Taylor Swift Confronts Mayer Laments Lautner In New Album

Whatever the reactions to Taylor Swift's third full-length album, Speak Now, might be, there are two critics whose responses we can easily pin down in advance.
Taylor Lautner is going to love it.
John Mayer? Not so much.
The hotly anticipated album, which comes out Oct. 25, has been held tightly under wraps until now, with only a handful of songs made available for advance listening even to journalists who have been doing interviews with Swift. Now that her label is finally starting to play the album for select critics, it's easy to fathom why its contents have been closely guarded, all fears of leakage aside. Some of the lyrics are startlingly candid, even by the standards of Taylor "Naming Names, Taking No Prisoners" Swift.
And listening to "Dear John," the scorching song that is-from all appearances-aimed at Mayer, all we can say is: Joe Jonas, you got off easy.
When I talked with Swift last month after hearing a few of the new songs, she didn't hesitate to frame Speak Now as her diary of the last two tumultuous years. The general public might have to guess which relationships or incidents most of the songs are about, but the subjects of the lyrics will quickly recognize themselves, she feels confident.
"They're all made very clear," Swift told me. "Every single song is like a roadmap to what that relationship stood for, with little markers that maybe everyone won't know, but there are things that were little nuances of the relationship, little hints. And every single song is like that. Everyone will know, so I don't really have to send out emails on this one."
But, I said, by necessity of her fame and that of her recent boyfriends, she is past the point of using proper names in the lyrics now.
"Um," she responded, "there's still names that I used. Wait till you hear those."
Actually, there's only one actual name called out anywhere in the 14 songs. So if you were thinking that "Dear John" takes its title strictly from the old expression "a dear John letter," you might want to think again. Swift is nothing if not extremely literal.

With most serious singer-songwriters, it might seem voyeuristic to speculate on the personal situations being reflected upon in song. But Swift has lived her life as a fairly open book, all but inviting her fans to relate her well-known relationships to their own as she evidences a gift for writing in both autobiographical and universal terms.
And it might seem sensationalistic to focus on "Dear John" at the expense of the rest of the album if it didn't feel like it might be her masterpiece to date, or at least the most bracingly, joltingly honest song you've heard any major performer have the nerve to put on record in years. Maybe not since John Lennon took on estranged partner Paul McCartney in "How Do You Sleep" has a major pop singer-songwriter so publicly and unguardedly taken on another in song. But while Lennon's song came off as mean-spirited, Swift was motivated by vulnerability and woundedness, which makes her song far braver... and more cutting.
The first chorus begins: "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." A second version of the chorus includes the lines: "It was wrong/Don't you think nineteen's too young/To be played/By your dark, twisted games/When I loved you so."
When rumors of a Mayer/Swift romance broke, some of us had a hard time imagining it, because of his rather famously ruinous reputation in matters of love and her ever-present, protective mom. "Dear John" addresses that: "My mother accused me of losing my mind/But I swore I was fine..." And: "You'll add my name to your long list of traitors who don't understand/And I'll look back in regret I ignored what they said/'Run as fast as you can'."
Swift, who turns 21 in December, won't outrightly acknowledge the subjects of these songs-except for "Innocent," the one written to Kanye West-so we have to allow that maybe "Dear John" is about some other much older man her mother warned her about who is known for "all the girls that you run dry," and not the 32-year-old Mayer... Like, the late John Forsythe, maybe? Hmm. Gonna have to stick with our original educated guess on this one.
There may be those who'll accuse Swift of exploiting her own romantic travails in this and other songs. But the extended bridge section of "Dear John" (and, at six and a half minutes, the entire song is fairly extended) packs such a cathartic punch, it really does transcend any tabloid associations. When Swift sings "I'm shining like fireworks over your sad, empty town," anyone who ever felt manipulated or used and found the strength to move on may be cheering like it's the 4^th of July.