads.
While most of the audio that ripped across X has already been taken down due to copyright violations, the overwhelming consensus among fans is that the bulk of the album’s lyrical content concerns not actor Joe Alwyn, whose six-year relationship with Swift reportedly ended last year, but Matty Healy, the problematic lead singer of The 1975 and a former situationship of Swift’s.
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In early April 2023, Entertainment Tonight reported that Swift and Alwyn had broken up a few weeks prior, and that the split was “not dramatic... the relationship had just run its course.”
By mid-May, Swift and Healy had been spotted kissing and photographed at double date dinners together by paparazzi, and Healy was even snapped leaving Swift’s New York City apartment with an overnight bag while wearing a Lover hat.
Fans balked at the pairing, “disgusted” by his appearance on an edgelord podcast in which Healy laughed at racist jokes about the rapper Ice Spice, and by his porn consumption (Healy openly admitted to masturbating to “Ghetto Gaggers” content).
“Who’s gonna hold you like me? / Nobody, no fucking body...” tweeters posted. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re gonna screw this up with me, but you told 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.”
If the lyric is real, this is almost certainly a Swift reference to Jack Antonoff, her longtime producer. The identity of “Lucy” is less certain but is perhaps a name-check of Boygenius singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus.
Last year, Healy tweeted, “I told Lucy Dacus that Boygenius had inspired me and [The 1975 drummer] George [Daniel] to start a new band called ‘Girlretard.’ I don’t really hear from her that often.”
“You don’t hear from me at all,” Dacus replied, and Healy deactivated his account.
On Wednesday night, Swifties dissected another apparently leaked lyric: “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 I’ve come to my heart exploding.”
Still another alleged Swift lyric that, if real, could be about Healy—a fellow songwriter—was this scathing fragment: “You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots.”
All things come to an end, and Swift and Healy eventually parted ways in early June. Swift is now, of course, dating Travis Kelce, tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs.
The singer was first clocked screaming for Kelce in the stands at a Chiefs game on Sept. 24, and by then, she later revealed, they had already been dating for a while in secret. Since then, she and Kelce have been inseparable, leaving Healy in the public imagination’s collective dust... until now.
The Tortured Poets Society is Swift’s first new album since 2022’s Midnights, which recently copped Album of the Year at the Grammys.
The official credits for the new album dropped this week, confirming that the artist is collaborating again with producer Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner of The National, as well as new studio partners: Post Malone has a credit on “Fortnight,” the first track, while Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine appears on the track “Florida!!!”
For albums past, Swift has either gone full court press on a conventional pop star promotion cycle—late night show appearances, months and months of heavy social media posting, the whole bit—or opted for a surprise release.
The Tortured Poets rollout has been a little more uneven. Swift announced the forthcoming LP at the Grammys in February, and since then, black and white images from the album, accompanied by IRL Spotify activations at The Grove in L.A., have left fans a little underwhelmed.
It remains to be seen whether the album itself will make up for it.
On another leaked track, Swift apparently sings about heartbreak, induced by Alwyn, Healy, or someone else altogether.
“I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday, every day / I’m so obsessed with him but he avoids me like the plague / I cry a lot but I am so productive, it’s an art.”
Some of her most relatable stuff yet, if it’s authentic.
