Matty Healy’s mom, Denise Welch, has a hard time biting her tongue when it comes to discussing her son’s romance with Taylor Swift.
“Denise is still Matty’s mum at the end of the day, and it was bloody hard for her to stay quiet during the whole ordeal,” a source exclusively tells Us Weekly. “Now that time has gone by, she’s saying what she can because she knows that her son got hurt.”
Welch, 67, didn’t seem to hold back as she spoke about Swift, 35, and her Tortured Poets Department album, which is believed to have been inspired by the pop star’s 2023 romance with Healy, 36, on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Thursday, July 24.
“Obviously on pain of death can I talk about that episode, but not being her mother-in-law is a role that I’m glad that I lost,” she said, earning gasps from the audience.
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However, Welch quickly added, “Not that I have anything against her at all. It was just — it was tricky.”
The British TV personality hinted that she thought it was unfair that Swift could share her side of the story via her music, but others who tried to speak out seemingly faced backlash from fans.
“Listen, you’re not allowed to say anything, and then she writes a whole album, you know, about it,” she continued.
Welch concluded that her son has “taken it all in completely good grace” and that they’ve “moved on.”
“He’s very happy with his amazing fiancée, Gabriella, Gabbriette [Bechtel], who is gorgeous,” she said.
Us’ source says of Welch’s WWHL interview, “You can’t blame a mum for standing up for her child,” adding that the time after Healy and Swift’s split was “terrible” for the Coronation Street star.
“Any mum can imagine what it would feel like — but then you have to multiply it by a million because of how famous [Taylor] is. I wish I could say she’s used to it, but she’s not,” the insider continues. “It’s a horrible thing to have the most famous person in the world saying that your son broke her heart when it was the other way around, and then you can’t even defend yourself.”
The source concludes, “She’s saying the mother-in-law stuff because that’s where Matty thought it was headed. She’s entitled to her opinion.”
Us reached out to reps for Welch and Healy.
Healy and Swift first sparked dating rumors in 2014 after she was spotted attending several of his band The 1975’s concerts. While Healy denied the romance speculation in a January 2015 radio interview, he did reveal that they “exchanged numbers in the same way that a lot of people in this kind of world do, and we spoke occasionally.”
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Healy later raised eyebrows with a comment he made about Swift in a 2016 interview with Q Magazine. The U.K. native said it would be “emasculating” to date someone more famous than him and name-dropped the pop star. However, Healy clarified in an interview with Elle that same year that his comments were taken out of context, telling the outlet that he’s “not a misogynist” but could be “an idiot on occasion.”
Healy and Swift were romantically linked again in May 2023, although they have both remained tight-lipped about the exact timeline and nature of their relationship. However, their split was confirmed the following month.
The Grammy nominee moved on with Bechtel, 27, in September 2023, and they got engaged in June 2024. Meanwhile, Swift began dating Travis Kelce in summer 2023, and they went public with their romance that September.
