Taylor Swift’s fan base is one of the most passionate fan communities out there. Taylor plays into this with all her Easter eggs, encouraging her fans to pay attention to every tiny detail. Having a fan base so devoted comes with a dark side, as we have seen in recent years. Fans have called in death threats to Taylor’s enemies at Big Machine and The Kid Mero, and as far as I know she doesn’t usually intervene or ask them to stop doing this stuff. So this might be something of a first. Ahead of the re-release of her third album, Speak Now, Taylor’s asking fans not to harass one of that album’s main muses: John Mayer. Kind of. She didn’t address him directly, but if you’re in the know, it’s not hard to figure out who she’s talking about.

She never said his name, but Taylor Swift asked fans not to attack ex-boyfriend John Mayer when she releases her version of the album Speak Now—which contains the song “Dear John”—next month.

“I’m 33 years old. I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19,” she said during a concert in Minneapolis on Saturday night.

“I’m not putting this album out so that you can go and should feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about 14 billion years ago.”

Swift was 19 when she briefly dated Mayer, who was 12 years older than her—and fans have long been convinced the scorching track is about him and their breakup.

[From The Daily Beast]

There is no doubt the song is about John Mayer. Everything about it points to him, down to the fact that the guitar lick in it sounds just like him. I also think that whatever she says to the contrary, she has some residual bitterness toward him. On the extended edition of her latest record, Midnights, she released a song called Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve that is also believed to be about John, since it references her “dancing with the devil” at nineteen. (If you aren’t well-versed in her lyrics just trust me on this.) I have to be honest and admit that Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve is my favorite song Taylor has ever done. For one thing, Aaron Dessner produced it and it is so much better than her work with Jack Antonoff. For another, I experienced a traumatic event at nineteen that triggered a religious crisis just like she sings about, so the song maps onto my own life in a way that’s downright spooky. Anyway in it she sings, “I can’t let this go/I fight with you in my sleep/The wound won’t close/I keep on waiting for a sign.” Those don’t sound like the words of someone who has resolved their anger, just saying. Maybe she wrote the song years ago, but she also knew her fans would make the connections to Dear John. They’re right there. I noticed them on my first listen. I think John is a sleazebag but I also think Taylor’s fans frequently take things too far. Here’s what I wonder: if the Swifties go after him after all, is she going to say anything then? Or is she going to let it happen? My gut tells me it’s too little, too late for Taylor to speak up about this now.

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