Taylor Swift [1] has always pulled inspiration from her personal life — and the people she's dated [2] — to write some of her best songs. Most of her past relationships have inspired tracks that cover a full range of emotions, from regretful and guilty to heartbroken and nostalgic. But there's one ex-boyfriend that seems to have been the target of most of her rage: John Mayer [3]. Mayer and Swift dated between the end of 2009 and February 2010. They first met when they collaborated on his song "Half of My Heart." Swift was 19; Mayer was 32.
And while Swift has befriended some of her exes, Mayer is not one of then. This April, he performed his song "Paper Doll" [4] — long rumoured to be about Swift — and said that he thought "people don't like it" because it sounds too "pissed off." He said of it, "Is there something about it that's a little b*tchy? There might be."
Meanwhile Mayer has seemingly served as inspiration for some of Swift's best songs [5], including one on 2022's "Midnights." Meanwhile, the three other tracks fans believe Mayer inspired were on 2010's "Speak Now." [6] Ahead, these are four Swift songs fans think are about Mayer ahead.
Is "Dear John" About John Mayer?
"Dear John" is boldly about Swift's relationship with Mayer. Though Swift (often with a heap of sexism) has a reputation for burning exes in her music, "Dear John" from 2010's "Speak Now" is the only song that actually names an ex-boyfriend in the title. Swift's anger and deep sadness is clear from the lyrics. In the chorus she sings, "Dear John, I see it all now that you're gone / Don't you think I was too young to be messed with? / The girl in the dress, cried the whole way home, I should've known." She also accuses him of treating her like a chess piece in a game in which he "changed the rules every day."
Swift wrote on her website [8] at the time about the song, "The song 'Dear John' is sort of like the last email you would ever send to someone that you used to be in a relationship with. Usually people write this venting last email to someone and they say everything that they want to say to that person, and then they usually don't send it. I guess by putting this song on the album I am pushing send."
Unsurprisingly, Mayer did not appreciate the track. He told Rolling Stone [9] in 2012, "It made me feel terrible. Because I didn't deserve it. I'm pretty good at taking accountability now, and I never did anything to deserve that. It was a really lousy thing for her to do." He said Swift never reached out about the song, explaining, "I never got an e-mail. I never got a phone call. I was really caught off-guard, and it really humiliated me at a time when I'd already been dressed down. I mean, how would you feel if, at the lowest you've ever been, someone kicked you even lower?" When Rolling Stone asked about the line "Don't you think I was too young to be messed with?" he would not comment on it. He also called it, "Cheap songwriting."
But in a way, Swift predicted this response. In the song she sings, "And you'll add my name to your long list of traitors who don't understand." And when Swift was asked about the song — and Mayer's reaction to it — in a 2012 interview with Glamour [10], she called him "presumptuous" and said she didn't want to know the details of his comments. "I know it wasn't good, so I don't want to know," she explained. "I put a high priority on staying happy, and I know what I can't handle."
Is "The Story of Us" About John Mayer?
Swift's "The Story of Us," another "Speak Now" song, is about running into an ex at an event and freaking out that you aren't together anymore. "Now I'm standing alone In a crowded room and we're not speaking / and I'm dying to know is it killing you like it's killing me?" she sings. The liner note for the song is "CMT Awards" — because in 2011, Swift and Mayer both attended the awards and were sitting near each other.
Back in 2010, Swift wrote on her website [11] about the song, "Let me just preface by saying that I have happened to run into exes in strange places lately. This is about one of those situations where the strange place that I ran into him was an awards show."
She continued, "I was seated a couple of seats away from him and there was so much that needed to be said, and neither one of us was willing to say it. We were both acting like we were engaged in conversations with people that we don't even know. It was just miserable. I was telling my Mom about it later, and I said I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room. And then I was like, 'Gotta go. Bye!' And my Mom is used to that at this point so, that's what this song is about."
Is "Superman" About John Mayer?
"Superman" is a track on the deluxe edition of "Speak Now." In the song, Swift imagines herself as the love interest of Superman, always stuck at home while he jets around the world. At first, that doesn't seem like Mayer, since Superman's reputation is always squeaky clean. But in the second verse, she describes this Superman even more, saying, "He's complicated, he's irrational" and "Something in his deep brown eyes has me singing / He's not all bad like his reputation." All this has led some fans to believe the song is about Mayer.
Is "Would've, Could've, Should've" About John Mayer?
If Mayer thought "Dear John" was too much, he's certainly not a fan of "Would've, Could've, Should've." In the track, off of 2022's "Midnights," Swift revisits their relationship again with the hindsight of the 13 years she's grown since it occurred, and she's even angrier about it than she was the first time.
What are the clues that let us know it's about Mayer? Swift says that she was 19 when their affair took place, singing, "I would've stayed on my knees / And I damn sure never would've danced with the devil / At 19." She also addresses the idea that she tainted him by association (and through her songs), singing, "If I was some paint, did it splatter / On a promising grown man?"
But what's clearest in the song is the way their time together has stayed with Swift through the years. She writes in the song, "If clarity's in death, then why won't this die? / Years of tearing down our banners, you and I. / Living for the thrill of hitting you where it hurts. / Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first."
