A Timeline Of Taylor Swift's Exes And The Lyrics She Wrote About Them
"I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser," Taylor Swift sings on the Midnights tune "Anti-Hero." Maybe this is true when it comes to the singer's highly publicized love life, but it's safe to say that her lyricism will always leave her fans captivated. In fact, Swifties have started to analyze every lyric in search of hints about Swift's ex-flames and current beaus. If taking a magnifying glass to a career that already spans almost two decades sounds intimidating, worry not: we've created a guide to Swift's long list of ex-lovers, and we've flagged up her references to them in her songs.
2008: Joe Jonas
The world got its first glimpse at a Taylor Swift romance in 2008 when she started dating fellow teen star Joe Jonas. They seemed to be a match made in music heaven… until they broke up three months later. The relationship may have been brief, but Swift still managed to write a slew of heartbreaking songs about it. It's rumored that "My. Perfectly Fine" and "Better Than Revenge" were written about the Jonas brother.
And Swift all but confirmed that "Forever and Always" was about Jonas. In 2008 the singer told People that the song was "about watching somebody completely fade away in a relationship and wondering what you did wrong."
"The boy who broke up with me over the phone"
"I'm not even going to remember the boy who broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds when I was 18," Swift told Ellen DeGeneres the same year. Fans think Jonas shared his side of the story in the 2009 song "Much Better": "I'm done with superstars and all the tears on her guitar." Then, more than ten years after the fact, Taylor gave an update on her and Jonas' relationship.
Swift explained that she and Jonas "laugh about it" now. More recently, though, their friendly relationship has been called into question. When Jonas and Sophie Turner split up amid highly publicized drama, Swift was seen out on the town with Turner. Perhaps they bonded over having the same ex?
2009: Taylor Lautner
Swift's career hit a new peak in 2009 when she ventured into another side of show business: Hollywood! She had a small but charming role in the all-star film Valentine’s Day. The singer was unsurprisingly convincing as a lovesick teen opposite heartthrob Taylor Lautner. And fans couldn’t believe it when the love interests shared a real-life romance off screen. They dated for a few months, and their relationship was the inspiration behind a famous Taylor tune.
The two Taylors — affectionately called "Taylor Squared" — reportedly broke up in December 2009, which, as every Swiftie knows, is a crucial month for the singer: it's what inspired the song "Back To December." Swift is widely thought to be describing how much she misses Lautner in this track.
"I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile"
"I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile," Swift sings, along with "I watched you laughin' from the passenger's side, and realized I loved you in the fall." In the song, she apologizes for breaking his heart, and it seems that Taylor Lautner ultimately forgave her. Years later, he not only appeared in the music video for her song "I Can See You (Taylor's Version)," but he was even a special guest at some of her Eras Tour concerts.
"Taylor's the nicest," Lautner said on Facebook Live back in 2016, and a few years later, Swift returned the sentiment in another song many people speculate is about Lautner: "Midnight Rain." "I broke his heart ’cause he was nice," she sings. "He was sunshine, I was midnight rain."