Taylor Swift is seemingly recounting her brief fling with Matty Healy on The Tortured Poets Department with “But Daddy I Love Him” likely taking aim at fan criticism.
“I’ll tell you something right now / I’d rather burn my whole life down / than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning,” Swift, 34, sings on the track, which dropped on Friday, April 19. “I’ll tell you something about my good name / It’s mine alone to disgrace / I don’t care to all these vipers dressed in pale dress groaning.”
Swift and Healy, 35, were first linked in 2014, nearly nine years before they were actually involved. Swift and the 1975 frontman briefly dated between April and May 2023. By that June, Us confirmed that their romance had fizzled out as a source noted they were “never serious.” (Several months later, Swift started seeing now-boyfriend Travis Kelce.)
Throughout Swift and Healy’s fleeting relationship, several of diehard fans criticized her for dating the British singer, despite his many past controversies. In January 2023, Healy mocked Swift’s friend Ice Spice’s heritage and admitted to masturbating to images of brutalized women during a radio interview. He eventually apologized to Ice Spice, 24, but didn’t regret his remarks.
“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,” Healy told The New Yorker in May 2023. “If it does, you’re either deluded or you are, sorry, a liar. 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.”
Swift never publicly addressed her romance with Healy, his controversies or the fan backlash seemingly until writing “But Daddy I Love Him.”
“God save the most judgmental creeps / who say they want what’s best for me / sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see,” Swift sings. “Thinking they can change the beat of my heart when he touches me / and counteract the chemistry.”
She adds, “Undo the death of me / you ain’t gotta pray for me / He’s my wild boy and I’m his wild child.”
Swift seemingly refers to the critics as “Sara” and “Hannah.”
“I just learned these people only raise you to cage you,” the Grammy winner sings. “Saras and Hannahs in their Sunday best / Clutching their pearls sighing, ‘What a mess.’ I just learned these people try and save you / because they hate you.”
In another section, Swift sings about her parents, Scott and Andrea Swift, eventually approving of her “But Daddy I Love Him” muse.
“There’s a lot of people in town I bestow upon my fakest smiles / Scandal does funny things to pride but brings lovers closer,” she croons. “When the heat died down, went to my parents / and they came around / All the one moms are still holding out / but f—k ‘em, it’s over.”
The song title has previously been presumed by fans to take inspiration from The Little Mermaid, using the line Ariel tells her father after he disapproves of her feelings for human Prince Eric. Swift used the phrase to call out the haters.
“Screaming, ‘But Daddy I love him, I’m having his baby,’” she sings in the chorus. “No, I’m not but you should see your faces / I’m trying to floor it through the fences / No I’m not coming to my senses/ I know it’s crazy but / he’s the one that I want.”
The Tortured Poets Department is out now.
