Taylor Swift might be cruising on the love boat with Travis Kelce but that does not mean she cannot shadow her former lovers with lyrical blows. Though the singer seems to be residing on cloud nine with Kelce, jetting away to tropical romantic destinations and making heads turn with consecutive public appearances, her lyrical prowess has yet again found home with the ultimate breakup anthems of the year. Fans have found possible references in not one or two but eight tracks of her recent, 'The Tortured Poets Department' that potentially take a hit for Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy. 

Even though Swift has often leveraged her talent to showcase real-life themes, with her recent album, she has gone personal as she promised.

After the 16-track project hit the streamers on Friday midnight, Taylor Swift took to her Instagram to declare that the contents will reflect a "period of the author’s life”" that is “now over”, leaving fans in wonder. Fans were quick to decode the Easter Eggs found in tracks like ‘Fortnight’, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’, ‘Down Bad’, ‘So Long, London’, ‘Fresh Out the Slammer’, ‘Guilty as a Sin’, and ‘I Can Fix Him’. In ‘Fortnight’, the album’s lead single featuring Post Malone, fans believe that Swift seemed to have aimed at Matty Healy, whom she briefly dated in 2023.

Swift possibly dubbed Healy as the “miracle move-on-drug” while the title of the song could point to the brevity of their relationship. The titular track further has been long speculated as a subtle jab for Alwyn, who previously confessed to being a part of a Whatsapp Group called The Tortured Man Club. However, the track mentions Healy’s close friend Lucy Dacus and a reference to Healy’s 2019 admission to GQ about how he liked typewriters also found a place. 

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In ‘Guilty As Sin’, her fans further found references for Healy’s favorite band ‘The Blue Nile’ while ‘I Can Fix Him’ follows the rollercoaster romance of the duo. While these tracks could have been arrowed for Healy, the next feature fires at Joe Alwyn, with whom she shared a relationship for over 6 years.

Taylor Swift is a genius when it comes to lyrics and her fans’ are even bigger ones for being able to decode her tracks inch by inch. In the third track, ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’ fans found possible references for Alwyn who was considered shy of her spotlight, in her lines where she talks about “playing pretend”. Furthermore, as per the far and wide discussions regarding ‘Down Bad’, the lines where she speaks about being left “hollow” after the long relationship with Joe Alwyn.

In ‘So Long, London’, the tone sees a massive change which cues that Swift by the time, had realized that the train had left the station. Swift sings along the lines about bidding farewell to, ‘the house in the Heath’, which is taken as a reference to the rural location the pair lived for a while in UK. In ‘Fresh Out the Slammer’, she further elaborates on her crumbling romance while fans find it cues for her possible rebound romance with Healy from there onwards. While for now, the list comes to a close end, with Swift initiating another mysterious countdown to announce the album as a two-part one, there will be more incoming in the near future. 

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What do you think about the references to Matty Healy and Joe Alwyn by Taylor Swift in 'The Tortured Poets Department'? Let us know in the comments below.