Is Taylor Swift’s ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ About Matty Healy?
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When Taylor Swift and Matty Healy broke off their brief romance last summer, a supposed insider revealed to Page Six that Swift would “not be writing albums about this one.” (The relationship was “a fun little thing whose moment is over.”) That source might have correctly predicted that Healy wouldn’t consume whole albums, but songs seem a different matter. After the April 19 release of Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, surprised fans noticed a few tracks seemed not to address Swift’s ex Joe Alwyn, or her current partner Travis Kelce, or even herself, but the 1975 frontman Healy.
One tune bears the particularly brutal name, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.” The title itself is noteworthy, given that Healy’s stature is an object of some debate. In 2018, the singer-songwriter told The Fader, “Everyone in [the 1975] is 6’4” and I’m 5’10”, so everyone thinks that I’m 5’5”.” In 2022, he informed a fan that he was “sick to fucking death” of this injustice, given that he is, in fact, “a big boy.”
But the real giveaway, re: the song’s subject matter, is in the first verse: “Gazing at me, starry-eyed / In your Jehovah’s Witness suit.” Healy’s trademark outfit is, as The New Yorker described it, a “close-cut suit and a tie,” also a favorite amongst Jehovah’s Witnesses who seek to “reflect the values that we live by” and “show respect for our God.” Although Healy is not himself a Witness, he has, arguably, dressed like one.
Other keywords abound in “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.” Swift references “rusting” her “sparkling summer”; that seems a nod to the fling’s early-summer timeline. She calls out the “you” in question for buying “pills”; Healy has spoken publicly about his experiences with addiction. Swift asks, “Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?” During the couple’s romance, some Swifties expressed fears that Healy—a controversial figure—posed a threat to Swift’s reputation. (On The Tortured Poets Department, Swift appears to address this particular concern with the track, “But Daddy I Love Him.”)
As an Entertainment Tonight source shared in June 2023, “Taylor and Matty broke up. They are both extremely busy and realized they’re not really compatible with each other. Taylor’s friends want what’s best for her and aren’t shocked that their relationship fizzled out.” But, if Swift’s lyrics mean what fans think they mean, that fizzled relationship might have been more powerful than any of these “sources” dared assume. Read the full lyrics to “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” below:
Was any of it true
Gazing at me, starry-eyed
In your Jehovah’s Witness suit
Who the fuck was that guy
You tried to buy some pills
From a friend of friends of mine
They just ghosted you
Now you know what it feels like
And I don’t even want you back
I just want to know if rusting my sparkling summer was the goal
And I don’t miss what we had
But could someone give a message
To the smallest man who ever lived?
You hung me on your wall
Stabbed me with your pushpins
In public showed me off
Then sank into stoned oblivion
Cause once your queen had come
You treat her like an also-ran
You didn’t measure up in any measure of a man
Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?
Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?
Were you writing a book?
Were you a sleeper cell spy?
In 50 years will this all be declassified?
You’ll confess what you did
And I’ll say good riddance
’Cause it wasn’t hot once it wasn’t forbidden
I would’ve died for your sins
Instead, I just died inside
And you deserve prison, but you won’t get time
You’ll slide into inboxes and slip through the bars
You crashed my party and your rental car
You said normal girls were boring
But you were gone by the morning
You kicked out the stage lights but you’re still performing
And in plain sight, you hid
But you are what you did
And I’ll forget you, but I will never forgive
The smallest man who ever lived
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