In the whirlwind romance of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, it's been easy to forget her past relationships. But Swift only broke up with her previous partner of six years, Joe Alwyn, in April 2023, and after that came her two-month fling with fellow musician Matty Healy, lead singer of The 1975.
As fans eagerly await the release of The Tortured Poets Department tomorrow, April 19, many are investigating who may have inspired the 17 tracks. Will the world learn more about her breakup with Alwyn? Or was her casual romance with Healy enough to make him her muse?
Thanks to an unverified album leak and the clues left in her Spotify pop-up in L.A, fans might have the answer sooner than they expected.
The pair were first linked in 2014, but little came from that meeting. Swift and Healy were spotted together in May 2023, about a month after her split from Alwyn. They were photographed on several dates, and Healy was even seen supporting Swift during one of her Eras Tour concerts. But by June, the pair had gone their separate ways.
"Taylor and Matt are no longer romantically involved," an insider told Us Weekly at the time. "They had fun together, but it was never serious."
Neither of them spoke directly about the breakup, but perhaps the new album will change that.
Fans believe her new tracks "Guilty as Sin," "I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)" and "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived" could be about Healy. "Did you really think Taylor was going to write a song called ‘I Can Fix Him’ and have it not be about Matty Healy?" one user wrote on X.
"I can practically hear Taylor Swift singing 'I can fix him, no really I can' in the most sarcastic tone," another said. Another fan theorized that "'The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived' is obviously about Matty Healy. It's not about a long term boyfriend."
More specifically, fans believe that "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" could be a reference to Healy's controversial comments about dating Swift back in 2016 to Q Magazine, before they were even an item. He discussed not wanting to date someone more famous than him. "It's just interesting to me how interested the world is about Taylor Swift," he said. "The reason I mention that is because if I had [properly] gone out with Taylor Swift, I would've been, fucking hell, I am not being Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.' You know, fuck that."
"If 'Who's Afraid of Little Old Me' is even moderately in the realm of being about someone who made her feel small suddenly begging her not to use her songwriting power against them now that it’s looking like they're going to split I will actually [be] inconsolable," a fan wrote on X.
Like many artists, Swift was a victim of an album leak. Individuals shared the tracks on social media, with many claiming they found them from a Google Drive link containing all 17 songs. It's important to note that these songs have not been verified, and some still believe they might be AI-generated. From these songs, fans were shocked to find that only two appeared to reference Alwyn, while the rest were seemingly about Healy and their brief yet eventful time together.
One user shared the lyrics: “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.” The internet was quick to associate these lyrics with Healy, a fellow musician who has tattoos and is known for erratic behavior.
Were they correct? The world will know more this time tomorrow.
