John Mayer is trending, hours after the release of Taylor Swift’s new album Midnights. And that’s not a coincidence.
Midnights, Swift’s tenth studio album, was released Friday at midnight, but just three hours later, she dropped seven more songs with Midnights (3am Edition). One of those songs, “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” appears to be about her brief relationship with Mayer between 2009 and 2010, when she was 19 and he was 32.
The lyrics reference a “promising grown man” and the chorus goes: “I would’ve stayed on my knees /
And I damn sure never would’ve danced with the devil / At nineteen.”
Swifties, of course, devoured it.
“John mayer was sleeping peacefully but was awoken at 3am with a chill down his spine,” reads one viral tweet.
She referenced their relationship more directly on 2010’s “Dear John,” but this feels familiar. Swift also indirectly (but directly enough for fans) referenced her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal last year on “All Too Well,” which brought out memes. Some fans thought this was another Gyllenhaal song, but apparently, the timeline doesn’t quite line up.
Earlier this year, playwright Domenica Feraud wrote a piece for Medium about an older actor taking advantage of her when she was working on a Broadway production. Many people sussed out that it was Gyllenhaal.
Mayer and Gyllenhaal reportedly got threats from Swifties after the Taylor’s Version re-release of Red last November, and Mayer responded to the harassment on Instagram. “I’m not upset, I just tend to have a curious mind and feel compelled to ask. Do you really hope that I die?” he wrote directly to a fan who sent him hate DMs last fall. So far, his most recent post is from four days ago, and Mayer has yet to publicly respond to this wave of the “Gyllenhaal treatment.”
People also brought up Jessica Simpson’s 2020 memoir Open Book, in which she detailed Mayer’s manipulative and emotionally abusive behavior during their relationship.
