Taylor Swift‘s 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, was released on Friday with fans eagerly predicting digs at her famous exes.
But in a somewhat hypocritical move, the singer, 34, appeared to take a hit at all the ‘gossips’ who have examined her past relationships – despite detailing her breakups from the likes of Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy on the double, 31 track record.
Taylor is known for her honest and clever lyrics often linking to the ends of her high-profile romances, with critics hailing the project her ‘most personal yet’ as she took a ‘sharp savage attack on her British exes.’
Many fans had predicted that The Tortured Poets Department would be the ultimate Joe/Taylor ‘breakup album’ as it’s been speculated the title itself was a direct dig at the British actor, who she dated from 2016 to early 2023.
Following the end of their relationship, she found herself in a whirlwind romance with 1975 frontman Matty — though neither ever directly confirmed — that started in April 2023 after they were seen kissing in NYC.
In a somewhat hypocritical move, Taylor Swift appeared to take a hit at all the ‘gossips’ who have examined her relationships – despite detailing her breakups on her new album
The double, 31 track record, The Tortured Poets Department, has been ‘most personal yet’ as she took a ‘sharp savage attack on her British exes’, Joe Alwyn (R) and Matt Healy (L)
But the fling ended as fast as it began after his ‘bad boy’ image and ‘racist’ remarks caused squeaky clean Taylor to face backlash.
On track 21, How Did It End? the song-writer appears to reference the speculation over her relationship with Joe as she details in the chorus:
‘Come one come all It’s happ’nin’ again / The empathetic hunger descends We’ll tell no-one / ‘Cept all of our friends / We must know How did it end?’
‘Didn’t you hear? / They called it all off / One gasp and then / How did it end?’
Accusing people of conducting their own ‘post-mortem’s’ in the opening sentence, Taylor also accuses people of being smug: ‘Soon they’ll go home to their husbands / ’cause they know they can trust him / Then feverishly calling their cousins.’
She later admits that while everyone is questioning, ‘How did it end?’ she doesn’t know herself: ‘But I still don’t know, how did it end?’
Taylor has since moved on with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — but it’s clear she still has a few bones to pick with the ‘worst men’ in her life.
The name of the album has long been speculated to be a jab at Joe, who previously revealed that he is part of a WhatsApp group chat with close pals Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott called The Tortured Man Club.
Many fans predicted the album would be the ultimate Joe/Taylor ‘breakup album’ as it’s been speculated the title itself was a direct dig at the actor, who she dated from 2016 to early 2023
On track 21, How Did It End? the song-writer appears to reference the speculation over her relationship with Joe as she details: ‘The empathetic hunger descends We’ll tell no-one / ‘Cept all of our friends / We must know How did it end?’
Accusing people of conducting their own ‘post-mortem’s’ she later admits that while everyone is questioning, ‘How did it end?’ she doesn’t know herself: ‘But I still don’t know’
But the titular track featured plenty of lyrics that allude to her time with Healy.
Swift implies that Healy would be devastated if she left him and even appears to reference his close friend Lucy Dacus of the band boygenius.
She sings: ‘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’
The song also features the lyric: ‘Like, ‘Who uses typewriters anyway?’
Back in 2019, Healy was clowned online when he confessed to GQ that he ‘really likes’ using a typewriter.
The heartbreaking track, So Long, London details Taylor’s raw heartache as she realises that her long-term relationship with the British actor could not be saved.
‘I stopped trying to make him laugh/ Stopped trying to drill the safe,’ she sings.
She then talks of bidding farewell to ‘the house in the Heath.’
The couple famously hunkered down together in a rural location in the UK back in 2017.
Having spent six years together, the singer talks about being ‘p***** off’ that her ex-boyfriend ‘let me give you all that youth for free.’
She also sings of feeling isolated in the relationship and that she felt as though she would ‘implode.’
‘Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years — I’ll never get that time back’
The song is 9 minutes and 28 seconds in length and Joe and Taylor were first confirmed to be dating on September 28, 2016.
As the album hit streaming platforms Thursday night, Swift published a lengthy statement on Instagram where she described it as ‘an anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure.’
She continued: ‘This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted.
‘This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.
The Bad Blood songstress – who recently teased a ‘timetable’ to her fans ahead of the LP’s release – initially announced the album while attending the 2024 Grammys earlier this year