As we know, Taylor Swift is in the process of re-recording her first six studio albums, the ones she recorded under her Big Machine recording contract. She’s already re-recorded Fearless, which comes out this week. As such, Taylor of course wants to dominate the cultural conversation, which is why she tweeted this:
Me in 2020: life is chill, writing songs based in fiction to avoid drama, feeling pretty grown up
My 2008 music from the vault, in a goblin voice: “REELEEEEEEASE MR PERFECTLY FIIIIIIINE” https://t.co/PCexr31q9x
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 7, 2021
As you can assume, “Mr. Perfectly Fine” is a song which didn’t make it onto Fearless at the time for various reasons, but she’s recorded it and included it on her “re-release” of the album. Here’s the lyric video:
It’s… okay. Not my vibe, but I’m sure if she had released it as a single in 2008/09, it would have been well-received. It’s very much of that Swift era, a perfectly okay pop song and a perfectly obvious blind item song about a guy who dumped her. That guy? Joe Jonas, of course. That’s who she was writing about in the Fearless era, and sources have confirmed all over the place that this is about Jonas. Which makes it all hit close to home for Joe’s current wife Sophie Turner, who is a member of the Snake Fam.
We’re living for the queen-raderie. After Taylor Swift released “Mr. Perfectly Fine” — which many fans speculate was written about Joe Jonas during her Fearless era — Sophie Turner shared the song on her Instagram Story, calling the track a “bop.” And Swift? She had the perfect Game of Thrones reply.
“It’s not NOT a bop,” wrote Turner, 25, who shares 8-month-old daughter Willa with Jonas, 31.
Soon after, Swift, 31, reposted her reply, paying tribute to Turner’s character Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones. “Forever bending the knee to the 👑 of the north,” Swift wrote back.
The interaction between the two comes as Joe Jonas’ name began trending on Twitter following the release of Swift’s track “from the vault,” which she wrote about the same time she dated the Jonas brother.
“sophie turner is a swiftie first and joe jonas’ wife second,” wrote one fan on Twitter.
“taylor really sent joe jonas a present/baby present because she knew fearless (taylors version) was coming,” tweeted another referring to her lyric from “Invisible String,” where she sings “For the boys who broke my heart/ Now I send their babies presents.”
I’m glad Sophie has a sense of humor about these things. A lot of wives would find it creepy, I’m just sayin’. I wonder what Taylor thinks about all of those 2008 blind item songs about a guy she dated for a few months who dumped her over the phone? Does she think that she was perhaps being kind of melodramatic and silly?
You cracked the codes and guessed all the From The Vault titles. 👏👏👏 Here’s the full track list, my friends. pic.twitter.com/lC3awlRmm2
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 3, 2021
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
I insta-loved this song. I must’ve listened to it 20 times yesterday, lol. I personally like her more fiction-leaning (or at least called fiction) writing as of late to her diary entry style writing of the past, because I think that stuff detracted a lot from her talent. But still, it’s QUITE a bop. As a fan I can’t even comprehend the sheer amount of content we’ll be getting from these rerecords — it’s overwhelming, in the best way!
Taylor writes bops but man, these lyrics come straight from a seventh grader’s diary… feeling INTENSE second hand embarassment. And if someone published a poem she wrote in high school about my husband, I’d take it about as seriously as Sophie did and lol
An aside: I kinda love that Swift creates puzzles for her followers – she really harnesses and provides a harmless outlet for the worst conspiracy theory impulses of internet culture… if people are gonna be going crazy connecting dots they may as well be the ones you provide
I donno, it didn’t seem harmless to me
tell me who it harmed then
Of course she thinks it’s over the top and dramatic! If I read my diaries from that time, I would laugh at how dramatic I was too
Does anyone watch Bailey Sarian on You Tube? She did a thing where she read her old diary and it was the funniest thing. So over the top and dramatic.
I love Bailey! I will have to find that. And, yes I am sure Taylor knows that she was a bit much back in the day.
I think she has in fact called herself “too much” at the time and said that it wasn’t cool that she blasted Joe on talk shows. Probably the fact that they are all friends/get along now is why it’s not weird for her to release this song even after so much time has passed.
Can I find it creepy on Sophie’s behalf?
They’re all friends. I think it’s such a great little story about maturity.
Maybe it’s just Swift’s break up songs in general I find creepy. Heartache is the basis for most music/art but something about her having an entire repertoire about being dumped just doesn’t work for me. It is funny between friends and I guess in their world being super public is still between friends.
no because you don’t know any of them at all on any level
If I were Sophie I’d laugh about it. It’s so far in the past and a lot of the sentiments are so juvenile, being jealous about it would be strange. I found an old middle school love note in my husband’s room at his parents house and I keep it on our fridge. “Mr. Carousel, I love you so much you are funny and hunky you should ask me to the dance and maybe just maybe we will get married and have babies” I love it because he IS hunky and funny, and also because it’s exactly the kind of nonsense I could have written about a boy when I was that age.
Agree, CAROUSEL….. Love that Sophie sees its way in the past and now it’s just part of Taylor’s catalog. Too lovely ladies bypassing the drama.
This is the same girl who will complain two months after about how the media dare to talk about her past relationships and how she was many time being dumped like a shit .A part from making the buzz and attracting the media expectation on the re-release of this album, she did not need to release this song, because Joe Jonas is now married and the parent of a child, I doubt that he and Sophie want this buzz .
Sophie is of an age where she loved Taylor Swift long before she loved her husband. She’s Bieber generation where Swift was still on the rise, but the Jonas Brothers had already fallen off by the time she was a teenager. There is a cute clip of Sophie and Taylor hugging when they were both on the Graham Norton show from a few years ago. Taylor and Joe also became friendly again when he dated Gigi Hadid and were on double dates together and Taylor went to his birthday party etc. So it’s a fun place to be for now, but if later on she drops another John Mayer destruction should we even be mad about that in 2021 after it turns out Taylor’s Dear John matched exactly the experiences Jessica Simpson described in her book?
She is exhausting and seems trapped in her teen years.
+1
This is some regressive nonsense…
Yeah, I think about the fact that she was the most famous teen act in the world at that time, at the peak of her social and media power , whereas he was just famous in a teen bop way. She could have ruined his career, the way she could have ruined Jake Gyllenhall’s. Those actions seemed deliberately venomous, and she certainly derailed Camila Belles career, as well as that Victoria’s Secret mode who no ones ever heard from since. She made a dent in Katy Perry’s career for sure.Not sure why people give her a free pass for trying to ruin people’s lives when they dent her ego.
I’ll just say … Katy Perry dented her own career with terrible, terrible albums. I don’t think anyone can be blamed for the demise of Katy Perry besides herself.
I think it’s harmless and fun. To me, Sophie’s liking of the song is a sort of undercover tacit approval from Joe Jonas. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she sent it his way before adding it to the album for pre-approval. Swift and Jonas and Turner are all widely known to be very good with one another. This baseless chatter about her being stuck in her teenage years is nonsensical. She’s releasing stuff from over ten years ago to drum up stuff for her re-release of an album whose rights have been stolen from her. These songs are of an age and an era from over a decade ago and should be viewed as such. If you don’t have the discernment to see them in that light, that’s on you frankly. (Not saying that’s what you’re saying, just seeing a lot of online commentary and criticism from people being affronted when, by all reports, all the actual involved parties are chill with it)
Totally agree with you. She’s not regressing in her songwriting or anything — these are songs she didn’t get to use from 2008! Maybe some people missed that.
And as you noted, it’s clear she’s friendly with Sophie and Joe now and I highly doubt she’d release anything like this without his prior knowledge. This was a brief teenage relationship. I’m sure there are no hard feelings lol.
100% agreed.
Also too how nice is that thought and how human lol? HS level drama that publicly played out on the Ellen Degeneres Show (don’t get me started) is now such a non-starter? It’s all in the past and laughable and a woman can laugh with another woman that her husband briefly dated years ago and admire her work? That, to me, is one of the most normal and human thing. So many celebrities trying to be relatable and this to me is so much more relatable than seeing paparazzi pics of Alba at the supermarket.
I tend to agree. If she was writing this stuff NOW about a (now) married man she dated for a few months nearly 15 years ago, I’d be side-eyeing her but the fact she did the song as a melodramatic teenager (as teenagers tend to be) is very different. As for releasing it, if Sophie and Joe are fine with it (or at least able to appear so in public), I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business.
It might be that at the time Taylor didn’t use the song because it was too painful but that it isn’t any more as she’s moved on from the relationship. If she’s using unreleased material from around that time to make sure people buy the new version of her album, good for her.
She was 18, the fact that so many people felt the need to make fun of an 18 year old for having feelings was bizarre. I’m sure she does think she was a bit dramatic but at this point, it’s part of her history and made a big impact on her fans. She was so well known for these autobiographical songs, that she really doesn’t write anymore. So she’s having fun with this re-release.
It is A BOP. I love that song!
I do like Taylor but I do think its weird that just two months ago she and her fanbase went apeshit mad at Netflix . Over a line in Ginny and Georgia about her past relationships and now she release a song about her past relationship Making fun of her short lived Romance . And she being celebrated but the actress from Ginny and Georgia got death threats and racial abuse for saying a line about Taylor dating history.
As a big Taylor fan, she can be overly sensitive to things that should roll off her back like that line. However, there’s a big difference between sexist jokes about a young woman having a normal, healthy dating life and releasing a song about your (past) dating life. Her entire point was that the way she was depicted and treated was wrong, not that she should stop releasing music because of that.
I do wish she had thought more about the actors involved in the show though before popping off, despite the fact that it really was a dated joke and the fault of the writers.
I mean there’s kinda a big difference between laughing at your teenage heartbreak vs. Being slut shamed. I’m not really sure why you’re acting like it’s the same thing.
That line wasn’t not slut shamed ok Taylor should have been a adult and laugh it off just like everybody else . Taylor made the line a big deal her reaction cause a young black actress to be bullied with racial slurs and abuse for days over line in a fictional show about fictional character. Taylor wrote a song about Camilla belle saying she better know for what she does on the mattresses but she actress that’s is slut shaming . For her to turn around and release a song about her past relationships and it being celebrates but just two months ago she went apeshit over a line on show .
@Vanessa: did you… watch the same show as me? G&G is RIFE with internalised misogyny (and several other unsavoury behaviours—hello, “oppression olympics”). The daughter consistently maligns her mother as conniving and duplicitous, denigrates her dating history and love life, etc. That comment, in the context in which it was made, was undoubtedly slut-shaming.
Tacos4life I agree, not even close to being the same thing. Again, it’s about the double standards between men and women (or even about Taylor Swift and every other person). Everybody writes songs about personal experiences, including their love lives, but Taylor always seems to get crap for it. Same with dating around. So she’s had a lot of boyfriends, big deal.
I wonder if Taylor has apologized to Camilla Belle yet about the slut-shaming? Something tells me she has not and never will.
I think it hits different with Joe being a fellow musician. Harry Styles had a similar chill reaction when the songs about him came out. As a songwriter, you write based on experiences and both of these guys have done the same with their ex’s, including Taylor.
My understanding is that all of the actual parties involved are cool and have been for a good while now, to the point of sending each other baby gifts (Taylor to Joe and Sophie). He also dated Gigi Hadid before Sophie, meaning he’s been back in Taylor’s life in some capacity for something like five or six years, so I imagine they’ve worked everything out privately.
All of this to say, it feels like a nothingburger to me. Everyone involved has moved on, so I’m not sure why history needs rewritten to further malign Taylor (go figure) and this needs to be a big deal for anyone. The only person who was properly burned in this breakup’s fallout and who has never received any kind of formal apology (that we know of) was Camilla Belle.
Anyway, this is a silly, overdramatic song and her tweet alludes to that. It’s also damn fun. It doesn’t need to be a masterclass in songwriting every time.
@ Libra yes I actually watch the show didn’t just judge the show or it’s writing based on what Taylor Swift and her fans say . Ginny is young girl dealing with a lot of problems and is lashing out at her mother wanting to hurt her feelings that’s how I took the scene I didn’t take as oh the show is calling a Taylor a slut the line was meant to hurt the character not Taylor Swift. It was Taylor who took to a another level with that tweet and her fandom reaction with the same misogyny racism toward Antonia . The show has its issues but address that why did the fans have to attack Antonia with racism and misogyny personal it’s clearly you are a huge Taylor fan I like her but I do think Taylor and her fans are hypocrites and their clearly a double standards.
I don’t think it’s creepy or weird. Taylor and joe made up and have laughed about how dramatic they were. No biggie. He hated Gigi, one of Taylor’s closest friends too. If anything I would say he’s already aware of the song before we were. Sophie has a sense of humour and we know she’s gonna tease him about this.
Sometimes music is just music you know? At this point of her life, these are just lyrics, words on a page from a different era
I think it’s a pretty good song and example of its genre and era. I’m not a big Swift fan but she writes catchy tunes, no doubt. And as others have said, she didn’t JUST write this, she wrote it when she was much younger and is just releasing it now. I don’t have any issue with the song.
The only Taylor Swift song I like is “Blank Space.” This one is not changing my mind. But there’s nothing really wrong with it either. I’m just… bored.
I loved this song. So catchy. I probably wouldn’t love it if she wrote it in 2021 at age 31, but i 2008? Perfect pop capturing the intense feelings of a teenager. Sophie Turner doesn’t have an issue, I assume Joe Jonas doesn’t have an issue either because it’s about something that happened in 2008 and everyone involved has moved on. I don’t know why people can’t understand simple context.
Totally agree. Sophie was like… 12 when Joe and Taylor dated (which is kind of crazy now that I think about it). But I’m sure they have all moved on. I would have found it funny as well.
The song is fine (lol), petty but in a cute way. I guess it’s because we know it’s they’re all pretty cool with each other now, as they should as grown ups.