It was in February 2024, on stage while she was collecting her Grammy for best pop vocal album for Midnightswhen Taylor Swift decided to surprise announce the arrival of her eleventh studio album on April 19, and its title: The Tortured Poets Department. Immediately, the universe swiftie He began to speculate: with the title, with its meaning and with the people to whom the singer could refer in the lyrics of her new songs.
Swift, who in addition to being a great lyricist is a musical genius marketing, does not give a stitch without a thread, and tends to sprinkle details of his love life in most of his songs. And the thing, at that time, was like this: after a discreet six-year relationship, the performer and the British actor Joe Alwyn broke up in April 2023, at first it was said that in a “friendly” way, although later it seems that not it was so much. That summer, Swift had a brief romance with Matty Healy, lead singer of the group The 1975, who couldn’t stand the arrival of the cold. And in October, the singer confirmed her relationship with Travis Kelce, tight end of the Kansas City Chiefs, a famous American football team, through a hand-in-hand walk through New York City. Just a few minutes after the artist left the Grammy stage, a tweet already accumulated thousands of I like and retweets. It was the one that explained that the title of the new album referred to the name of the private WhatsApp group that Joe Alwyn and two other popular actors, Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, had. Turns out it was true: the group is called The tortured men club. There were two months left for the album to come out, but the swifties They were already warming up.
On April 19, swifties convinced and converted journalists taylorism They woke up to the surprise of 31 new songs ready for analysis and over-analysis. They were not disappointed: The Tortured Poets Department It’s a metanarrative gold mine where the more you dig, the more you find.
There are not at all subtle references to Kim Kardashian in thanK you aIMee (in the capital letters it directly reads KIM), with whom the singer has been fighting since 2009, when the then husband of the businesswoman and reality television star, Kanye West, stole Swift’s microphone on the stage of the MTV Awards Video Music Awards. There are football and romantic nods to Travis Kelce in songs like The Alchemy (“Where’s my trophy?” Taylor sings, referring to the Kansas City Chiefs’ victory in the 2024 Super Bowl, “it’s coming running towards me”) or in So High School, where the artist sings about a romance that seems straight out of a high school movie and in which, to the delight of fans, she lets it slip that Kelce is not, precisely, the sharpest pencil in the color box (“You know how to throw the ball, I know about Aristotle”). But, without a doubt, the real pearls of the album are directed at her ex.
About Joe Alwyn, the archaeologists of Swift’s lyrics have found references in at least six songs: So Long, London is, perhaps, the most obvious, since the artist went to live in the British capital with her partner after a reputation crisis in the United States. In the song, she talks about how alone and insecure she felt in the relationship, about how she waited in vain for him to ask her to marry him, and even leaves the actor’s possible infidelity in the air. In Fresh Out the Slammer, Swift sings about feeling free after spending years in prison (“But it’s okay, I served my time”). In lomlmakes a play on words: the acronym is used in English to say love of my life (love of my life), but Swift transforms it into lost of my life, that is, the loss of his life. And so on, up to six. Maybe because of the six years they were together.
Healy is also referenced in a series of songs where Swift seems to laugh at the strange couple they made (“You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith, this isn’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re just two modern idiots,” she sings in the song that gives its name to the album) and the aura of the singer’s tortured poet, with constant references to his typewriter, his suits that make him look like a Jehovah’s Witness, or even his addiction problems. Perhaps the most striking of all the songs that refer to the vocalist of The 1975 is The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived (which would be translated as The smallest man who ever lived), where he says that he was not at his level “in any measure of a man” (and let everyone understand what they want).
No paparazzi could find Alwyn or Healy on April 19, 2024. The press speculated that the actor and singer were hiding, very wisely, from the media hurricane. A few days later, a cameraman caught Matty Healy in Los Angeles, dressed in a tracksuit and wearing a hoodie. “Matty! How would you rate your diss track [en jerga hiphopera, se refiere a una canción cuyo propósito es atacar a otra persona, por lo general, a otro artista] compared to the other 30 songs on the album?” asked the cameraman. With elegance and a small smile, he responded: “My diss track? I haven’t heard the whole album, but it’s definitely good.”
The singer has not responded to questions about the album again. Not about Swift. Until March, he was on tour with his band in Europe and, according to Rolling Stone, The 1975 is preparing a new album. Recently, a source close to the singer has revealed to U.S. Weekly that Healy was “completely shocked” by the content of The Tortured Poets Department; “He also found it hilarious, because they never had anything really serious.” Despite appearing unfazed by the album, a source also revealed that he was “uncomfortable with the renewed attention on their relationship.” [con Taylor]especially because it is [con alguien] new”. Healy has been dating model Gabbriette Bechtel since September 2023.
![Joe Alwyn at the latest edition of the Cannes festival, where he presented his second collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos, after 'The Favorite'.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/D7GOCLKVCRHSRKGUWFIDZ4IDHM.jpg?auth=9170300859535d7720ff8b2122aaa41578222ce73a730ff6adcff7011d1fee65&width=414)
Alwyn also kept a low profile and wanted to stay out of any controversy. The protagonist of the series Conversations between friends, based on the successful novel by Sally Rooney, has preferred to weather the storm in silence, as he did during his time with Swift. A nearby source the actor revealed to People that “he doesn’t feel comfortable being the center of attention,” and added that the actor had been “focused on work,” that he had already turned the page and, like his high-profile ex, he was also in a new relationship.
He reappeared, for work reasons, at the recent Cannes Festival, where he presented his latest film, Kinds of Kindness, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, and co-starring alongside Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe. “He will hold press conferences, but he will not accept questions about Taylor,” stated a source close to the actor in the Daily Mail. And, of course, he didn’t. There was some expectation to see how Alwyn and Stone, Swift’s close friend, would behave on the red carpet (the truth is that they did not have a great interaction in front of the spotlight, but there was no excessive tension) and at the festival parties ( Stone attended a cocktail party with the film’s crew and production company Searchlight at the Carlton Hotel, while Alwyn preferred to attend the one organized by Columbia Pictures). The universe swiftie He will speculate, but Alwyn will not give a word.
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