Our Long National Nightmare is Over

RIP to the romance between Taylor Swift and Matty Healy: 2023 to, like, three weeks later in 2023. On Monday, TMZ reported that Swift and her scourge of a boyfriend are no longer together: “Taylor Swift and Matty Healy are shaking it off when it comes to their relationship -- the singers have broken up ... TMZ has learned,” the site reported. “According to a friend close to the situation ... Taylor is in fact ‘single’ again, although it's still unclear exactly why they've now split up.” I love this Slaughterhouse-Five “There is no why” book report framing: there are, in fact, too many whys!!!

Healy has been an honorary Disgusting Brother, kissing fans, eating raw meat, doing a Nazi salute during a song, and making fun of Ice Spice?? (I haven’t even finished reading the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino piece about him.) On Tuesday, Azealia Banks (who devoted Hung Up readers will recall is either radically right or radically wrong) summed it up best: “Taylor, this guy is gonna give you scabies. He’s not on the level of powerful puss u worked HELLA hard to build.” (After that read, goodness, they had to break up like my god!)

Allie Jones, of the amazing newsletter Gossip Time, and I met in a Google doc to discuss the demise of the Swift-Healy romance.

Hunter Harris: Obviously this was inevitable. There was only so long Tree Paine could let this go on. I have this fantasy about Taylor Swift and Matty Healy breaking up, and it’s that Tree sat Swift down and said it’s him or me. (Will be an amazing scene to play at the Oscars ceremony where Amy Adams wins Best Actress for playing Tree.) This guy is too much of a liability, he is one long series of headaches, more migraine than man! 

But also, maybe I’m too cynical, I immediately thought they could still be together and just taking it underground. Block got too hot!

Allie Jones: The timing here is hilariously convenient: After three weeks in which Swift seemed to want to be photographed with Healy as much as possible, now he’s back on tour in Europe making out with security guards and she’s immediately like, Oh yeah, we broke up. Okay. I wonder what would have happened if he didn’t have to go back to Europe and could continue following her around on her tour, making friendship bracelets with Gigi Hadid and whatnot. Would she have dumped him quite so fast? ...