Despite it not really containing many songs that could be considered to be nearly as memorable as some of her finest, Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department is still at the forefront of everyone's minds in the days following the surprise double-album's release. And although it lacks some of the magic specificity the pop star has been known to conjure, it's not short on references — and one of the people Swift name-dropped on the album was the legendary Patti Smith, who has now responded.
The title track of the record features one of the chorus lyrics that is quite nearly satisfying, with Swift singing (presumably about Matty Healy), "You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith / This ain't the Chelsea Hotel, we're modern idiots." (She's clearly a fan of Just Kids, and who among us isn't?)
Smith herself took to Instagram over the weekend to react to being mentioned in the song, writing, "This is saying I was moved to be mentioned in the company of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Thank you Taylor," as the caption for a pair of photographs of her holding Thomas's 1940 short stories collection, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.
See Smith's post below.