For two weeks now, Taylor Swift fans have been obsessing over her new, 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” and its gorgeous accompanying short film starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien.
Online analysis has mostly revolved around reveling in the video’s many Easter eggs (the red scarf! the 1989 car! the birthday cake!) and hating on the doo-doo head who broke Taylor’s heart back in 2010. Namely Jake Gyllenhaal, with all of his plaid shirts and fancy friends and mean words. Never mind that some of the lyrics Swift added to “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” are barbed, to say the least. Most notably the line: “I’ll get older but your lovers stay my age.” (The 40-year-old Gyllenhaal is currently dating a 25-year-old model. Ouch.)
Gyllenhaal has now been paying for his three-month relationship with Swift for approximately nine years, ever since her Red album originally came out. (Let’s not forget about the Jake-baiting video for “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” either.) For that entire period, Gyllenhaal has refused to offer up his version of events, or get drawn into a conversation about his ex.
Which is, oddly, where San Francisco singer/songwriter John Elliott comes in…
Elliott just released “All Too Well (Jake’s Version)”—a rendition of the Swift track that offers Gyllenhaal some points of defense. Sung from the actor’s perspective, this new-new version makes some suggestions. Maybe Taylor’s scarf just got lost for 10 years! Maybe he was having a career crisis! Maybe he wanted to be at the damn birthday party! Maybe his family pushed him into seeming more serious than he was! Maybe he’s just “a product of the patriarchy”!
