How Glasgow's best band from the 1980s inspired Taylor Swift's last album

Global superstar Taylor Swift positioned Glasgow favourites The Blue Nile at the start of the lyrics for one of the songs on her much-anticipated album The Tortured Poets Department which was released in April 2024.

The song “Guilty as Sin” has a very interesting opening lyric that Glaswegian music fans picked up on right away.

In the opening verse, Taylor Swift sings:

“Drowning in the Blue Nile He sent me "Downtown Lights”, I hadn’t heard it in a while My boredom’s bone deep, This cage was once just fine Am I allowed to cry?”

The song concludes with the lyric: “He sent me "Downtown Lights”, I hadn’t heard it in a while, Am I allowed to cry?”

The reference is to The Blue Nile’s 1989 song, The Downtown Lights, the lead single from their second album Hats, widely considered to be among the finest records that Glasgow has produced. The Downtown Lights reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart in early 1990, becoming the group's only single chart entry in the United States.

Ahead of the album launch, Taylor Swift fans had already speculated that three tracks on the album were written about her relationship with The 1975 frontman Matt Healy - I Can Fix Him, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, Guilty as Sin. The two singers briefly dated in 2023 having first met each other back in 2014.

The context fits as Matt Healy is a very vocal advocate for The Blue Nile. Talking about Hats he said: “That is my favourite record of the ’80s. The Blue Nile are my favourite band of all time. They’re f***** amazing. Musically, they’ve inspired me so much. There’s so much drama. It’s perfect night-time music.”

Members of The Blue Nile were delighted to hear the band being mentioned by Taylor Swift in the song. Speaking to BBC Scotland News, PJ Moore said: "It’s been a mad 24 hours - the long haul here, then opening the phone to the Taylor Swift thing.

"We always intended the music, the words and the soundscape too, to reach out to ordinary people and bring a sense of shared humanity.

"I’m glad that Taylor Swift was so affected, but no more than when anyone else 'got it'. The Downtown Lights is neither better nor worse than it was when we made it in 1989.

"Maybe [it] does prove that we succeeded in making something true enough to last.”