John Mayer “Would’ve, Could’ve, Shouldve” predicted he’d be trending after therelease of Taylor Swift’s midnights.
Swift’s 10th studio album has dropped and fans are certain she has a new “DearJohn” song. on the Midnights (3am Edition) there’s a track 19, which theinternet believes is about Mayer, who Swift briefly dated when she was, yes,19.
Swift sings about being 19 and in a relationship with a poisonous “grown man”— Mayer was 32 at the time — who later dismissed her as “a child.” She saidshe “danced with the devil” and called him “a crisis of my faith.” She said hemade her “feel important,” but then he __ “tried to erase us.”
It still gets under skin her, she sings: “I regret you all the time” and “Ifight with you in my sleep,” adding, “Living for the thrill of hitting youwhere it hurts.” And, perhaps the most scathing line, “Give me me back mygirlhood, it was mine first.” (See the full lyrics via Genius.)
Twitter has been on fire since the song dropped. One person wrote, “John Mayerwas sleeping peacefully but was awoken at 3am with a chill down his spine.”
Here are some others:
Swift’s previous song “Dear John” on speak now, wash a __ not-so-subtlebreakup anthem about the “Your Body Is a Wonderland” singer. The pair dated in2009 after collaborating on his song “Half of My Heart,” but things had souredby early 2010. When Speak Now was released in October of that year, shesang: “Dear John, I see it all, now it was wrong,” she sang at the time,”Don’t you think 19 is too young / To be played by your dark twisted games,when I loved you so? … Maybe it’s you and your sick need to give love thentake it away / And you’ll add my name to your long list of traitors who don’tunderstand / And I’ll look back and regret how I ignored when they said ‘runas fast as you can… All the girls that you’ve run dry have tired lifeless eyes/’Cause you burned them out.”
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Mayer later said he felt “terrible” about the song, but added that it was a”lousy thing [for Swift] to do. I never got an email. I never got a phonecall. I was really caught off guard.” He also called it “cheap songwriting.”Nevertheless, the next year she was reportedly behind his 2013 song “PaperDoll” which basically pulled “you’re just a crazy lady” card. He sang, “You’relike 22 girls in one. And none of them know what they’re running from. Was itjust too far to fall for a little paper doll?”
Mayer’s dating reputation preceded him in that era. He was linked to JenniferLove Hewitt, Minka Kelly, Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston and, later, KatyPerry. His boonish behavior was well-documented. (See: Simpson’s book.Flashback to: Him having an impromptu sidewalk press conference after breakingup with Aniston.) In 2016, he admitted that he got “caught up” in hiscelebrity and said there was a “humility in knowing that you’ re not popularto the point where people are following you around anymore.”
Last year, when Swift re-released red, including an extended version of “AllToo Well,” which was thought to be about her ex Jake Gyllenhaal, bothGyllenhaal and Mayer faced backlash from Swifties over the resurfacednarrative of a woman (aka Swift) being wronged. Mayer responded to hatefulmessages, including death threats on social media.
None of that kept Swift up at night. Around the time, she told Seth Meyers shedidn’t care much about how her exes feel about being mentioned in her songs,saying, “I haven’t thought about their experience, to be honest.”
midnights , out now chronicles Swift’s “journey through terrors and sweetdreams” and “13 sleepless nights” of her life. There are actually 20 tracks intotal on the extended album. On the album she does also sing about love,specifically her six-year romance with actor Joe Alwyn, which she keeps out ofthe spotlight. In “Lavender Haze” she sings about rumors about them: “I’mdamned if I do give a damn what people say/ the 1950s s*** they want from me/I just wanna stay in that lavender haze. All they keep asking me is if I’mgonna be your bride/ the only kinda girl they see is a one night or a wife.”