Taylor Lautner joked that he is “praying” for John Mayer ahead of the rerelease of Taylor Swift’s third album, Speak Now.
“I think it’s a great album. Yeah, I feel safe,” he told Today.com on Tuesday. “Praying for John.”
Since 2021, Swift has been rereleasing her first six albums as Taylor’s Versions after she said she wasn’t given the opportunity to buy the master recordings of the originals. So far, she’s rereleased 2008’s Fearless and 2012’s Red, and last week during a concert in Nashville, she announced that Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) will come out July 7.
Fans are excited to listen to the album that Swift will officially own, but men like Lautner and Mayer, who both dated Swift in the 2000s, might be nervous considering they are rumoured to be the subjects of some of the songs on Speak Now.
Lautner and Swift reportedly dated and broke up in 2009, and Swift’s apologetic breakup song Back To December is believed to be about the Twilight actor.
That song paints Lautner as a good guy whom Swift broke up with — but on the song Dear John, which many believe to be about Mayer, Swift sings about an ex-boyfriend who “messed with” a 19-year-old Swift and played “dark twisted games.”
Swift’s fans have been known to not hold back when it comes to her ex-boyfriends. When Swift released Red (Taylor’s Version) in November 2021, fans went to social media to attack actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who is believed to be the subject of most of the album, but most notably the song All Too Well (10-Minute Version).
Gyllenhaal turned off his Instagram comments after fans flooded it with scarf emojis in 2021 — a reference to a lyric in the song — but he told Esquire in 2022 that the song didn’t bother him.
“At some point, I think it’s important when supporters get unruly that we feel a responsibility to have them be civil and not allow for cyberbullying in one’s name,” he said. “That begs for a deeper philosophical question.”
Mayer probably won’t experience anything new when Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) comes out. In late 2022, his name trended on Twitter after Swift released the pointed song Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve that many believed was about him.
While Swift has never publicly declared who her songs are about, Mayer told Rolling Stone in 2012 that Dear John was “cheap songwriting.”
“It made me feel terrible,” Mayer said. “Because I didn’t deserve it. I’m pretty good at taking accountability now, and I never did anything to deserve that.”
“It was a really lousy thing for her to do,” he added.