Taylor Swift live: The Tortured Poets Department songs take aim at Matty Healy, mourn Joe Alwyn relationship

Now it’s Kim’s turn! That’s right, it looks a lot like Swift has written a song especially for the star of the Kardashian clan, with the song title “thanK you aIMee” in lower case apart from the letters “K, I, M”.

There’s plenty of alluding to Swift and Kardashian’s long-running feud, which was sparked after the reality TV star leaked a phone conversation that appeared to show Swift approving a lyric by Kardashian’s then-husband, rapper Kanye West, for his single “Famous”.

“All that time you were throwin’ punches, I was buildin’ somethin’,” she sings. “And I can’t forgive the way you made me feel/ Screamed “Fuck you, Aimee” to the night sky, as the blood was gushin’/ But I can’t forget the way you made me heal.”

Swift also mentions her mum, Andrea Swift: “Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman/ But she used to say she wished that you were dead.”

Later, she seemingly refers to a viral TikTok of Kardashian and West’s daughter, North, dancing to the pop star’s hit song “Shake It Off” on TikTok, a song Swift now suggests was written about Kardashian.

“And maybe you’ve reframed it,” she sings. “And in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue/ I don’t think you’ve changed much/ And so I changed your name, and any real defining clues/ And one day, your kid comes home singin’/ A song that only us two is gonna know is about you.”

Kardashian’s famous branding of Swift as a “snake” led to the pop star taking a lengthy hiatus due to the backlash she received. She was later vindicated after the full conversation proved she did not approve West rapping “I made that bitch famous” on the track, which West and Kardashian had claimed she had.

“My career was taken away from me,” Swift told Time in an interview for her Person of the Year 2023 award.

“You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar. That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before.

“I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone any more. I went down really, really hard.”

Fans are now scrambling to dissect the meaning of songs from The Tortured Poets Department, with the title track, along with songs such as “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, “loml”, “But Daddy I Love Him”, “Fresh Out the Slammer” and “My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys” all interpreted to be about Healy. She also appears to reference him on “The Black Dog”, from the extended version of the album.

Here’s a breakdown of the references we’ve spotted so far:

On “The Black Dog”, Swift shouts out another of Healy’s favourite bands, the pop-punk group The Starting Line. The 1975 covered their 2002 track “The Best of Me” while on tour last year, days before Swift and Healy were first spotted holding hands.

She sings: “I just don’t understand how you don’t miss me/ In The Black Dog when someone plays The Starting Line / And you jump up, but she’s too young/ To know this song/ That was intertwined in the magic fabric of our dreaming.”

Fans expecting a post-mortem of the musician’s six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn have been left surprised, as Swift seems to spend more time dissecting her brief fling with The 1975 frontman

Swift and Healy were first briefly linked in 2014. While neither party confirmed this at the time, Swift appears to reference it on the song “loml”, as she sings: “Who’s gonna stop us from waltzing back into rekindled flames/ If we know the steps anyway/ We embroidered the memories of the time I was away/ Stitching, ‘We were just kids, babe.’”

They met backstage in LA in November 2014, during a 1975 concert; Swift was there with Ellie Goulding and Selena Gomez. A few months later, Healy dismissed rumours they were dating as “ridiculous”.

Things were relatively quiet for the next few years, as Swift dated Calvin Harris, Tom Hiddleston and then her long-term boyfriend, now ex, British actor Joe Alwyn.

But then Swift made a surprise appearance at a 1975 concert at the beginning of 2023, where she performed her song “Anti-Hero” live for the first time.

She and Alwyn are reported to have split in April. A month later, fans are stunned as she and Healy appear to make public appearances as a couple, with Healy flying from the Philippines to Nashville to watch Swift play her first Eras concert in the city.

They are seen together, apparently on a date, at Casa Cipriani on 11 May.

However, barely a month later, it is reported that Swift and Healy have called time on their brief relationship. The Sun reported things were “back on” in July, but this was quickly shut down in a report published the same day by “sources close to Swift’s team”, as well as sources close to The 1975.

Swift spends a fair amount of time unpacking that brief relationship on The Tortured Poets Department, including on “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, where she seems to allude to Healy “ghosting” her.

“You tried to buy some pills/ From a friend of friends of mine,” she sings. “They just ghosted you/ Now you know what it feels like.”

No one does it like Taylor, honestly. Three hours after releasing The Tortured Poets Department, BAM, here you go, it’s a surprise double album, so here are FIFTEEN EXTRA SONGS. Good grief.

First there’s “The Black Dog”, presumably a reference to the pub in Vauxhall (fun fact, I’ve been there). It’s a morose piano-based track, on which Swift sings in her most fragile falsetto about how an ex walks into the pub having forgotten to turn his location off. It’s pretty heartbreaking – I want to believe it’s about Joe Alwyn, her boyfriend of six years, but the line: “Were you making fun of me/ With some esoteric joke,” makes me think it’s about Matty Healy. ‘Cause, you know.

“It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album,” Swift writes on Instagram.

“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.”