COMMENTARY: Dissecting Taylor Swift and Matt Healy’s alleged relationship
Unless you are living under a rock or living off the grid you have probably heard about Taylor Swift and Matty Healy’s alleged relationship. TikTok and Twitter have a lot of fans speculating about if the rumors are true and some Swifties are not happy with this duo. Fans are flocking to the internet to share their strong opinions. Here’s a recap of what we know:
Healy wore a 1989 shirt performing in Milwaukee November 7, 2014. Swift attended one of the 1975 concerts with friends about a week after fans had this sighting. Later that month Swift is seen wearing a 1975 shirt leaving the recording studio. By the first week in December, rumors had already started that Swift was back with Harry Styles, dating Matt Healy, and was caught kissing Karlie Kloss at a 1975 concert. In response to this, she tweeted “As my 25th birthday present from the media, I’d like for you to stop accusing all my friends of dating me.”
Years later in 2021, Healy works with Jack Antonoff, who regularly partners with Swift, on The 1975 album “Being Funny in a Foreign Language”. There were rumors of The 1975 being featured on a track from “Midnights” but Healy tweeted that it was fake news.
More recently Healy has received a lot of criticism from fans and even in articles from Buzzfeed and Rolling Stone about being a racist and misogynist after appearing on The Adam Friedland Show podcast. The episode received so much backlash it was taken down two months after it was posted. In the podcast episode, Healy and the hosts are heard laughing and making jokes calling Ice Spice a “chubby Chinese lady” and mocking different accents. As well as people saying he kisses fans during sets, has done Nazi salutes, and has been misogynistic towards women interviewing him in the past. The Tik Toker PattyPopCulture posted a Tik Tok showing the top five most horrible things Matty Healy has ever done which includes more clips and audio from the now-deleted podcast.
Fans of The 1975 argue that Healy does bits and is not serious about these things, they are ironic. However, PattyPopCulture made another Tik Tok stating regardless the gesture was not okay and “I feel like white cis straight men think they can just get away with anything as long as they wrap it up in irony or satirical humor.”
A fan on Twitter posted an open letter to Taylor Swift regarding her relationship with Matty Healy expressing her disappointment and it was signed “Sincerely your fans”. Some fans support it and some fans are upset that the original account was claiming to speak for all of Taylors fan’s and the Twitter user got a lot of negative comments about their parasocial relationship with the pop star. The account has since been deleted.
Rolling Stone wrote an article with the headline “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if Taylor Swift was a man.” In this article, it talks about how “We don’t treat Taylor like an individual. We treat her like a diety,” Going back to the term “parasocial relationship” and how she previously asked fans to stop accusing her friends of dating her in 2014, this is valid. As Taylor’s fame grew so did technology and media presence allowing fans to form this type of relationship with her. When in reality she is human and is allowed to make mistakes in her dating life just like everyone else does.
If everyone minded their own business and put the same amount of time and effort into figuring out who Taylor Swift is dating, they could have learned a new hobby by now. If anything Swifties should be excited for the new era of Taylor Swift after a breakup and looking forward to songs with juicy undertones.
