Taylor Swift’s exes inspired some of her best work. Behold the heartbreak that came before Travis Kelce
By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — Turns out Taylor Swift meant it when she sang about “never, ever getting back together.”
Now that Travis Kelce has put a ring on it, the Swifties have been celebrating their girl finding her permanent guy, and saying to goodbye all the others for good.
Well, maybe not for good, since any casual Swift listener (much less the Swifties) know All Too Well that a substantial portion of her past work was inspired by lost love, and/or love that just didn’t work out.
So in keeping with that, let’s take a trip in the time capsule to revisit some of the famous yet infamous exes who inspired Swift to put pen to paper, from after her debut all the way to a bunch of tortured poets.
Joe Jonas
The singer dated Joe Jonas, who is a member of the group the Jonas Brothers, for a few months in 2008.
Young love can be tough, and after they split, Swift appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres’s daytime talk show where she said she was “cool” with it.
“When I find that person that is right for me, he’ll be wonderful,” Swift said at the time. “When I look at that person, I’m not even going to remember the boy who broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds when I was 18.”
She went on to explain that “I looked at the call log, it was like 27 seconds. That’s got to be a record.”
Yikes.
Swift also shared that she had recorded a song about their relationship at the time, kind of last minute, titled “Forever & Always,” for her sophomore “Fearless” album.
But many fans also think the tracks “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” “Better Than Revenge,” and “Last Kiss” are also about Jonas.
She even referenced him in her opening monologue when she hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 2009.
“You might think I’d bring up Joe, that guy who broke up with me on the phone,” Swift said. “But I’m not going to mention him in my monologue. Hey, Joe! I’m doing real well and I’m hosting SNL, but I’m not going to write about that in my monologue.”
The pair got past it though, and during a 2019 appearance again with Ellen DeGeneres, the two women were playing a round of “Burning Questions” and the host asked Swift about the most rebellious thing she did as a teen.
“Probably when I, like, put Joe Jonas on blast on your show,” Swift said. “That was too much. I was 18. Yeah. We laugh about it now, but … that was mouthy.”
John Mayer
Swift was 19 when she dated fellow artist John Mayer, and let’s just say things didn’t exactly go great.
Fans quickly clocked her “Dear John” tune – from her third studio album, 2010’s “Speak Now” – as possibly being about Mayer, especially because of the lyrics: “Dear John, I see it all, now it was wrong / Don’t you think 19 is too young to be played by your dark twisted games, when I loved you so?”
Yikes, again.
Even Mayer himself thought the song was about him.
“I was really caught off-guard, and it really humiliated me at a time when I’d already been dressed down,” the musician told Rolling Stone in 2012. “I mean, how would you feel if, at the lowest you’ve ever been, someone kicked you even lower?” (Triple yikes!)
Taylor Lautner
“Twilight” star Taylor Lautner seemed to have spilled tea on himself after dating the superstar who shares his first name.
Lautner and Swift were linked for a bit in 2009 after costarring in the movie “Valentine’s Day” together, but it wasn’t until years later that we got to sip the tea, when his “Scream Queens” costar Lea Michele asked him during a Facebook Live about possibly having inspired a Swift song.
“That’s what she does,” Lautner said at the time. “She writes songs.”
Michele couldn’t figure out the name of the song, but believed it had something to do with a hat. Lautner cleared it up for her.
“It’s called ‘Back to December,’” he said.
But there’s no Bad Blood here. In 2023, Swift brought Lautner on stage as a surprise during her “Eras” tour stop in Kansas City for the debut of the music video for “I Can See You,” which costars Lautner.
Lautner and his now wife, who is also named Taylor (that’s a lot of Taylors), talked about their support of his ex during their podcast “The Squeeze” at the time.
“We’ve been very excited about this secret for the last few months,” he said. “We’ve known how freaking awesome the video is for awhile now so (we) were just stoked for everybody to see it.”
Jake Gyllenhaal
Hold on, because this one got Dionne Warwick involved.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Swift briefly dated in 2010, and fans have decided that a few of her songs were about their time together, including but not limited to, “We Are Never Getting Back Together,” “State of Grace,” and “The Moment I Knew,” all off her fourth studio album from 2012, titled “Red.”
That first one in particular got attention, as the actor is a well known indie music fan and in “We Are Never Getting Back Together,” Swift sings, “And you would hide away and find your peace of mind / With some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.”
Fast forward to 2021, when Swift released a short film music video for her single “All Too Well” off her “Red (Taylor’s Version)” album.
While the original track had long been believed to be about Gyllenhaal as well, the short film all but confirmed it as it featured an actor who could have been his double.
There is also a line in the song where Swift sings, “And I left my scarf there at your sister’s house / And you’ve still got it in your drawer even now.”
That’s where Warwick came in.
“If that young man has Taylor’s scarf he should return it,” the legendary singer tweeted.
“It does not belong to you,” she added. “Box it up and I will pay the cost of postage, Jake.”
Folks kind of loved that Warwick decided to not just “Walk On By” the whole situation.
Harry Styles
There was only One Direction this relationship was going.
Swift and Styles set tongues wagging after they were spotted by paparazzi strolling together in November 2012, and things seemed even more heated after they were photographed sharing some New Year’s Eve smooches the following month.
But the boy bander turned out not to be her forever, and he is believed to have inspired “Style” and “Out of the Woods” – off her smash album “1989” from 2014 – and “I Knew You Were Trouble,” off “Red.”
In “Out of the Woods,” Swift sings the lyric “Baby, like we stood a chance / Two paper airplanes flying,” due to the fact Styles once wore a paper airplane necklace, and in the music video for the song there are several Easter eggs including her wearing a blue dress which looks a lot like the dress she wore leaving a trip they reportedly took to the British Virgin Islands together.
Joe Alwyn
One of her longest relationships is actually Swift’s last public one before she found Kelce.
The songstress dated British actor Joe Alwyn for more than six years before they split in 2023.
The year before, she revealed that her song “Lavender Haze” from 2022’s “Midnights” album was connected to their relationship.
“Like, my relationship for six years, we’ve had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff – and we just ignore it,” she said in a video shared on social media. “This song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff.”
And while it’s believed that he inspired multiple other songs – including the happy-go-lucky “London Boy” off of 2019’s “Lover” – he also actually collaborated with her on a few.
Under the pen name William Bowery, Alwyn helped Swift write “Exile” and “Betty” from her 2020 “Folklore” album; “Champagne Problems,” “Coney Island,” and the title track “Evermore” from the same year’s “Evermore” album, and “Sweet Nothing” from “Midnights.”
Alwyn apparently left a lasting impression given that her 2024 album was titled “The Tortured Poets Department,” which featured the much less happy “So Long, London,” also believed to be about the actor. Even the album title itself seemed to be a nod to him, as Alwyn and his friends – fellow actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott – previously shared that their group chat is titled “Tortured Man Club.”
Honorable mention: Katy Perry
While not necessarily heartbreak of the romantic kind, Swift’s long-held feud with Katy Perry, believed to have stemmed from a dispute about backup dancers, most likely served as the basis for her 2014 hit “Bad Blood” off “1989.” Happily, the pair later reconciled and eventually Perry appeared in Swift’s video for “You Need to Calm Down” in 2019, wearing, you guessed it, a giant burger costume.
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