Matty Healy subtly added fuel to the rumor that Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department track "Guilty as Sin" is about him on Monday (November 18) when he shared a post on his Instagram story about the Blue Nile's "Downtown Lights."
The post was a screenshot of Annie Lenox's version of the 1989 track with the caption "If you don't know this cover, you're welcome." It's an innocent enough post to the average person, but to Swifties it's a major clue. The pop star famously sings “Drowning in the Blue Nile, he sent me ‘Downtown Lights'” at the beginning of the song, which is seemingly about fantasizing about being with someone while in a relationship with someone else. Swift and The 1975 singer famously got together shortly after her breakup with Joe Alwyn. Though their relationship was short-lived, only lasting a month, many songs on her latest album are thought to be about Healy. Fans took to X to react to the Instagram story.
"Matty Healy really said 'yeah guilty as sin is about me and what about it' I’m crying," wrote one Swiftie.
"did everyone see matty healy’s guilty as sin story omg he’s somebody’s fiancé let me remind you guys," wrote another, referring to the singer's engagement to model/musician Gabriette Bechtel over the summer.
Healy also seemed to take a jab at his ex during a recent visit to the Doomscroll podcast.
“Last year I became a way more well-known public figure for loads of different reasons," he explained during the interview. "The only reason that I was interested in is what I was doing. I think that a lot of artists, they become very interested in their lore, or they become interested in the things that have happened outside of their art that people know about and they want to address that, and fair enough.”
“Honestly, I would kind of just be lying if I made a record about, I don’t know, all the stuff that was said about me or my casual romantic liaisons — or whatever it may be that I’ve kind of become known for just because I was famous," he added. “That’s an obvious thing to draw from, and I’m just not interested in [it]. The idea of making a record about something that personally happened to me, that by the time I put it out is gonna be, like, two years old… I see people doing that as well, and it’s not interesting.”