Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department is an instant success. Poised to shatter chart records next week, the album has also sparked renewed attention to Swift's lyricism on the album.
While many have deduced that a significant portion of the songs written was for Swift's ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, rumored boyfriend Matty Healy, and some for her current boyfriend, Travis Kelce, some also believe that a song in the extensive album refers to Jake Gyllenhaal, another one of Swift's exes.
Taylor Swift Sang About Jake Gyllenhaal on 'The Manuscript'?
Swift is known to chronicle her life and personal mythology in her own songs. Since then, she has sung about her love for her boyfriends and even her heartbreak (hence this new album).
While many Switfies believe that The Tortured Poets Department sang largely about her longest relationship yet with Alwyn, some say that one song is aimed toward Gyllenhaal.
People magazine published a lyrical breakdown that noted that in "The Manuscript," Swift sings about a "torrid affair," the same way she sang about her "love affair" in "All Too Well."
Notably, Swift never explicitly confirmed that "All Too Well" was about Gyllenhaal, but certain reported events have been pieced together to confirm various aspects of the song that point to Gyllenhaal as the main culprit of breaking Swift's heart at the time.
Among the biggest characteristics of Swift and Gyllenhaal's autumn romance was their strikingly huge nine-year age gap. Age also comes into play in "The Manuscript," when Swift sings that she wishes she was thirty and making coffee through a French press every morning.
After dating Gyllenhaal, she dated relatively younger men. She dated Conor Kennedy, a few years younger than her, and Harry Styles, four years younger. She references this in the same song, saying she "only ate kids' cereal" and "dated boys her own age."
Taylor Swift 'The Manuscript' Mirror 'All Too Well (A Short Film)' Scenes
Aside from the very glaring references, Swift seemed to also reference some scene on her Grammy-winning "All Too Well (A Short Film)" in "The Manuscript."
In the song, she sang about how actors "hit their marks" while slowly dancing with the sparks. This is a rather direct reference to Sadie Sink and Dylan O'Brien's scene in the kitchen with the refrigerator light at dusk on the "All Too Well (A Short Film)."
The cherry on top of the similarities is perhaps the actual title of the song itself. In "All Too Well (A Short Film)," Swift then ended the short film where she now plays an all-grown-up Sink. She is at a book launch of "All Too Well," a fictional novel she wrote chronicling her love affair, presumed to be Gyllenhaal.
It might be too on the nose already that "The Manuscript" clearly talks about the fictional novel with which she ends the short film.
Listen to Swift's "The Manuscript" and "All Too Well (A Short Film) below.
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