Why Did Taylor Swift, Matty Healy Break Up? Split Reason From Tortured Poets Department

Is The Tortured Poets Department about Matty Healy?

Questions around why Taylor Swift and Matty Healy broke up resurfaced in April 2024 when Swift released her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, which fans believe to be about her relationship with Healy following her split from Joe Alwyn.

Fans believe that the ninth song from the album, “Guilty as Sin?”, was about Swift’s “fantasies” about Healy while she and Alwyn were still dating. “I keep these longings locked In lowercase inside a vault / Someone told me “There’s no such thing as bad thoughts, only your actions talk” / These fatal fantasies / Giving way to labored breath,” Swift sings in the song, confirming that were wasn’t any overlap between her relationships with Alwyn and Healy. She continued, “Taking all of me We’ve already done it in my head / If it’s make believe, Why does it feel like a vow / We’ll both uphold somehow?”

A source also confirmed this to The Sun in May 2023. “She and Matty are madly in love. It’s super-early days, but it feels right. They first dated, very briefly, almost ten years ago but timings just didn’t work out,” the insider said at the time. “Taylor and Joe actually split up back in February, so there was absolutely no crossover.

So why did Taylor Swift and Matty Healy break up? In “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” the 14th song from The Tortured Poets Department, Swift hinted that she and Matty broke up after he ghosted her and she got over the “starry-eyed” feeling she felt at the beginning of their relationship. Was any of it true
Gazing at me, starry-eyed / In your Jehovah’s witness suit / Who the fuck was that guy / You tried to buy some pills / From a friend of friends of mine / They just ghosted you / Now you know what it feels like,” Swift sings.

Later in the song, Swift hinted that Healy’s reputation caught up to him and was the catalyst to end their relationship. “And I don’t even want you back I just want to know If rusting my sparkling summer was the goal /And I don’t miss what we had / But could someone give a message / To the smallest man who ever lived?” she sings.

Matty Healy’s controversies

The breakup likely came as a relief to many Swifties, who have been very vocal about their distaste for the couple. When Swift and Healy’s relationship emerged in May 2023, many Swifties took to action to call out his previous actions. A Swiftie account @antiheroandie made a Twitter thread: “Matty Healy being a racist, islamophobic, antisemitic sexist, and overall piece of shit- a thread” Included in the thread are deleted tweets and videos of him doing a Nazi salute earlier in January 2023 at a 1975 concert.

On May 17, 2023, Taylor Swift’s fans made a campaign #SpeakUpNow to raise awareness about Matty Healy’s controversies and a call for him to take responsibility for his actions. “From engaging in racist remarks, making offensive jokes, and admitting to watching degrading pornography in which people of color are being humiliated and assaulted, his actions contribute to the perpetuation of hate, stereotypes and objectification which targets and hurts some people from the Jewish, Black, Chinese, Hawaiian, Inuit, LGBTQ+ communities as well as women,” the statement read. “While individuals have the right to make their own choices and form relationships, we believe that it is essential for those in the public eye to take a stand against discrimination and hold themselves and their associates accountable.”

It continued, “We urge you to reflect on the impact of your own and your associates’ behavior and engage in genuine self-reflection. True change requires more than a simple apology: it necessitates a commitment to education, unlearning harmful beliefs and actively dismantling systems of oppression that perpetuate racism and discrimination.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone UK, Matty commented about his own presence online. “I’ve almost got this big brother — not Orwellian, actual big brother — relationship with them because I am one of their peers,” he said, adding that, “My phone’s like Samaritans if you’re getting canceled.” He added that there’s a lot of content about cancelation in his album on being funny. “I think there’s three lines about being cancelled, and I’ve started thinking, ‘Fuck, I don’t really care that much about the cancelling.’ I’m not worried about that; it’s just a funny thing.”

What happened with Matty Healy?

Healy and Swift have known each other for years and were even rumored to be an item in 2016. In a resurfaced interview with NME from that year, Healy was asked whether he had a fear of losing himself when he enters into a relationship. He replied: “Yeah. Absolutely. And the reason I mention that is because if I had gone out with Taylor Swift I would’ve been, ‘Fucking hell! I am NOT being Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.’ You know, ‘FUCK. THAT.’ That’s also a man thing, a de-masculinating, emasculating thing.”

Matthew Healy, the frontman of The 1975, has been known to cause a stir on the internet with his remarks on certain topics and provocative actions. Though, his antics from the past have resurfaced after it was reported that Matty was dating singer-songwriter and superstar Swift. On May 3, 2023, sources told The Sun that she was reportedly dating The 1975 frontman. A source told the UK gossip site, that the two “are madly in love.” “It’s super-early days, but it feels right. They first dated, very briefly, almost ten years ago but timings just didn’t work out,” the source said. “Taylor and Joe actually split up back in February, so there was absolutely no crossover.”

“Both Matty and Taylor have been touring over the past few weeks, so it’s been a lot of Face-Timing and texting but she cannot wait to see him again,” the source said while Taylor is in the thick of her Eras Tour while Matty was wrapping up The 1975’s At Their Very Best tour in Manila, Philippines. “But as two international megastars, they understand the pressures of one another’s jobs better than anyone and are incredibly supportive of their respective careers. They are both massively proud and excited about this relationship and, unlike Taylor’s last one — which was very much kept out of the spotlight, deliberately — she wants to ‘own’ this romance, and not hide it away. Taylor just wants to live her life, and be happy. She’s told pals Matty is flying to Nashville over the weekend to support her on the next leg of her tour.”

Matty’s past actions have resurfaced and are causing a rift between Swifties who want to support their favorite artist and her happiness, but won’t support their relationship. One 1975 fan commented on a Reddit thread about his controversial past, “We cancel him so frequently at this stage I feel like we don’t give him time to grow and actually realise the implications of some of the things he’s done. There’s been so much over the years starting with the robbers kiss in the self titled era I wouldn’t know where to start.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone UK, Matty commented about his own presence online. “I’ve almost got this big brother — not Orwellian, actual big brother — relationship with them because I am one of their peers,” he said, adding that, “My phone’s like Samaritans if you’re getting cancelled.” He added that there’s a lot of content about cancellation in his album on being funny. “I think there’s three lines about being cancelled, and I’ve started thinking, ‘Fuck, I don’t really care that much about the cancelling.’ I’m not worried about that; it’s just a funny thing.”

On May 31, 2023, Buzzfeed made an article that exposed two of Matty’s friends—Dasha Nekrasova and  Anna Khachiyan made fun of Taylor in their podcast Red Scare. In the podcast episode called “Make Americana Great Again,” they called Taylor’s documentary “very masterful propaganda” as they called Taylor “literally the walking, talking embodiment of liberalism in that she’s a person who cannot acknowledge their capacity for monstrousness or evil, which is the source of all their problems.”  

They even made fun of Taylor’s mom when Anna mimicked the evermore singer. “She was like: ‘The president’s gonna come for me, he is going to throw me in one of those dreamer detention camps. He’s gonna separate me from my Miss Piggy mother!’”

One Taylor fan on Reddit called out their behavior and even questioned why Taylor was with Matty. “Once again, no idea why she continues to date him. She has no self respect whatsoever,” one person wrote on a Reddit forum. Someone else added: “Can’t imagine my boyfriend being friends with people that would mock me in any way and even worse my mom.”