Luigi Mangione Had His Taylor Swift Playlist Replaced

Alleged murderer Luigi Mangione writes that his music playlist featuring Taylor Swift was replaced by an inmate. In a letter written in June that Mangione sent to his supporters, as shared by the The Mangione Trial account on X (formerly Twitter) on October 28, he explains what he has been listening to while behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. But then he was “scolded” by a fellow prisoner about his playlist and was forced to listen another artist instead.

Mangione downloaded “a bunch of Taylor Swift” out of curiosity

At the end of a letter where Mangione makes list of the things he’s been grateful for, he says that he “downloaded a bunch of Taylor Swift and Charli XCX” onto his tablet. Prisoners at the facility can purchase MP3 players from the commissary and then download songs onto the device.

“I’ve never really listened to either of them,” he writes, “but some phony list of my favorite music circulated on social media.” This could refer to memes of people coming up with songs he was listening to after his arrest in December 2024. “Rather than being a buzzkill and set the record straight, I figured I’d see what all the hype was about.”

Mangione continued, “So I’m walking laps on the top tier of my unit listening to “Cardigan” by Taylor Swift when one of the other inmates, ‘King’, calls me over to see what I’m listening to. He scolds me for a while, then replaces all my music. Now I listen to Lil Durk.’”

As a point of emphasis, Mangione wrote that he was thankful for Taylor Swift’s “Cardigan” at the bottom of the letter before crossing it out and replacing it with Lil Durk’s “Dis Ain’t What You Want” instead.

The Grammy Award-winning Lil Durk was arrested on murder-for-hire charges in October 2024. His trial date has been pushed back several times and, at the time of writing, is slated for January 20, 2026.