Some of Taylor Swift’s songs on The Tortured Poets Department have clear subjects, be it Joe Alwyn for “So Long, London,” or Matty Healy for album’s titular song. Track four, “Down Bad,” is a little more ambiguous at first glance. Upon closer look at the lyrics, however, many fans are convinced it’s about Healy.
The tell is in how Swift reflects on a brief romance (“For a moment I knew cosmic love”), while her love story with Alwyn was much longer (like, six years longer!). At one point, she seems to allude to Healy’s controversial public reputation, singing, “I loved your hostile take-overs / Encounters closer and closer / All your indecent exposures.” Alwyn, on the other hand, did not have a reputation for being publicly hostile or indecent. As a source told Entertainment Tonight following their breakup, “They had been together for such a long time and were spending so much time together, but their personalities were just too different. Joe is more introverted, shy, and quiet.”
Swift’s describing her love interest in the song as “my twin” also suits Healy more. Both she and Healy are fire signs, making them possible literal twin flames. Healy is an Aries, while Swift is a Sagittarius. As the Astro Twins write for ELLE about this pairing, “Chemistry and connection ignite like a flash fire for these two adventurous, philosophical fire signs, who discover a twin soul in one another. You’re both independent explorers, driven by lust, joie de vivre, and a breathtaking moxie that others mistake for arrogance.”
Fans also noted that Swift’s lyric about a fort might reference Healy’s own connection to building forts, which The 1975 fans have addressed.
Swift and Healy’s romance was publicly short-lived, lasting from May 2023 to June 2023. When the news of the split came out in early June, a source spoke to People about what happened—and how their busy schedules contributed to the breakup more than any issues between them.
The source touched on Healy’s problematic comments, saying they didn’t affect Swift’s view of him. “He likes to provoke a response out of people,” the insider said. “She’s a grown woman more than capable of forming her own opinions about people. No one forces her into anything, especially not these days. She’s on top of the world.”
A separate source suggested that while they fizzled out, they could rekindle again someday: “They were never boyfriend-girlfriend or exclusive and were always just having fun,” that source said. “There is no drama, and who knows what could happen again. It was a good time and ran its course.”
“Taylor is doing great—her focus right now is her tour,” the source continued. “Since Matty is touring too, they won't be able to see each other at all. They have been friends for years and decided to just go back to being friends. Nothing complicated happened. It’s just life.”
Swift’s “Down Bad” lyrics reveal that things might have been a little more complicated behind the scenes.
Swift, by the way, hasn’t confirmed the song’s subject. She did discuss its inspiration with Amazon Music though. She said, “A lot of songs on The Tortured Poets Department deal with the idea of heartbreak or loss in a metaphor of something else. The metaphor in ‘Down Bad’ is that I was comparing the idea of being love bombed, where someone rocks your world and dazzles you and then just kind of abandons you as an alien abduction where you were abducted by aliens, but…this girl is abducted by aliens, but she wanted to stay with them, and when they drop her back off in her hometown, she said, ‘Wait, no, where are you going? I liked it there. It was weird, but it was cool. Come back.’ And so…the girl, the character in the song, felt like, ‘I’ve just been exposed to a whole different galaxy and universe I didn’t know was possible. How can you just put me back where I was before?’’’
Here, the full lyrics to the song:
Verse 1:
Did you really beam me up?
In a cloud of sparkling dust
Just to do experiments on
Tell me I was the chosen one
Showed me that this world is bigger than us
Then sent me back where I came from
Pre-Chorus:
For a moment I knew cosmic love
Chorus:
Now I’m down bad, crying at the gym
Everything comes out teenage petulance
“Fuck it if I can’t have him”
“I might just die, it would make no difference”
Down bad, waking up in blood
Staring at the sky, come back and pick me up
Fuck it if I can’t have us
I might just not get up
I might stay down bad
Fuck it if I can‘t have him
Down bad
Fuck it if I can’t have him
Verse 2:
Did you take all my old clothes?
Just to leave me here naked and alone
In a field in my same old town
That somehow seems so hollow now
They’ll say I'm nuts if I talk about
The existence of you
Pre-Chorus:
For a moment, I was heavenstruck
Chorus:
Now I’m down bad, crying at the gym
Everything comes out teenage petulance
“Fuck it if I can’t have him”
“I might just die, it would make no difference”
Down bad, waking up in blood
Staring at the sky, come back and pick me up
Fuck it if I can’t have us
I might just not get up
I might stay down bad (Like I lost my twin)
Fuck it if I can’t have him (Down bad)
Down bad (Waving at the ship)
Fuck it if I can't have him
Bridge:
I loved your hostile take-overs
Encounters closer and closer
All your indecent exposures
How dare you say that it‘s–
I’ll build you a fort on some planet
Where they can all understand it
How dare you think it’s romantic
Leaving me safe and stranded?
’Cause fuck it, I was in love
So fuck you if I can’t have us
’Cause fuck it, I was in love
Chorus:
Now I’m down bad, crying at the gym
Everything comes out teenage petulance
“Fuck it if I can’t have him”
“I might just die, it would make no difference”
Down bad, waking up in blood
Staring at the sky, come back and pick me up
Fuck it if I can’t have us
I might just not get up
I might stay down bad (Like I lost my twin)
Fuck it if I can’t have him (Down bad)
Down bad (Waving at the ship)
Fuck it if I can’t have him
Outro:
Like I lost my twin
Fuck it if I can’t have him
Down bad (Waving at the ship)
Fuck it if I can’t have him
This post has been updated with Swift’s explanation of what inspired “Down Bad.”
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she's not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
