Beth Garrabrant
The Starting Line, the group behind the 2003 pop-punk traditional “The Best of Me,” received a name-check on Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department album and posted a response to the pop star after listening to the tune.
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Swift references The Starting Line on the emotional ballad “The Black Dog,” discovered on certainly one of 4 deluxe editions of her Tortured Poets bodily launch, and as monitor No. 17 on Swift’s full 31-song The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, made available on streaming providers and through digital obtain on April 19.
The tune begins with Swift’s realization that her former flame forgot to disable location monitoring on his cellphone. It goes on to set the scene of what she imagines is taking part in out with out her at a London pub.
“I just don’t understand/ How you don’t miss me in The Black Dog/ When someone plays The Starting Line/ And you jump up, but she’s too young/ To know this song that was intertwined/ In the magic fabric of our dreaming,” Swift sings on the refrain of “The Black Dog.” “Old habits die screaming.”
Later, Swift’s harm turns to anger as her phrases shift to “And I hope it’s shitty in The Black Dog/ When someone plays The Starting Line/ And you jump up, but she’s too young/ To know this song that was intertwined/ In the tragic fabric of our dreaming/ ‘Cause tail between your legs, you’re leavin’.”
In a observe posted on The Starting Line’s Instagram account on Friday, the band wrote: “Dear Taylor, we heard the song, thank you for name checking our band. We feel flattered and humbled by the reverberations of love that have come back to us as a result. It’s an honor to have TSL memorialized on such a lovely song. You didn’t have to do that, but you did, and we appreciate it wholeheartedly. Respect!”
Although Swift doesn’t title the tune by The Starting Line she’s listening to in her head on “The Black Dog” — nor does she determine the romantic curiosity the tune is about — her lyric might be alluding to “The Best of Me,” the lead single from TSL’s debut album, Say It Like You Mean It.
The 1975’s Matty Healy — who by all appearances Swift briefly dated in 2023 after additionally briefly being linked collectively a decade in the past — occurred to play a snippet of “The Best of Me” stay on tour in New Zealand on April 21, 2023, and once more on May 3, within the Philippines. On May 5, Healy was noticed attending Swift’s Eras Tour in Nashville. This was the primary of a number of occasions he was photographed round or together with her through the time interval, sparking relationship rumors for the pair.
“Shout-out to people in their 30s,” Healy stated with a smile after his brief “The Best of Me” cowl, as seen within the clip above from The 1975’s present a yr in the past.
Fans have identified indicators indicating Healy because the potential muse of title track “The Tortured Poets Department,” amongst different songs, on Swift’s latest launch.
“Tell me what you thought about when you were gone/ And so alone/ The worst is over/ You can have the best of me,” The Starting Line’s Kenny Vasoli sings on the group’s “The Best of Me.” “We got older/ But we’re still young/ We never grew out of this feeling that we won’t give up.”
See the band’s thank-you letter to Swift for the shout-out on “The Black Dog” under. According to initial reports, on simply its first day of launch The Tortured Poets Department already marked Swift’s largest gross sales week ever within the U.S., with 1.4 million copies in conventional album gross sales.
