“Sounds exactly like him”: Fans react to Taylor Swift’s 1989 vinyl from Target allegedly crediting Matty Healy on The 1975 feature

Lead vocalist of "The 1975" Matty Healy and Taylor Swift's 1989 album are making rounds on X and not for the reasons you'd think.

Fans were surprised when pictures of Taylor Swift's 1989 Vinyl, allegedly purchased from Target, saw Matty Healy credited as a feature on the song "Sl*t!".

His verse "Lights blink... called me a Gentleman" probably refers to his alleged relationship with Taylor Swift which ended in 2023.

His vocals aren't present on the track but the vinyl cover still credits him as a writer on the song. This led fans to believe the covers were made before his verse was removed and that a few misprinted vinyls made their way into public circulation.

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Fans react to viral Matty Healy vinyl cover on X

Dedicated fans were quick with their theories as to whether the cover was real or fake.

Image via X / @1989tvalbum13

Although the viral pictures haven't yet been confirmed by an official source, Swift fans are still stirring with curiosity.

Image Via X/ @the1975_thteam

The cover identifies a ghost verse which never appears in the actual song. This led both Swift and Healy fans to conclude this was the speculated "Matty Healy verse," which was left out of the released album.

Throughout the second verse, the lyrics strongly refer to a woman with lines like "Cat eye running down her cheekbone", and "I tell her, you are not a Sl*t," leaning into the theory that Matty had written this verse in the initial drafts for the song "Sl*t".

Adding to the confusion was Matty Healy's name and record label, Dirty Hit, appearing as credits on the song.

"Lead vocals by Matty Healy and The 1975 appear courtesy of Dirty Hit LTD" / Image via X @emilyioriii

Some Healy fans speculated that the missing verse, along with the use of words like "Relevant" and "American" are signs that Matty was originally featured on the song.

This sounds like a conspiracy theory, but we relate to the passion with which they tweet.

Fans seem to have wanted this collaboration to happen.

There were fans however who didn't believe Taylor Swift and Matty Healy had ever collaborated on a song.

The mix of fans, both wanting and not wanting the collaboration to have happened was plenty, with many in support of the alleged Matty Healy verse not being included in her album.

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Why was Matty Healy left out of the album?

Both artists seemed to have had a long romantic history, stemming back to 2014, before supposedly announcing themselves as a couple in May 2023.

Between all the love and chaos, rumors would surface that Matty Healy was going to appear as a featured artist on the 1989 (Taylor's Version) album, which was released in October that year.

Matty and Taylor's relationship appeared to fizzle out soon after they got together. A few months after their alleged relationship ended, Taylor's album dropped with no feature from Healy on any of the tracks.

Swifties were in support of the news of her no longer being associated with Healy, due to the various controversies surrounding his name.

These controversies are apparently what sent Taylor Swift's fans into a frenzy and were the reason that some cited for the removal of Matty Healy's verse from the album.

In March 2016, Matty Healy commented on the initial rumors of him and Taylor being a couple in the now inactive Q magazine, in which he described their relationship as a "Flirtation."

"So the one time I did have a flirtation with a girl, it ends up going everywhere...I mean, I got on E! News and people were like, 'Who's Matt Healy?', so that was cool. But I didn't make a big deal out of it myself. It's not really anything to talk about, because if she wasn't Taylor Swift we wouldn't be talking about her. She wasn't a big impact on my life."

He proceeded to call the idea of him dating Taylor Swift “emasculating," which went viral and received quite a lot of backlash. He responded to it in a tweet that has since been taken down, where he clarified what he meant stating "Now I may admit to being an idiot on occasion, but I am not a misogynist. This suggestion makes me really sad."