Fans think Taylor Swift is revisiting her 2009 romance with John Mayer in her newly released album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”
In the song “The Manuscript” –– which is the last track on the bonus version, “The Anthology” –– Swift sings about two people in a relationship with a significant age gap.
“In the age of him, she wished she was thirty / And made coffee every morning in a Frеnch press / Afterwards she only atе kids’ cereal / And couldn’t sleep unless it was in her mother’s bed,” she sings.
As fans know, Swift notably dated Mayer when she was 19 and he was 32 between 2009 and 2010.
The Grammy winner, now 34, continues to sing that she went on to date “boys who were her own age.”
Following her break up with Mayer, Swift dated Jake Gyllenhaal –– who is also much older than her –– before moving on to Harry Styles and Conor Kennedy, who are closer to her age.
Swift again alludes to the age gap in the song with the lyrics, “He said that if the sex was half as good as the conversation was / Soon they’d be pushin’ strollers / But soon it was over.”
“She thought about how he said since she was so wise beyond her years / Everything had been above board / She wasn’t sure.”
Swift ends the song reflectively and notes that “Lookin’ backwards / Might be the only way to move forward” and later, “And at last / She knew what the agony had been for.”
After the highly anticipated double album dropped Friday, fans took to Twitter to share their theories about “The Manuscript” and Mayer, now 46.
“the manuscript……..john mayer you will never live this down,” one fan tweeted.
“the manuscript being about John Mayer was not on my 2024 bingo card,” another user wrote.
“not The Manuscript being one final f–k you to John Mayer,” one X user bluntly put it.
“She really said f–k you John Mayer and Jake Gyllenhaal with The Manuscript,” another fan tweeted.
Despite keeping the subjects of her songs under wraps, fans have been able to figure them out.
In 2010, Swift seemed to sing about Mayer for the first time in the song “Dear John” on her album “Speak Now.”
“Don’t you think nineteen’s too young / To be played by your dark, twisted games when I loved you so?” she sang.
Swifties want to know
Over a decade later, Swift appeared to revisit her failed relationship with Mayer in the song “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” on her “Midnights” album released in 2022.
“Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve / If you’d never looked my way / I would’ve stayed on my knees / And I damn sure never would’ve danced with the devil / At nineteen,” she sang.
Meanwhile, Swift’s 10-minute version of her song “All Too Well” seemed to be about her relationship with Gyllenhaal, now 43, when she sang, “You, who charmed my dad with self-effacing jokes / Sippin’ coffee like you’re on a late-night show / But then he watched me watch the front door all night, willing you to come / And he said, ‘It’s supposed to be fun turning twenty-one.’”
Despite the obvious clues, Swift has yet to confirm or deny that any of the above songs are about Mayer or Gyllenhaal.
Elsewhere on the chart-topping album, Swift appears to shade her breakups with Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy, while also calling out her longtime feud with Kim Kardashian.
