Matty Healy Reignites Theory Taylor Swift Wrote 'Guilty as Sin?' About Him

Intentional or not, some fans are convinced Matty Healy dropped a clue connecting him to a song from Taylor Swift’s album The Tortured Poets Department.

While there was already plenty of evidence to suggest that Healy, 35, inspired much of the record, which dropped in April, the 1975 frontman gave Swifties a new Easter egg to run with on Monday, November 18.

“If you don’t know this cover, you are welcome,” he wrote via his Instagram Story, linking to Annie Lenox’s rendition of “Downtown Lights” by The Blue Nile. The song is referenced in the Tortured Poets Department track “Guilty as Sin?”

“Drowning in the Blue Nile, he sent me ‘Downtown Lights,’” Swift, 34, sings in the song’s opening lines.

Related or not, fans were quick to make a connection between Swift’s lyrics and Healy’s Instagram post.

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“Matty posted downtown lights on his insta story … he’s never beating the guilty as sin allegations,” one X user wrote.

Another person chimed in, “Matty wants us all to be guilty as sin so he sent downtown lights to everyone lmao.”

Matty Healy, Taylor Swift

“Guilty as Sin?” goes on to detail longing for someone “without ever touching his skin” and questioning whether it’s “bad or mad or wise” to have “fatal fantasies” about this person.

Some fans have speculated that the song is an admission to emotionally cheating while in a failing relationship. Swift briefly dated Healy in the spring of 2023 after splitting from her boyfriend of six years Joe Alwyn.

“Fresh Out The Slammer,” another TTPD track, has similar themes as Swift recalls getting away from the “silent dinners” and “gray and blue and fights and tunnels” with a partner who “don’t understand me” before “running back home” to someone else. Years before their whirlwind romance, Swift and Healy were initially linked in 2014.

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While “Guilty as Sin?” and “Fresh Out the Slammer” paint a picture of someone who gave Swift something to hope for as she dealt with the dissolution of her and Alwyn’s romance, many of the other TTPD songs rumored to be about Healy are less flattering.

“You hung me on your wall, stabbed me with your push pins / In public, showed me off, then sank in stoned oblivion,” Swift sings on “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.”

Healy was “completely blindsided” by the record’s “lyrical content,” a friend of his exclusively told Us Weekly in June.

“He loves the attention it’s brought to him, [but] he also thinks it’s hilarious because at no time [were they] ever serious,” the friend claimed.

Healy has yet to really address his past with Swift. Last month, he spoke about not wanting to rehash his real-life romances in his new music.

Matty Healy Is 'Uncomfortable' With Focus on Taylor Swift Romance

“If I made a record about 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, I think that’s an obvious thing to draw from. I’m just not interested in it,” he said on the “Doomscroll Podcast” in October. “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 just not interesting.”

Both Healy and Swift have moved on since their fling. Healy got engaged to Gabbriette Bechtel in May and Swift has been dating Travis Kelce since the summer of 2023. Kelce, 35, is believed to have inspired the TTPD songs “So High School” and “The Alchemy.”

“They said there was no chance, trying to be the greatest in the league / Where’s the trophy? He just comes running over to me,” Swift sings on the bridge of “The Alchemy,” seemingly nodding to the Kansas City Chiefs tight end’s Super Bowl LVIII win in February.