Patti Smith Reacts To Taylor Swift Name-Dropping Her On 'Tortured Poets Department'

Taylor Swift’s new record just got a nod from punk’s poet laureate, Patti Smith.

Pop star Swift drops Smith’s name in the album’s title track, “The Tortured Poets Department,” where she sings, “I laughed in your face and said, ‘You’re not Dylan Thomas / I’m not Patti Smith / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel / We’re modern idiots.’”

In response, the New York counterculture icon posted a black and white Instagram photo of herself smiling behind a copy of Thomas’ “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.”

“This is saying I was moved to be mentioned in the company of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas,” she captioned the post. “Thank you, Taylor.”

While Smith and Swift seem worlds apart, the “Horses” artist talked about sympathizing with the “Reputation” singer in a 2019 profile for the New York Times.

Asked if artists like Swift should be more politically engaged in the time of Trump, Smith said, “She’s a pop star who’s under tremendous scrutiny all the time, and one can’t imagine what that’s like. It’s unbelievable to not be able to go anywhere, do anything, have messy hair.”

“And I’m sure that she’s trying to do something good,” the singer and once muse of Robert Mapplethorpe went on.

“She’s not trying to do something bad. And if it influences some of her avid fans to open up their thoughts, what does it matter?”

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