The new 10-minute version of “All Too Well” all but confirmed the song is really about Jake Gyllenhaal, whom Taylor Swift dated when she was almost 21. Here’s what we found out.
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Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal had a short-lived romance that ended with her creating a 10-minute masterpiece called “All Too Well.”
The two were first seen together in October 10, and they dated for around three months. But it was definitely Taylor Swift’s most serious relationship to that point.
When she released Red in 2012, everyone guessed several songs were inspired by the Hollywood A-list actor.
“All Too Well,” “The Moment I Knew” and “We Are Never Getting Back Together” gave a breakdown of what went wrong between the two. The secret message for the song was “Mapple lattes,” which the two were seen holding when they were spotted by paparazzi on a date. The setting is also in autumn, around the time they dated.
Taylor revealed that she met his mom who’d tell her “stories ’bout you on the tee-ball team.” This aligns with the fact that Gyllenhall revealed he takes all his dates to meet his mom first. Then, there’s the most famous scarf in the world: “And I left my scarf there at your sister’s house / And you’ve still got it in your drawer, even now.”
The two would drive around, singing, or dance around the kitchen in the refrigerator light. But Swift blamed Gyllenhaal, and say he “tore it all up,” and the new version gives us more details into the breakup.
The new lyrics share they were always driving around, “you were tossing me the car keys, f**k the patriarchy / key chain on the ground, we were always skipping town.” During their drives, she’d keep hoping he’d say he loves her, yet he never did: “And I was thinking on the drive down, any time now / He’s gonna say it’s love, you never called it what it was.”
She also adds that he came back after three months as if nothing happened, which is a theme she explored in “We Are Never Getting Back Together: “So he calls me up and he’s like ‘I still love you.'”
Taylor also reveals in the 10-minute version of “All Too Well” that “You said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine,” hinting at the 9-year gap between the two. Taylor was just turning 21 when they dated.
She adds that he had an idea of her that wasn’t true, one that didn’t need constant reassurance and showed him what he wanted to see: “The idea you had of me, who is she? / A never-needy, ever-lovely jewel whose shine reflects on you.” Similar to her song off Folklore, “Mirrorball.”
Taylor also revealed how she was crying in the bathroom at a party, when “some actress asking me what happened.” The actress in question is rumored to be Jennifer Aniston, whom Taylor Swift had never met before the event. Rumors are that Jennifer told her to “hang in there,” and to “go and have fun.”
She also describes that Jake also met her family, and “charmed” her dad, “sipping coffee like you’re on a late-night show.” But that her dad didn’t seem to like him much, when Taylor spent all her 21st birthday party sad because Jake never came to the party. The event is fully explained in “The Moment I Knew,” which seem to have been the decisive moment in their relationship.
Despite having told her about the age difference, Taylor also notes that “I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age,” which reflects on Gyllenhaal’s relationships to younger women.
In an interview with New York magazine in November 2013, Taylor revealed: “He was like, ‘I just listened to the album, and that was a really bittersweet experience for me. It was like going through a photo album.’ That was nice. Nicer than, like, the ranting, crazy e-mails I got from this one dude.”
Of her process, Taylor explained on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: “I think I was 21 when I wrote this. I was in band rehearsals for a tour that I was about to go on called The Speak Now Tour, and I showed up for rehearsals, and I was really upset and sad and everybody could tell. It was not fun being around me that day.”
She continued: “So I started playing guitar, and just playing the same four chords over and over again. The band sort of joined in, and I started ad-libbing what I was going through and what I was feeling. And it went on, with the song kept building and building in intensity. And the song went on for about 10 to 15 minutes of us doing this. And we got done with that, and then we moved on to the scheduled rehearsal.”
Another interesting fact to note is that the original “All Too Well” (Taylor’s Version) stays as much on track as the original recorded song. But the 10-Minute version of the song shows Taylor’s more mature sound, but it strays more with its initial chords than the first one. Which makes it sound like it’s a song that could belong on any of Swift’s recent albums.
But Taylor added that her mom, Andrea, went to her sound guy at the end of the day, and asked if he recorded any of it. He did, and gave her the CD. And that’s how the masterpiece was born.
Listen to the 10-minute version of “All Too Well” here, before it will become a short film starring Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink. You can check out the music video here.
