On Monday, the news broke that Taylor Swift and Matty Healy, her fan ire-provoking fling of a month or so, had broken up. “She had fun with him, but it was always casual,” one source told People; “They were never boyfriend-girlfriend or exclusive and were always just having fun,” another added. And Healy—who’d been spotted clutching his heart while watching Swift’s juggernaut Eras tour and making out with the pop star as recently as May 24—now seems to be brushing off the firestorm of criticism that his problematic behavior, and now-simmered dalliance with Swift, had caused this spring.
During his band The 1975’s show in Austria on Monday, Healy paused onstage to thank a fan for making a sign that read “You are loved.”
“I’m sure [the sign is] alluding to… as you’re aware, I’m not very online at the moment, and I’m sure people have just been calling me a cunt relentlessly,” Healy told the crowd.
Indeed, many Swift fans have responded jubilantly to the news of her abrupt split from Healy.
“TAYLOR AND MATTY BROKE UP EVERYBODY PARTY,” one person tweeted. “Mom, we’re celebrating,” another crowed, before clarifying, “not because [of you] having another heartache but bcoz you are free from that chipmunk XOXO. It’s your healing era now.”
“I’ve not been online, but what I have been with is my boys,” Healy added while speaking to his fans on Monday. “And honestly, as much as I appreciate that [sign]—it’s so beautiful, and I thank you—but I don’t need it because I’ve got them.”
Healy’s comments project a what’s-the-big-deal sentiment, but as of very recently, he was brushing off the idea that he’d need any kind of support to buoy him through the publicity shitstorm he managed to kick up for himself and for Swift.
At the end of May, a New Yorker profile of Healy found the singer minimizing the backlash to his recent appearance on The Adam Friedland Show podcast, in which he’d giggled along as the co-hosts mocked the rapper Ice Spice by adopting exaggerated Chinese accents; Healy also blithely discussed masturbating to Ghetto Gaggers pornography in the same episode.
“Let’s say, best case scenario is Matty was totally joking in that interview,” Swift fan Madeline Ambrose told The Daily Beast. “It’s still disgusting to joke about that. To think that those [porn] websites are a joke makes it so clear how ignorant he is to the privileges he has, and to the ways that that content perpetuates so much racism. So even in the best case scenario, he’s ignorant and uneducated, and that’s who [Swift] is wanting to spend her time with.”
Rather than apologize to the legions of Swift fans who’d expressed being genuinely hurt by his words and actions, Healy doubled down, telling the New Yorker that his provocations don’t “actually matter. Nobody is sitting there at night slumped at their computer, and their boyfriend comes over and goes, ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ and they go, ‘It’s just this thing with Matty Healy.’ That doesn’t happen.”
“If it does, you’re either deluded or you are—sorry—a liar,” Healy continued after New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino pushed back, pressing him to consider that his words do matter. “You’re either lying that you are hurt, or you’re a bit mental for being hurt. It’s just people going, ‘Oh, there’s a bad thing over there, let me get as close to it as possible so you can see how good I am.’ And I kind of want them to do that, because they’re demonstrating something so base level.”
When Swift announced a collaboration with Ice Spice on May 24, many were quick to speculate that the link-up was Swift’s hasty attempt at damage control. And now, in the aftermath of the reported breakup, some are similarly convinced that things between the former lovers came to an end simply because Healy was starting to do too much damage to Swift’s image.
“She’d have stayed with him forever if it weren’t for the Cum Town fiasco,” one Twitter commentator said, referring to the name of Friedland’s defunct former podcast. “You have to fuck up really bad for Taylor Swift to break up with you.”
There are gentler takes among Swift’s fans, but they’re not being received well. “The poor girl just wanted to bang a dirtbag before settling down like the rest of us in their late 20s/early 30s and no one would let her do it in peace,” Rolling Stone writer Ej Dickson tweeted on Monday, drawing a deluge of criticism.
“He’s a racist,” one person replied. “Her dating him makes her a racist as well, and y’all white women acting like he’s a run of the mill douchebag really shows how morally bankrupt people like you are.”
Swift, of course, has yet to publicly comment on her relationship with Healy. But one can only imagine how she might begin to address his problematic podcast backlash, her ex’s eyebrow-raising habit of kissing fans onstage, or her breakup with Joe Alwyn—which has been all but drowned out in the tidal wave of Healy discourse—on her next album. There’s a lot of delicate ground to cover if she wants to keep fans firmly on her side.
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