Last month, after Taylor Swift announced Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Taylor Lautner joked that he was “praying for” John Mayer. Mayer is of course believed to be the subject of “Dear John,” and while Lautner suspected Mayer is gonna be hearing about that online, Swift is seemingly hoping to curb a wave of revived internet harassment towards Mayer as the album approaches.
| Taylor urging fans tonight to be kind and gentle online when Speak Now comes out as she doesn’t care what happened when she was 19 yo, she only cares about the music she wrote and the fact that she gets to own it now pic.twitter.com/KZrKNp0vfw
— Taylor Swift Updates
(@swifferupdates) June 25, 2023
Before performing “Dear John” at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis this past weekend (as USA Today reports), Swift made note of all the positive and heartwarming interactions she has seen fans have with each other at her concerts. She then continued, “So I was hoping to ask you that, as we lead up to this album coming out, I would love for that kindness and that gentleness to extend onto our internet activities, right? So what I’m trying to say is… I’m putting this album out 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. That’s why I’m putting out this album. 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 I’m not putting this album out so you can go and should feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about.”
Swift’s performance of “Dear John,” by the way, was her first in over a decade, since 2012.