Taylor Swift can't just be defined by the men she written songs about over the years. Her ability, though, to tell vivid stories (lovely and heart-wrenching) about her relationships is something she's not only know for, but does very, very well.
Therefore, looking back at her discography, you might assume that a lot of her albums were either about breaking up or making up (2019's Lover definitely falls in the latter mushier category). But of the past relationships she's had, only one merited a tribute — because according to Swift, she only defines one album of her eight full-lengths as a breakup album.
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As the singer explained in a teaser for Rolling Stone and Amazon Music's upcoming 500 Greatest Albums podcast, "I look back on this [Red] as my true breakup album, every other album has flickers of different things. But this was an album that I wrote specifically about pure, absolute, to the core, heartbreak.”
🔊 | Taylor Swift will feature on a new podcast by @RollingStone and @amazonmusic discussing the #RS500Albums list https://t.co/o1EpHblOcK
— Taylor Swift News (@TSwiftNZ) October 27, 2020
— Hear her snippet from the trailer below talking about how RED “was a huge risk that changed everything for her” pic.twitter.com/XTiVLRDLV0
Swifties know very well that if the superstar is talking 2012's Red, that probably means it has to do with about Swift's three-month relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal in 2010. Swift's fan-favorite song “All Too Well" off the album is widely assumed to be about him, and Swift's famed "scarf" described in the song (speculated to have been left at his sister Maggie Gyllenhaal's house), is an iconic and core part of Swiftie culture.
And nearly 10 years later, it still seems that the power of the album, the heartbreak Swift describes, and the imagery of the songs still linger. In fact, Gyllenhaal still seems to pop up regularly in the news for this very reason.
Just this September, the actor's Instagram was flooded with Swifties pointing out that one of his old, bespectacled picture mirrored the "All Too Well" lyric, "You used to be a little kid with glasses in a twin-sized bed."
Those must've been a hell of a three months.