Taylor Swift Asked Fans Not to Cyberbully John Mayer Before Playing “Dear John” for the First Time in 11 Years
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If you happened to have“cyberbully John Mayer as a show of support for Taylor Swift” on your to-do list for today (or ever), you can go ahead and cross it off because Taylor would like you to use that time to do literally anything else.
On Saturday night during her Eras Tour show in Minneapolis, Taylor pointed out that the world is only 13 days away from the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), and she celebrated that milestone with a rare live performance of “Dear John” from the album. How rare? Before its Eras Tour surprise song moment, Taylor hadn’t performed the song live in more than a decade (11 years, according to Rolling Stone).
While Taylor generally stops short of *officially* confirming who her songs are about, it’s pretty much accepted as fact among Swifties that “Dear John” was inspired by John Mayer, who Taylor briefly dated in 2009, when she was 19/very much “too young to be messed with.” Even John is sure the song is about him, based on his public comments about the song, including a 2012 Rolling Stone interview in which he said he was “really humiliated” by it.
Anyyyway, because the general consensus is that when a 19-year-old Taylor Swift was played by someone’s “dark twisted games,” that someone was John Mayer, Swifties’ feelings about John tend to range anywhere from “What a jerk!” to “BURN IT DOWN.” Don’t start a #JohnMayerIsOverParty on Taylor’s behalf, though, because 33-year-old Taylor is completely over anything/anyone who broke 19-year-old Taylor’s heart.
Taylor made ^^^that^^^ explicitly clear in the speech she gave before playing “Dear John,” in which she also directly asked fans to refrain from cyberbullying John Mayer anyone they *think* she wrote a song about when she was 19.
“I get to stand on the stage every single night of this tour and watch the most beautiful things happen,” she said after explaining the importance of Speak Now, which she wrote entirely on her own without any collaborators. “Like, I watch you guys make friends with each other. I watch you bond. I watch you to give each other friendship bracelets. I see so many beautiful interactions happen and I hear so many stories about friends that were made at these shows and I watch it happen every night. It’s the most unbelievable thing to watch. And so 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 on to our internet activities.”
After a brief detour to reiterate the real point behind her entire Taylor’s Version rerecord project (which is to own her music), Taylor got back to her also-very-important “please don’t bully John Mayer/anyone online” PSA.
“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,” she explained. “So what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not putting this album out so that you could go and, like, feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about 14 billion years ago.”
Well. Said.
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