Taylor Swift’s music has become synonymous with tales of ex-boyfriends, lost love and bitter backlash in the wake of her high-profile romances.
And with a discography spanning 11 albums and a string of 14 famous boyfriends, the songstress, 34, has made sure all her relationships are heavily featured.
In the early hours of Friday morning, Taylor released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, with fans noting the digs at her exes Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy and also a tribute to her current love Travis Kelce.
In the past meanwhile, stars including Harry Styles, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joe Jonas and John Mayer have been the subject of Taylor’s lyrical wrath.
So who has been subject to Taylor’s lyrics on which albums and when?
ALBUM: TAYLOR SWIFT – 2006
ALBUM: TAYLOR SWIFT – 2006
Jordan Alford
SONG: Picture To Burn
LYRICS: ‘I hate that stupid old pick-up truck you never let me drive/You’re a redneck heartbreak who’s really bad at lying / There’s no time for tears / I’m just sitting here planning my revenge / There’s nothing stopping me
‘From going out with all of your best friends / And if you come around saying sorry to me / My daddy’s gonna show you how sorry you’ll be’.
The first target of Taylor’s musical chagrin came when she penned a track about her high school boyfriend Jordan Alford, whom she accused of cheating.
Following the release of the song, it was revealed that the subject of the cheating allegations was Taylor’s former friend and Jodan’s now wife Chelsea.
Speaking to Daily Mail at the time, Chelsea said: ‘We just thought it was funny. [Jordan] was like, ‘I’m not a redneck! She makes me look like some redneck!’ But other than that, we just thought it was kind of funny.’
Drew Hardwick
SONG: Teardrops On My Guitar
LYRICS: ‘Drew looks at me, I fake a smile so he won’t see/That I want and I’m needing everything that we should be/I’ll bet she’s beautiful, that girl he talks about/And she’s got everything that I have to live without’
While Taylor did not date Drew Hardwick, she made her feelings for the fellow musician as she sang about his feelings for other women.
Her crush was made clear when the song came out, and while he was oblivious to the crush initially he attempted to reach out to Taylor.
After he turned up at her house two years later, she divulged: ‘I have theories about what he was doing. He had his friend with him, so maybe he was trying to prove to people that the song really is about him or whatever…
‘Or maybe he was really trying to be friends. Or maybe he thought I was still pining away from him. Whatever!’
Drew later hit headlines in 2015, when he was arrested and charged with child abuse after being accused of hitting two girls aged three and five.
Christopher and his wife Joni Hardwick were also arrested and charged with assault and disorderly conduct, as well as simple assault and resisting arrest charges, respectively. Those charges were not related to the assault of the children, but to confrontations with police officers.
ALBUM: FEARLESS – 2008
ALBUM: FEARLESS – 2008
Stephen Barker Liles
SONG: Hey Stephen
LYRICS: ‘Hey Stephen, I could give you 50 reasons/ Why I should be the one you choose/ All those other girls, well they’re beautiful/ But would they write a song for you?’
Stephen and Taylor did not officially date, however the star of Love And Theft – his group that supported Taylor on her 2008 tour – revealed they shared a crush.
While there was no heartache between the pair, he confessed when she revealed she penned a song in his honour he grew fearful of the content, given her less than favourable penmanship of men in her past music.
He said: ‘I hadn’t heard it yet, so she told me about the song. But she didn’t say, like, ‘I wrote a nice song about you,’ so I’m just thinking, ‘What did I do?’…
‘Because she doesn’t really write very many nice songs about guys. So I was very relieved when it turned out to be a nice song, and it’s actually one of the nicest things anybody’s ever done for me.’
Joe Jonas
SONG: Forever And Always
LYRICS: ‘Was I out of line?/ Did I say something way too honest, made you run and hide/ Like a scared little boy/ I looked into your eyes/ Thought I knew you for a minute, now I’m not so sure.’
Joe marked Taylor’s first celebrity romance – with the high-profile pair dating from July 2008 to October 2008, making for a swift romance.
She branded the relationship ‘an ouch’ and made Forever And Always a last minute addition to her Fearless album to take aim at The Jonas Brothers star.
The star later said of the track: ‘[It’s] a song about watching somebody completely fade away in a relationship and wondering what you did wrong. It’s been tough. You just have to try to realize someday you’ll find someone that’s right for you.’
She then told Ellen DeGeneres that Joe broke up with her in a 25 second call.
Joe said: ‘ Some day, I’m gonna find somebody really, really, really great, who’s right for me. When I find that person that is right for me, he’ll be wonderful…
‘When I look at that person, I’m not even gonna be able to remember the boy who broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds when I was 18.’
ALBUM: FEARLESS – 2008
ALBUM: FEARLESS – 2008
Cory Monteith
SONG: Mine
LYRICS: ‘Do you remember, we were sitting there by the water?/You put your arm around me for the first time/You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter/You are the best thing that’s ever been mine’.
Taylor never confirmed her relationship with the late Glee star in 2010, remaining coy over their love and affection for one another.
When asked about the song Mine, she confessed to seeing ‘an entire relationship flash before her eyes’ in a nod to her potential union with Cory.
He went on to date co-star Lea Michele. In 2013, he tragically passed away aged 31 from ‘a mixed drug toxicity’ consisting of heroin and alcohol.
Joe Jonas
SONG: Better Than Revenge
LYRICS: ‘She’s not a saint and she’s not what you think/ She’s an actress, whoa/ She’s better known for the things that she does/ On the mattress, whoa/ Soon she’s gonna find/ Stealing other people’s toys on the playground/ Won’t make you many friends’.
Joe did not escape unscathed from Taylor’s next album, as she harked back two years to their split to again mention the boybander.
On Better Than Revenge, the songstress took aim at actress Camilla Belle, the mystery beauty Joe is said to have hooked up with immediately after dumping Taylor.
Joe and Camilla met on the set of the Jonas Brothers’ Lovebug music video, which was filmed as his relationship with Taylor was meeting its end.
John Mayer
SONG: Dear John
LYRICS: ‘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 / Well, maybe it’s me / And my blind optimism to blame/
‘Or maybe it’s you and your sick need / To give love then take it away / And you’ll add my name to your long list of traitors’.
John Mayer and Taylor’s romance was one of her most widely-discussed – with their 12 year age gap making for explosive headlines at the time.
They dated from May to December 2009, after which, aged 19, she wrote her scathing song Dear John aimed at the crooner.
In 2012, he explained the star ‘humiliated him’ with the track, as he said: ‘It made me feel terrible. 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.’
SONG: The Story Of Us
LYRICS: ‘Now I’m standing alone in a crowded room/ And we’re not speaking and I’m dying to know/ Is it killing you like it’s killing me yeah’.
While Dear John acted to chronicle her emotions after the split, Taylor revealed The Story Of Us detailed an encounter between the pair at the CMT Awards.
After both performing at the ceremony, she revealed they ‘pretended not to see each other’, saying: ‘We both had these silent shields up’.
Taylor Lautner
SONG: Back To December
LYRICS: ‘I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile, so good to me, so right/ And how you held me in your arms that September night’.
Little is known about her relationship with the Twilight star save for their meeting on the set of ensemble comedy Valentine’s Day.
She alluded to the fact that she concluded the romance on unfair terms, saying: ‘Sometimes you learn a lesson too late and at that point you need to apologize because you were careless’.
ALBUM: RED – 2012
ALBUM: RED – 2012
Conor Kennedy
SONG: Starlight
LYRICS: ‘I met Bobby on the boardwalk, summer of ’45/ Picked me up late one night at the window /We were 17 and crazy, running wild, wild’.
Throughout 2012, Taylor dated 18-year-old Conor Kennedy – in a romance so serious that she bought a house next door to the Kennedy family Massachusetts compound.
Her music bizarrely alluded to Her music bizarrely alluded to Conor’s grandmother Ethel relationship with Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968.
At the time, Ethel called Taylor ‘spectacular’.
Joe Jonas
SONG: Holy Ground
LYRICS: ‘Tonight I’m gonna dance for all that we’ve been through/ But I don’t wanna dance if I’m not dancing with you/ Tonight I’m gonna dance like you were in this room/ But I don’t wanna dance if I’m not dancing with you’.
Despite the length of time since their break-up, she continued to discuss their relationship in her lyrics. Holy Ground appeared to show that she was ready to move on, although undoubtedly for Joe time was the only teller.
Jake Gyllenhaal
SONG: We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
LYRICS: ‘I’m really gonna miss you picking fights/And me falling for it, screaming that I’m right/ And you would hide away and find your peace of mind/ With some indie record that’s much cooler than mine’.
Taylor and Jake dated from October 2010 to January 2011, after which he became one of the many targets of her musical tongue lashings.
She explained to MTV at the time that the hit song came to be when an ex – alleged to be Jake – walked in to the studio, in which she and producer were working and hinted at a rumour of her and him getting back together.
The star then wrote her first song about their break-up – with others lying in wait for her future albums in reference to their love.
SONG: All Too Well
LYRICS: ‘Time won’t fly, it’s like I’m paralyzed by it/ I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it/ After plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your own/ Now you mail back my things, and I walk home alone’.
All Too Well was deemed an ultimate break-up ballad, detailing the intimacy of a defunct relationship and the pain of the healing process.
In the song, she references Jake’s famous sister Maggie and alleged the actress still has a scarf Jake had given Taylor for her birthday.
Taylor later said of the song: ”All Too Well’ was the hardest to write because it took me a long time to filter through everything I wanted to say…
‘It started out being a 10-minute song, which you can’t put on an album. I had to filter it down to a story that could work in the form of a song.’
ALBUM: 1989 – 2014
ALBUM: 1989 – 2014
Harry Styles
SONG: Style
LYRICS: ‘Cause you got that James Dean daydream look in your eye/ And I got that red lip classic thing that you like/ And when we go crashing down, we come back every time/ Cause we never go out of style/ We never go out of style’.
Taylor set the pop world alight in 2012 when she enjoyed a short-lived but widely-publicised romance with One Direction star Harry Styles.
While Style was a clear allusion to Harry, she later confessed her romance with the beloved heartthrob heavily influenced much of the album.
SONG: Out Of The Woods
LYRICS: ‘Looking at it now, last December/ We were built to fall apart, then fall back together/ Your necklace hanging from my neck/ The night we couldn’t quite forget/ When we decided (We decided)/ To move the furniture so we could dance/
‘Baby, like we stood a chance/ Two paper airplanes flying, flying, flying’.
Prior to the publication of their romance, Taylor had been sporting Styles out in public, which turns into a metaphor for the short flight of their relationship
Taylor and Harry Styles pictured in 2012
ALBUM: REPUTATION – 2017
Tom Hiddleston
ALBUM: LOVER
Calvin Harris
ALBUM: FOLKLORE
ALBUM: EVERMORE
ALBUM: MIDNIGHTS
Joe Alwyn
ALBUM: THE TORTURED POETS SOCIETY
She showed off her figure while reclining on a bed
Joe Alwyn
Matty Healy
