Taylor Swift gave concertgoers the surprise of a lifetime on Saturday night (June 24) when she performed “Dear John” for the first time in 11 years, reports USA Today. During her Eras Tour stop at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the singer prefaced the song that has long been rumored about John Mayer with a plea to fans.
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“I’m 33 years old,” Swift said as she introduced the track “Dear John” from her 2010 Speak Now album. “I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19. What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not putting this album out so that 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 14 million years ago. … I do not care. We have all grown up. I’m good.
“So, I’m saying that because … Only because I’m proud of it as a song, I’m going to play ‘Dear John.’”
Swift allegedly penned “Dear John” following her breakup with Mayer. The two started dating in 2009 when she was 19 and Mayer was 32. Swift never revealed to Mayer that the song was about him, but the “Your Body Is a Wonderland” singer told Rolling Stone that Swift “humiliated” him when it was released.
“I never got an e-mail. I never got a phone call,” Mayer told the outlet. “I was really caught off-guard, and it really humiliated me at a time when I’d already been dressed down. I mean, how would you feel if, at the lowest you’ve ever been, someone kicked you even lower? Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with? I don’t want to go into that.”
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, Swift sings in the chorus of “Dear John.”
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), featuring “Dear John” and six extra songs from the vault, is available on July 7. The singer previously shared that she made Speak Now “completely self-written, between the ages of 18 and 20.”
“The songs that came from this time in my life were marked by their brutal honesty, unfiltered diaristic confessions, and wild wistfulness,” she added in a social media post. “I love this album because it tells a tale of growing up, flailing, flying and crashing … and living to speak about it.”
Swift’s The Eras Tour resumes on July 1 at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio.
(Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
