Taylor Swift asked Matty Healy’s pal Lucy Dacus for permission to name-drop her in a diss track believed to be about The 1975 singer.
Dacus said that “it’s fair game” to confirm that the name-drop in the title track of Swift’s 2024 album, “The Tortured Poets Department” was, indeed, about her in an interview with People published Thursday.
The Boygenius band member, 29, also revealed that Swift, 35, reached out to her for consent before using her name in the tune.
“She actually texted me and asked for my approval,” Dacus said.
In the song, Swift sings, “Sometimes, I wonder if you’re gonna screw this up with me / But you told Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave / And I had said that to Jack about you, so I felt seen / Everyone we know understands why it’s meant to be / ‘Cause we’re crazy.”
The “Best Guest” singer reflected on how she felt when she first heard her name in the Grammy-winning artist’s song.
“Well, I pushed play on the album just like, ‘Oh, this is so crazy,’” Dacus remembered, noting, “This is the first Taylor record to come out since meeting her, and listening to a friend’s record feels so much different than a stranger’s record.”
Dacus admitted that the experience was “really weird” to hear a voice that she’s “heard basically what feels like [her] whole waking life” say her name.
“It was definitely an experience,” Dacus shared. “I sat down and I was like, ‘Huh. Wow.’ But I think that that record of hers is super open-hearted, and I don’t know how many people at her level, if anyone is at her level, are writing from the heart that openly.”
Healy, 35, and Lucy used to have a close friendship, but they seemingly had a falling out after feuding via X in 2023.
“I told Lucy Dacus that Boygenius had inspired me and George to start a new band called ‘Girlr—–d’. I don’t hear from her that often,” Healy wrote on X at the time, according to a Reddit thread.
Dacus replied by writing back, “You don’t hear from me at all,” reportedly prompting Healy to delete his X account.
It’s unclear if they mended their friendship since the online episode unfolded.
As Page Six previously reported, Swift and Healy famously dated for a month in May 2023 — shortly after her breakup with her boyfriend of six years, Joe Alwyn.
The “Blank Space” artist and Healy also had a brief fling in 2014.
Along with the title track, Swifties believe other songs on the album are about Healy including “Guilty as Sin?” “Down Bad,” “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” — which seemingly references his open battle with drug addiction — “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can).”
Several tracks are also believed to be about Alwyn as well as Swift’s current boyfriend, Travis Kelce.
