Patti Smith Thanks Taylor Swift for the Name-Drop in 'TTPD' Title Track
Patti Smith was surprised and flattered to get a name-drop on Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.
“This is saying I was moved to be mentioned in the company of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas,” Smith, 77, wrote via Instagram on Friday, April 19, sharing a photo of herself reading Thomas’ Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. “Thank you, Taylor.”
Swift, 34, released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, on Friday. In the title track, she references both Smith and Thomas, who died in 1953.
“And who’s gonna hold you like me? / And who’s gonna know you, if not me?” Swift sings in the chorus. “I laughed in your face and said / ‘You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’rе modern idiots.’”
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Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” muse is presumably Matty Healy, with whom she had a brief fling in spring 2023 after initially being linked one decade earlier. Another line in the song mentions a partner who “left [his] typewriter” at Swift’s apartment. Healy, 35, has previously been candid about using the vintage technology.
“It’s not that there’s any kind of romance to having a notebook, but I really like typewriters, as well,” he previously told GQ in a 2018 interview about his favorite belongings. “I don’t have one with me [now] because that’s really impractical.”
Elsewhere in “The Tortured Poets Department,” Swift recalled one time that she and her love interest declared that “Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.” Healy, meanwhile, once tweeted his praise for Puth, 32, in 2018.
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Swift and Healy’s rekindled romance fizzled in June 2023, with a source telling Us at the time that they “were never serious” together. Their connection, however, did seemingly inspire other songs on Swift’s TTPD, including “But Daddy I Love Him,” “Down Bad,” “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “Guilty as Sin?” and “Fortnight.”
Healy was aware of Swift recounting their relationship on TTPD ahead of its release date, a source exclusively told Us Weekly.
“Matty still thinks very highly of Taylor but we were all nervous about what she might have said on the album,” the insider told Us, noting the 1975 frontman “couldn’t be happier” with the LP result. “Matty’s family knew about the relationship and they were worried that Taylor was going to rip him apart. Matty has struggled with life in the public eye, and he’s been doing really well, but the last thing that he needs is for every Swiftie in the world to think he’s a villain.”
Swift also wrote songs for TTPD about navigating her breakup with Joe Alwyn, whom she dated for six years until they split in 2023, her feud with Kim Kardashian and falling in love with now-boyfriend Travis Kelce.
The Tortured Poets Department is out now.
