John Mayer Was ‘Humiliated’ by Taylor Swift’s “Dear John”—It Was ‘Really Lousy’
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With the latest Taylor’s version out and about in the world, Swifties might have this question in mind: What does John Mayer think of Taylor Swift’s “Dear John”?
John and Taylor dated from 2009 to 2010 and the legacy of that relationship has intrigued Swifties for more than a decade. She was 19 and he was 32. The “Love Story singer released “Dear John” which many fans theorize is about her guitar-shredding ex-boyfriend. 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.”
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Swift never outrightly said who the song’s subject is about but fans and even John Mayer thinks that the songwriter allegedly wrote about him.
So what did he think about Dear John? Read more to find out.
What did John Mayer think of Taylor Swift’s Dear John?
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What did John Mayer think of Taylor Swift’s “Dear John”? When the song initially came out, Mayer told Rolling Stone 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.”
“I never got an e-mail. I never got a phone call,” he recalled about how he figured out the subject of the song. “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 asked about the song’s line, “Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?” Mayer says, “I don’t want to go into that.”
“I will say as a songwriter that I think it’s kind of cheap songwriting,” he says. “I know she’s the biggest thing in the world, and I’m not trying to sink anybody’s ship, but I think it’s abusing your talent to rub your hands together and go, ‘Wait till he gets a load of this!’ That’s bullshit.”
In response to his reaction, Taylor Swift told Glamour, “How presumptuous! I never disclose who my songs are about,” and added that she did not want to hear his public response. “I know it wasn’t good, so I don’t want to know. I put a high priority on staying happy, and I know what I can’t handle.”
She continued, “It’s not that I’m this egomaniac and I don’t want to hear anything negative, because I do keep myself in check. But I’ve never developed that thick a skin. So I just kind of live a life, and I let all the gossip live somewhere else. If you go too far down the rabbit hole of what people think about you, it can change everything about who you are.”
Fans also believed that John’s song “Paper Doll” was a response to “Dear John” with lyrical parallels like “You’re like twenty-two girls in one/ And none of them know what they’re runnin’ from.” Despite all of the backlash, Mayer still praises Swift as a songwriter. “[‘Paper Doll’] never got listened to as a song,” he told MSNBC in 2015. It became a news story because of the lyrics. I’m not in the business of telling people what the song’s about,” Mayer explained.“Now I can just go, ‘Look, I can say the name Taylor Swift.’ She’s an artist. I’m an artist. Everybody stop, nobody’s got cancer. We’re rich people who get to live out our dreams. Let’s just stop it,’ ” he said.
“One of the tenets of being a singer-songwriter is: We don’t talk about who the songs are either inspired by or reference,” Mayer said at the time. “And when ‘Paper Doll’ came out, 100% of the people believed it was about somebody and the person that they thought it was about brought a certain amount of a superficial pop culture back and forth.”He added, “The song didn’t get the credit it deserves. I had to let it go.”
After Red (Taylor’s Version) came out, a Taylor Swift fan messaged Mayer on Instagram “F–k yourself you ugly bitch I hope you choke on something.“ She subsequently added, A”nswer me you bitch.”
“I’ve been getting so many messages like these the past couple days,” Mayer wrote back. “I’m not upset, I just tend to have a curious mind and feel compelled to ask. Do you really hope that I die?”
“My friend literally dared me to do that,” she said in the recording, apologizing to Mayer. “She’s a Taylor fan and like so am I. It was a dare. I’m sorry. I did not expect you to see.”
Mayer assured that it was fine. “So it’s a fun thing people are doing without taking into account that I might see it and be affected by it?” The “Gravity” singer messaged back, “It’s 100 percent OK. Go forth and live happy and healthy!”
💜| Taylor urging fans tonight to be kind and gentle online when Speak Now comes out as she doesn't care what happened when she was 19 yo, she only cares about the music she wrote and the fact that she gets to own it now pic.twitter.com/KZrKNp0vfw
— Taylor Swift Updates 🏟️ (@swifferupdates) June 25, 2023
Weeks before the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Swift warned her fans about behavior when the record is released. “I was hoping to ask you, that as we lead up to this album coming out, I would love for that kindness and that gentleness to extend onto our internet activities,” Swift said, per fan-recorded videos from the show. “So what I’m trying to say is, I’m putting this album out because I want to own my music and I believe that any artist who has the desire to own their music should be able to. That’s why I’m putting out this album.”
She continued, “I’m 33 years old, I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19 except the songs I wrote and the memories we made together. So what I’m trying to tell you is that I am not putting this album out so you should feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I wrote a song about 14 million years ago when I was 19.”
The day before Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) was released, Mayer posted a carousel on Instagram of pictures of him playing with Dead & Company. The last slide features a drone light show displaying the words “Please Be Kind.” Swifties swiftly appeared on his comments “it’s our speak now time. for u, speak never.”
Meanwhile, Swift’s other ex Taylor Lautner has thoughts about the album that is allegedly about him too. “I think it’s a great album. Yeah, I feel safe,” he told Today before the album re-release drops. “Praying for John.”
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