Exes Taylor Swift and John Mayer reportedly closely avoided a recent run-in.
Swift, 36, was spotted leaving Paul McCartney’s Saturday, March 28, concert outside Los Angeles’ Fonda Theatre, according to photos published by TMZ on Sunday, March 29. The pop star walked out of the venue in a group that also included Olivia Rodrigo.
According to the outlet, Mayer, 48, was photographed leaving the Fonda Theatre just moments earlier without running into Swift.
Swift and Mayer were romantically linked from 2009 and 2010 after collaborating on his song “Half of My Heart,” despite a 13-year age gap. (Swift was 19 while Mayer was 32 when they were reportedly an item.)
Taylor Swift is notorious for dropping hints about her famous exes in the lines of her songs — and John Mayer easily picked up on the clues. The songwriters were linked in 2009 and 2010 after collaborating on Mayer’s single “Half of My Heart.” At the time, Swift told Elle that she’d “been such a […]
Speculation ultimately swirled that the two called it quits when Swift included a breakup song called “Dear John” on her 2010 album, Speak Now.
“Dear John, I see it all now that you’re gone / Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?” Swift sings. “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 / Who don’t understand.”
While Swift famously doesn’t name her musical muses, Mayer called out the 14-time Grammy winner for her “cheap songwriting” in a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone.
“It made me feel terrible. It was a really lousy thing to do,” he told the outlet in June 2012 of Swift allegedly writing a song about him. “I never got an email. I never got a phone call. I was really caught off guard. … [That’s] abusing your talent to rub your hands together and go, ‘Wait ’til he gets a load of this!’ That’s bulls***.”
John Mayer and Taylor Swift perform onstage during Z100’s Jingle Ball 2009 in New York City. Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
Swift ultimately rerecorded “Dear John” for Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and urged her fans against resurfacing any bad blood with Mayer.
“As we lead up to this album coming out, I would love for that kindness and that gentleness to extend onto our Internet activities,” Swift told fans during a June 2023 concert on her Eras Tour. “I’m putting this out now because I want to own my music and I believe that any artist who has the desire to own their music should be able to.”
Taylor Swift knows there’s no better song inspiration than relationships — and she’s seemingly written several tunes about her whirlwind romance with John Mayer. Sparks flew between the two after collaborating on Mayer’s 2009 single “Half of My Heart.” However, their relationship sparked some controversy for their large age gap as Mayer was 32 and […]
She continued at the time, “I’m 33 years old. I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19, except the songs I wrote. So, what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not putting this album out so that you should go and feel the need to defend me on the Internet against someone you think I might have written the song about 14 million years ago.”
Swift is now engaged to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, while Mayer was recently dating influencer Kat Stickler.