Matty Healy‘s family have given a withering assessment of his ex Taylor Swift after she appeared to savage him on her new album.
Swift, who briefly dated Healy last spring, is widely believed to take aim at her ex in the song The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived prompting renewed fan scrutiny of the period when she was dating The 1975 frontman.
The 34-year-old’s 11th album The Tortured Poets Department was released on Friday as speculation the diss song was about Healy hit fever pitch around the world.
The lyrics refer to a man in a ‘Jehovah’s Witness suit’ and ‘rusting my (Swift’s) sparkling summer’. Healy is known for wearing distinctive black suits during live performances and the pair are believed to have broken up in June 2023.
But his aunt today appeared scornful of Swift’s candour about her exes, including Matty, when she spoke to MailOnline. He is now thought to be dating model Gabbriette Bechtel – with whom his aunt says he is ‘very happy’.
Taylor Swift and Matty Healy of the 1975 leave a studio in Manhattan in May 2023 while they were briefly dating
Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department was released on Friday – initially as a 16-track volume with a surprise additional 15 tracks released two hours later
Matty Healy’s aunt Debbie Dedes (left, with Matty’s celebrity mother Denise Welch), said Healy will likely not be surprised by the fact he appears to be referenced on the new album
Swift has described the new work as having captured a ‘fleeting and fatalistic moment in time’, with fans furiously analysing the lyrics to work out who they might refer to in her personal life
The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived references a lover in a ‘Jehovah’s Witness suit’. Healy is known for wearing black suits and ties with white shirts during live performances with The 1975 (above)
Taylor Swift performing during the Eras Tour in Kansas City, Missouri, USA in July 2023 – a month after reportedly splitting up with Healy
Healy is now thought to be dating model Gabbriette Bechtel after being dumped by Taylor Swift last summer
Matt Healy is singing Shake it Off at Taylor Swift’s concert
Debbie Dedes said of how Matty would react: ‘Nothing surprises him any more.
‘He will not be surprised by the song. Him and her know what went on.’
And Debbie, who as sister of Matty’s celebrity mum Denise Welch has known Matty since birth, went on: ‘She writes about all her relationships, doesn’t she?
‘I don’t think it will come as a shock to him at all.
‘He’s very happy in his new relationship so I’m sure he will be focussing on that.’
The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived lyrics
[Verse 1]
Was any of it true? / Gazing at me starry-eyed / In your Jehovah’s Witness suit / Who the f*** was that guy? /You tried to buy some pills / From a friend of friends of mine / They just ghosted you / Now you know what it feels like
[Chorus]
And I don’t even want you back, I just want to know / If rusting my sparkling summer was the goal / And I don’t miss what we had, but could someone give / A message to the smallest man who ever lived?
[Verse 2]
You hung me on your wall / Stabbed me with your push pins / In public, showed me off / Then sank in stoned oblivion / ‘Cause once your queen had come / You’d treat her like an also-ran / You didn’t measure up /In any measure of a man
[Chorus]
And I don’t even want you back, I just want to know / If rusting my sparkling summer was the goal / And I don’t miss what we had, but could someone give / A message to the smallest man who ever lived?
[Bridge]
Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead? / Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed? / Were you writin’ a book? Were you a sleeper cell spy? / In fifty years, will all this be declassified? / And you’ll confess why you did it and I’ll say, ‘Good riddance’ / ‘Cause it wasn’t sexy once it wasn’t forbidden / I would’ve died for your sins, instead, I just died inside / And you deserve prison, but you won’t get time / You’ll slide into inboxes and slip through the bars / You crashed my party and your rental car / You said normal girls were boring / But you were gone by the morning / You kicked out the stage lights, but you’re still performing
[Outro]
And in plain sight you hid / But you are what you did / And I’ll forget you, but I’ll never forgive / The smallest man who ever lived
And hinting that Matty has his own version of the relationship that he has been too respectful to share publicly, Debbie added: ‘As my nephew, we know a bit more about what went on than has been in the press.’
Other lyrics in the song suggest the unnamed subject of the title ‘tried to buy some pills’ and ‘didn’t measure up in any measure of a man’.
Healy has openly spoken about his drug problems in the past, and has said in interviews he is tired of speculation about his height, claiming to be 5ft 10ins, but dwarfed by other members of The 1975.
He told The Fader in 2018: ‘Everyone in [the 1975] is 6ft 4ins and I’m 5ft 10ins, so everyone thinks that I’m 5ft 5ins.’
Swift found herself in a whirlwind romance with Healy — though neither ever directly confirmed — that started in April 2023 after they were seen kissing in NYC.
But the fling ended as fast as it began after Healy’s ‘bad boy’ image and ‘racist’ remarks caused squeaky clean Swift to face backlash.
Swift is now happily in love 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.
Swifties have been furiously speculating about the potential targets of the singer’s songs on the new album – which was initially launched as a 16-song volume before a surprise additional release of 15 songs came two hours later.
The singer, who has reinvented herself over the years as a pop icon and more recently as a folksy indie voice of introspection, describes the album as capturing a ‘fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure.’
She added in a post on Instagram: ‘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.
‘And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.’
Many of the songs – and the title of the album itself – are thought to refer to actor Joe Alwyn, who dated Swift for six years – but fans have speculated that several songs are about Healy too.
Alwyn disclosed in an interview with Variety that he and fellow actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott have a WhatsApp group called ‘The Tortured Man Club‘. The interview was resurfaced by Swift fans after the title of the album was announced in February.
Title track The Tortured Poets Department, however, features the lyric ‘who uses typewriters anyway?’ – with some fans noting Healy revealed in a 2019 interview he ‘really likes’ using the old-fashioned machines.
And some fans have also speculated that But Daddy I Love Him – a song about the disapproval expressed for a new romantic partner – is also about Healy, and those who disapproved of the relationship ultimately leading to its implosion.
Lead single Fortnight, featuring Post Malone, also appears to take aim at Healy and how their toxic fling was ‘ruining my life’.
Swift and Healy became romantically involved in May last year after she split from Alwyn – with the 1975 frontman becoming a regular sight backstage on her Eras tour.
But a series of controversial episodes from Healy – including comments he made about his use of pornography and allegedly racist remarks on separate podcasts – prompted fury from Swifties, who called for the singer to dump him.
Swift reportedly dumped Healy days after he kissed a male security guard during a gig in Denmark.
Reviews of The Tortured Poets Department have been largely positive, with critics hailing it as a ‘doozy’ of a break-up album and a ‘smart, seductive, lyrically sharp set of smooth synth pop songs about affairs of the heart’.
And fans have taken to social media to call it her ‘best album’.
