“ HELP THE WAY HE THINKS IT ‘S A safe THING ? ! ! ”
If you cast your minds way back to the year 2008, you may remember thatTaylor SwiftandJoe Jonas’sthree-month relationship came to a pretty brutal end when he dumped her in a 25-second phone call, which she went on to expose onThe Ellen Show.
Taylor, who was 18 years old at the time, was promoting her second album,Fearless, when she dropped the bombshell, telling hostEllen DeGeneres: “When I find that person that is right for me, he’ll be wonderful. And when I look at that person, I’m not even gonna be able to remember the boy who broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds when I was 18.”
But by 2015, Joe insisted that he and Taylor were “cool,” and the two were spotted hanging out together at the Billboard Music Awards. In 2019, Taylor admitted that sheregrettedputting Joe “on blast” in that infamousElleninterview, adding: “We laugh about it now, but that was some mouthy — yeah, just some teenage stuff there.”
Still, their newfound friendship didn’t stop Taylor from releasing another diss track about Joe, “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” in April 2021 as part of herFearlessre-recording. She had originally written it for her 2008 album, but it didn’t make the final cut, meaning that fans heard it for the first time when she releasedFearless (Taylor’s Version).
In the song, Taylor suggests that Joe effectively love bombed her before turning cold and ending their relationship. She implies that what she struggled with the most amid their split was the “casually cruel” way that Joe acted like he hadn’t done anything wrong, accusing him of issuing an “insincere apology” and scrambling to make sure that “he doesn’t look like the bad guy.”
Taylor also calls out the way that Joe was so effortlessly able to move on from their romance, and how his reputation continued to thrive. She sings: “So dignified in your well-pressed suit / So strategized, all the eyes on you / Sashay away to your seat / It’s the best seat, in the best room / Oh, he’s so smug, Mr. ‘Always wins’ / So far above me in every sense / So far above feeling anything.”
Thankfully, releasing this song didn’t appear to impact Joe and Taylor’s relationship in 2021, with Joe’s then-wife,Sophie Turner, evenpoking fun at the factthat her husband was the inspiration behind the song when she shared a screenshot of it to her Instagram story and quipped: “It’s not NOT a bop.” Taylor reposted this to her own story.
However, it seems likely that their relationship may have soured in recent years, withTaylor very publicly siding with Sophieamid her and Joe’s incredibly messy and headline-dominating split in 2023. The star was spotted on multiple nights out with Sophie, and she even let the British actorstay in her New York City home.
So, it’s perhaps fair to say that Joe may have a bit of a difficult relationship with this song, which is why fans were caught off-guard when he earnestly replied to a TikTok comment quoting lyrics from it on Wednesday.
Joe posted a video of himself walking around the streets of London to an audio sound of somebody talking about his “smart” “TikTok presence" that keeps him “top of mind.”
trust to be top of mind xoxo
Referencing both Joe’s suit and Taylor’s lyrics, one fan commented on the post: “so dignified in his well pressed suit🤭,” to which Joe replied: “Thanks for noticing” — and people can’t decide whether Joe got the reference or not.
