The department of settling scores

So, who is Taylor Swift singing about? Eva Hartman has the answers.

Taylor Swift didn’t hold back on calling everyone out on her newest album, The Tortured Poets Department, and the reactions are rolling in.

The surprise double album was released in two parts, giving exuberant Swifties plenty of material to analyse — including multiple celebrity call-outs.

KIM KARDASHIAN

Swift and Kardashian have a long-standing feud, which started with Swift and Ye back in the day and goes back to Kimye’s infamous doctored phone call, which appeared to prove Taylor had given consent for a nude wax figure of her to appear in Kanye’s Famous music video. TLDR: The call was edited, but Swift was ripped to shreds online anyway, an experience that inspired her now legendary Reputation album.

Swift isn’t quite letting Kardashian off the hook, and TTPD’s thanK you aIMee pointedly had the letters of Kardashian’s first name capitalised in the title.

"And so I changed your name and any real defining clues / And one day, your kid comes home singin’ / A song that only us two is gonna know is about you," Taylor wrote, apparently referencing daughter North West’s TikToks that have featured her songs in the past.

Kardashian didn’t respond directly to the taunt, but she did post a throwback photo with Swift’s ex-best friend Karlie Kloss on mutual pal Derek Blasberg’s birthday. Whether it was a coincidence is anyone’s guess.

MATTY HEALY

The 1975 frontman was the surprise TTPD guest star. He and the Bejeweled singer appeared to have had a short fling following her split from Joe Alwyn, but the lyrics in TTPD have led to speculation that the two were involved for far longer.

The title track is particularly damning: "You left your typewriter at my apartment," Swift sings, referencing Healy’s apparent penchant for the old-school device. ("Who uses typewriters anyway?" she later asks.)

Swift goes on to call him a "tattooed golden retriever" before describing his smoking habits.

"But you tell Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave / And I had said that to Jack about you so I felt seen," she continues, referencing Boygenius member Lucy Dacus, who performed with Swift on the Eras tour, and her producer and bestie Jack Antonoff. Sounds super healthy and normal!

And all that’s from just one song. But Daddy I Love Him, Fresh Out the Slammer, Guilty as Sin?, I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) and The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived all pile on the blame.

Healy responded coolly. "I haven’t really listened to that much of it," the singer said, "but I’m sure it’s good."

His tone marks a stark difference from when he called dating Swift "emasculating".

His mom, Denise Welch, was similarly unbothered, saying on British talk show Loose Women that she "wasn’t aware [Swift] had an album out at all".

Unlikely, considering TTPD became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day, but whatever.

JOE ALWYN

Just as fans predicted, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend of six years was spared little sympathy. Even the album title is supposedly a reference to the name of a group chat between the actor, Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott, called the "Tortured Man Club".

So Long, London is Taylor’s most obvious hit at Alwyn, considering he inspired the track London Boy on her 2019 album Lover.

"I didn’t opt in to be your odd man out," she sings about the end of their relationship. "I founded the club she’s heard great things about / I left all I knew, you left me at the house by the Heath."

It’s clear Alwyn promised Swift a lot more than what he gave her. In LOML she laments how "You sh**-talked me under the table / Talkin’ rings and talkin’ cradles / I wish I could unrecall / How we almost had it all."

The marriage references don’t stop. In imgonnagetyouback, Swift tries to decide "whether I’m gonna be your wife or gonna smash up your bike".

Fans have also latched onto a line in Fortnight, which features Post Malone, as proof that Alwyn wasn’t always faithful to Swift. "My husband is cheating, I wanna kill him," Swift sings.

According to a source, Alwyn "has listened to the album, and he is slightly disappointed, but not surprised at all". Maybe he’s upset about Healy stealing his spotlight?

TRAVIS KELCE

Of course, Swift couldn’t leave current beau Kelce behind. The Kansas City Chiefs tight end is the apparent subject of The Alchemy and So High School, both of which are riddled with football metaphors.

"The greatest in the league / Where’s the trophy? / He just comes running over to me," she sings in The Alchemy, referencing the couple’s viral kiss after Kelce’s team won the Super Bowl in February.

"You know how to ball, I know Aristotle," she added in So High School. "You knew what you wanted and, boy, you got her," she concludes in the song, alluding to how Kelce pursued her after seeing her perform on the Eras tour.

CHARLIE PUTH

Finally, in a seemingly random shout-out on the title track, Swift sings, "You smoked, then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist."

Fans rushed into a frenzy online, flooding the We Don’t Talk Anymore singer’s social media with notifications about his name drop. "literally honored lol," he replied in the comments of a now-deleted Instagram post of the song. — TCA