Which Taylor Swift Song Did Luigi Mangione Listen to While ‘Walking Laps’ Around His Brooklyn Jail Unit?

NEED TO KNOW

• Luigi Mangione, 27, is listening to Taylor Swift and Charli XCX songs in jail, he wrote in a letter to a supporter

• He is also listening to the rapper Lil Durk on the insistence of a fellow inmate, he wrote in the same letter

• The recipient of Mangione’s letter provided PEOPLE with an image of the typed and handwritten note as well as the stamped envelope it arrived in to confirm its authenticity

Is Luigi Mangione a Swiftie?

In June, Mangione sent a letter to supporters, friends and pen pals which listed 27 things he was thankful for on the occasion of his 27th birthday.

The letters were all typed out, but a few had additional written sections where Mangione shared opinions, updates or well-wishes.

On Tuesday, the individual who runs the Twitter account The Mangione Trial said they received one of these letters in June, and then posted that letter on social media.

The Mangione Trial also provided proof of the letter’s authenticity by providing PEOPLE with photos of the letter and a stamped envelope it arrived in, and said the letter was a response to one they sent Mangione on May 22.

Mangione’s website, which keeps a running list of all mail he receives in jail, also shows that he got a letter from someone referred to as MT on May 22.

The letter starts off with a typed list of the things Mangione is grateful for, then includes a personalized message at the end of the letter.

Mangione wrote at the bottom of this letter that he “downloaded a bunch of Taylor Swift and Charli XCX onto my tablet” the previous week because he had “never really listened to either of them.”

He said that his decision to listen to the artists came after “some phony list of my favorite music circulated on social media,” which is likely a reference to the multiple doctored Spotify playlists shared on social media after his arrest in December 2024 which some people edited by adding art to suggest songs from artists like Swift or Charli XCX were on the original list.

“Rather than be a buzzkill and set the record straight, I figured I’d see what all the hype was about,” Mangione wrote.

He then said that while walking laps “on the top tier of my unit,” he listened to “Cardigan” by Swift, a song off her 2020 Album Folklore.

That listening session ended prematurely, however, Mangione wrote, when an inmate he refers to as “King” asked about the song he was listening to during his walk.

“He scolds me for a while, then replaces all my music. Now I listen to Lil Durk,” Mangione wrote at the end of the letter.

Inmates are able to purchase MP3 players from the commissary at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and then download songs onto the players by hooking their devices up to the Trust Fund Limited Inmate Computer System (TRULINCS) modules in their housing unit and then purchasing songs that are available in the prison catalog.

In that same letter, Mangione had initially listed “Cardigan” as one of the things he was thankful for, but that was crossed off and just below he wrote a song by Lil Durk: “Dis Ain’t What You Want.”

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Mangione is currently awaiting both federal and state trials at MDC, where inmates refer to him as the “ambassador” because of the work he does acclimating new inmates to the facility.

Authorities arrested Mangione at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on Dec. 9, 2024, five days after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside his Manhattan hotel.

Mangione was extradited to New York City 10 days later and charged with four federal crimes by prosecutors for the Southern District of New York.

He was then booked into the MDC, where he has remained since.

Mangione will be back in court on Dec. 1 for a pretrial hearing in his New York state case.

Read the original article on People