Taylor Swift mentions Glasgow favourites The Blue Nile on new album The Tortured Poets Department

Global superstar Taylor Swift has positioned Glasgow favourites The Blue Nile at the start of the lyrics for one of the songs on her much-anticipated new album. The Tortured Poets Department is the eleventh studio album release from Swift and it is expected to shoot to the top of the charts internationally when released on 19 April.

Lyrics from the song “Guilty as Sin” have been leaked the night before the album release. The song has a very interesting opening lyric that Glaswegian music fans are certain to like.

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. The added attention from Taylor Swift may lead to an unexpectedly late American streaming spike for the song.

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 last year.

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.”

Taylor Swift will not being playing in Glasgow this summer as the pop megastar will instead be performing three nights in Edinburgh at Murrayfield on her Eras Tour.

It’s good to know that Taylor is also a fan of one of Glasgow’s greatest bands and might even have the album Hats in her record collection.