While Taylor Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine, is puppeteering the tabloids and fielding interest from Amy Adams to play Swift in a biopic, the publicist for Swift’s ex, Matty Healy, is probably screaming in a locked dungeon. The bad thing happened: The rogue 1975 front man reclaimed his X account. Soon, he and Azealia Banks started beefing. He threatened to slap her, then felt guilty and crashed out. Now, he’s deactivated his account. It was like the pop-music fan’s equivalent of the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson fight. You grimaced, but you also couldn’t stop watching.
The beef started on Tuesday, when Banks went after Charli XCX. “Charli used to be soooo pretty,” she tweeted. This is not a new thing: Banks is always lobbing nasty insults at other, often more successful female artists; a few years ago, she memorably called the Brat singer an “ashtray.” (Just Google it.) Sometimes, her criticisms present as astute cultural commentary, while other times they sound like bitter nonsense. (Her X bio is “rantings of a lunatic.”) Lately, they’ve been more of the latter. Healy stood up for Charli, his bandmate George Daniel’s fiancée: “All the women you attack seem to be culturally relevant, attractive, divisive and NICE people. I think this makes you jealous cos you’re so talented but everything else about you is a failure. Just rap bro.” It’s a good read, but he should have really left out that last part.
It all went downhill from there. Banks, never one to play fair, attacked both Healy and his fiancée, the model Gabbriette, saying, “You both look like you share needles.” (Healy has struggled with heroin addiction.) Healy then threatened to “f–king slap you so hard I’ll get a Guinness world record for the highest a rat some bitch calls a wig has ever flown.” (Cue publicist scream.) He has too much racist baggage to win a fight like this, and Banks brought up nearly all of it, including the podcast episode that resulted in Swifties urging their idol not to date him. (Banks’s comment at the time: “Taylor, this guy is gonna give you scabies. He’s not on the level of powerful p—s u worked HELLA Hard To build.”) The fight was awful. It was amazing. Could it have played out anywhere else but X? Your move, Bluesky.