I heard Taylor found somebody else

On the Matty Healy rumors

I am very grateful to anyone who does not care about Vanderpump Rules or Taylor Swift but reads this anyway. Look, there just isn’t Anwar Hadid news every day.

I will be following up catching The Eras tour by going to a free Tom Sandoval and the Most Extras show, which I will review for you. Seems important to reiterate that it’s free. (And okay, okay, I’ll have seen Caroline Polachek, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The Faint in the interim, but for purposes of this newsletter, my life is devoted to Tom Sandoval and The Most Eras.)

Here was my view at Taylor’s gig:

Do you think I can get a little closer to the stage for Tom Sandoval?

Here’s a rumored new relationship I am contractually obligated to report on:

I think any time there’s a Taylor Swift dating rumor, it means that her team probably started it to get the temperature.

I will also preface this by saying love The 1975’s music, which softens the degree to which I consider Matty Healy a twat. He was, for a time, my celeb crush. Sometimes he is just too dumb for words, though.

The first time I heard the band was when I was given the option to review I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It or the new Macklemore album and I chose Macklemore because I thought I could be a real comedian and ended up with The 1975 assignment, which I am now grateful for.

“They were gonna go to the Pinegrove show. They didn't know about all the weird stuff. So they just left it,” is the only lyric about ~cancel culture~ I like. We’ll get to that.

I saw their last tour when it came to Austin, and I will tell you it was a very tame show because the most Matty did was eat some raw meat and dry hump a couch on stage. Later on in the tour, he started doing shit like kissing audience members (after dutifully checking IDs to make sure they’re legal) on stage. Healy has done it before (though with less due diligence), but never with this frequency and just generally the antics have been higher at recent shows.

Oh, and Taylor Swift showed up at one for the first ever live performance of a Midnights track, and you know Swift plays every move very carefully, so that decision has weight. Who does this guy think he is, a HAIM?

Healy also said he and Swift worked on some potential Midnights songs but they didn’t make the cut. Maybe there will be a 5 a.m. version? The band’s last album was produced by Jack Antonoff.

Just to catch everybody up to speed real quick: Jack Antonoff is engaged to Margaret Qualley who used to date Shia LaBeouf who is now facing a sexual abuse lawsuit from FKA Twigs, who went on to date Matty Healy but now they’re broken up. Prior to that, Matty dated the model Gabriella Brooks, who started dating Liam Hemsworth after he and Miley divorced. Miley and Friend of Taylor Selena Gomez both dated Nick Jonas and now Selena is is maybe dating Zayn who has a kid with (FOT) with Gigi Hadid who is the sister of Bella Hadid who dated The Weeknd on and off before he and Selena dated for a while. Oh, and Taylor’s rep tour opener Charli XCX is dating the drummer of the 1975.

Anyway, Taylor and Matty first sparked dating rumors in the 1989 era when they wore each other’s t-shirts, but instead she dated Calvin Harris, which wasn’t fun for anyone.

Taylor loooooves singing songs about how Harry Styles is a bad boy, which is cute. I do see the appeal for her of dating Healy, who made out with a cardboard cutout of Styles in a music video.

I fell asleep during John Mulaney’s new special but I’m gonna watch the rest at some point and I know he said, “likability is a cage.” (ps did you see when his ex accused Taylor of copying her?) Anyway, Taylor might be feeling that these days.

And now I’ll get into Matty Healy and the Most Extras. Look, he’s one of those guys that is continually a mess and actively trying to be “canceled” so he can show you that he can’t actually get “canceled.” Remind you of any Enemies of Taylor?

As a huge fan of the music, I have oscillated between being amused, indifferent, and disgusted by his constant attention grabs. A lot of it was just sharing shitposts about him in his Instagram stories and talking about how awful he is, which is fine. And what do you know? His legion of fans clung to him

Recently, he definitely crossed a line which is inexcusable on…you guessed it! The Adam Friedland Show Podcast. I’m not going to repeat what he said, but you can read about it if you want. It’s shitty. It’s not funny.

The episode has since been taken down, which is notable because the entire purpose of the podcast is to be offensive. He has since apologized to Ice Spice after managing to say a few degrading things about her into the recording. He’s stepped down (or was asked to step down) as a director of the 1975’s record label, whose roster includes Rina Sawayama and beadoobadee, who I was fortunate enough to see open for Taylor and I loveeee.

When Taylor dated Calvin Harris, people didn’t care about all the dumb shit he’s said, like saying he chose Calvin Harris as a stage name because he thought it it sounded black. But oh boy, the times they are a changin’.

Healy has since deactivated his social media, telling an Australian crowd, that his “asshole era is over.” Cool!

I’m personally of the mindset that everything is forgivable if you do the work, and I hope he does. He’ll probably go to rehab at some point in the next few months. Tree Paine will be sure of it.

Swift and Healy (who also hangs with Phoebe Bridgers) do have a lot of mutual friends and a lot in common, musically and otherwise. But yeah, if this turns out to be the real deal, it will be a swerve from the notoriously image conscious Swift.

But if we know one thing about Taylor Swift, we know that she loves a challenge. Having the most successful tour of all time or whatever and proving to anyone who forgot that she is a fucking pop star, critical respect, collaborations on that indie record that’s much cooler than hers…idk, maybe she wants to blow up her life a bit and date someone who isn’t the safe choice after six years with Joe Alwyn. (Congrats to Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons on being a blonde couple built to last.)

In short, a rep era sequel may be afoot.

xoxo t