diff --git a/beets/autotag/distance.py b/beets/autotag/distance.py
index d5821f4733..ba6d7939bf 100644
--- a/beets/autotag/distance.py
+++ b/beets/autotag/distance.py
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@
 SD_PATTERNS = [
     (r"^the ", 0.1),
     (r"[\[\(]?(ep|single)[\]\)]?", 0.0),
-    (r"[\[\(]?(featuring|feat|ft)[\. :].+", 0.1),
+    (r"[\[\(]?\b(featuring|feat|ft)\b[\. :].+", 0.1),
     (r"\(.*?\)", 0.3),
     (r"\[.*?\]", 0.3),
     (r"(, )?(pt\.|part) .+", 0.2),
diff --git a/docs/changelog.rst b/docs/changelog.rst
index 096a35a6db..f4fadcdb78 100644
--- a/docs/changelog.rst
+++ b/docs/changelog.rst
@@ -95,6 +95,10 @@ Bug fixes
   valid date/time string" error instead of crashing with an uncaught
   ``KeyError``. A ``|`` was being accepted as a relative-date unit due to a
   regular expression character-class typo.
+- Autotagging distance calculations no longer treat ordinary words containing
+  "ft" (such as "draft", "left", "gift", "craft") as a "featuring artist"
+  suffix, which was silently making genuinely different titles/artists score as
+  near-identical matches.
 
 ..
     For plugin developers
diff --git a/test/autotag/test_distance.py b/test/autotag/test_distance.py
index 15c4a7208f..03c2513c77 100644
--- a/test/autotag/test_distance.py
+++ b/test/autotag/test_distance.py
@@ -282,6 +282,23 @@ def test_matching_distance(self, string1, string2):
     def test_different_distance(self):
         assert string_dist("Some String", "Totally Different") != 0.0
 
+    @pytest.mark.parametrize(
+        "string1, string2",
+        [
+            ("Draft Beer", "Draft Whiskey"),
+            ("Left Field", "Left Symphony"),
+            ("Gift Ideas", "Gift Cards"),
+            ("Craft Beer", "Craft Wine"),
+        ],
+    )
+    def test_featuring_pattern_does_not_match_mid_word(self, string1, string2):
+        # The "featuring"/"feat"/"ft" pattern must not match "ft" embedded
+        # inside an ordinary word (draft, left, gift, craft, ...) -- doing so
+        # would treat everything after "ft" as a low-weight suffix and make
+        # genuinely different strings look almost identical instead of
+        # correctly registering as a large distance.
+        assert string_dist(string1, string2) > 0.3
+
     @pytest.mark.parametrize(
         "string1, string2, reference",
         [