The Mercury News

Taylor Swift splits from Matty Healy

- By Martha Ross mross @bayareanew­sgroup.com

Two days after Vulture asked whether Taylor Swift was due for another backlash because she had begun dating “dirtbag” British rocker Matty Healy, the singer said they have split.

TMZ and other outlets broke the news Monday morning that Swift and Healy, lead singer of the 1975, “are shaking it off when it comes to their relationsh­ip,” with a close friend saying that Swift is “single” again.

Of course, it's unclear when they broke up or why, or whether they were ever really dating — though it had generally become accepted in celebrity world that the two had become an item, just weeks after Swift broke up with longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn.

For anyone who wasn't isolated the past month — who hadn't, say, subjected themselves to an extended stay in Aaron Rodgers' darkness retreat — they would have been forced to follow the extraordin­ary news that Swift had ended her relationsh­ip with her reliably handsome British actor boyfriend and taken up with Healy, described by Vulture as having the “Victorian-streeturch­in vibe previously employed by the likes of Pete Doherty.”

Their relationsh­ip, first reported by the UK tabloid The Sun on May 3, felt “both impossible and inevitable,” Vulture said in another report.

The musicians were once linked romantical­ly eight years ago and have continued to share mutual friends and colleagues, including Jack Antonoff, who produced both of their recent albums. Swift's ardent fans — known as “Swifties: — “revolted” at the idea that their goddess was dating someone as brash and disreputab­le as Healy, Vulture said. He didn't have “the precisely manicured public image that one would expect from Taylor Swift's Boyfriend,” Vulture said.

He's known for making controvers­ial statements on politics, culture and other music artists. More recently, he had begun to try to craft the persona as “a post-woke rock star,” though he could still switch “unpredicta­bly between tenderness and trollishne­ss,” as the New Yorker said in a recent profile.

 ?? MONICA SCHIPPER — GETTY IMAGES ?? Fan favorite Taylor Swift accepts the iHeartRadi­o Innovator Award onstage during the 2023iHeart­Radio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre on March 27in Hollywood.
MONICA SCHIPPER — GETTY IMAGES Fan favorite Taylor Swift accepts the iHeartRadi­o Innovator Award onstage during the 2023iHeart­Radio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre on March 27in Hollywood.

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