Diehard Taylor Swift fans have spent the past few months speculating whether or not Speak Now will be the next album to come down the Taylor’s Version pipeline. In light of Swift’s dramatic revisitation of “All Too Well” last year, folks online have wondered if she will take a similarly blistering approach with the Speak Now ballad “Dear John,” not-so-subtly about her brief but apparently tumultuous relationship with John Mayer when she was 19 and he was 32. In a 2012 Rolling Stone interview, Mayer responded to the damning track, stating he was “humiliated” and “didn’t deserve it,” and further blasting Swift’s songwriting as “cheap.”
Likewise, Swifties on Twitter were not pleased when it was announced that Mayer would appear on this week’s episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, given his infamous affair with Swift (and a plethora of other famous women). Not to mention, Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper has previously stated her affection for the “Anti-Hero” singer, saying she hopes to have her on the show someday.
However, if Swifties were looking for an opportunity to drag Mayer upon the episode’s release on Wednesday, he didn’t provide much bait during his conversation with Cooper—though that doesn’t seem to be stopping fans from attacking him.
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During their hour-long conversation, Cooper asked the Dead & Company singer about his upbringing, creative process, and six-year sobriety journey. While Cooper brought up Mayer’s reputation as a “fuckboy” before the term was even invented, she didn’t press him on any one woman he was publicly linked to from the mid-2000s to early 2010s (aside from Swift, that list includes Katy Perry, Jessica Simpson, Minka Kelly, Jennifer Aniston, and even Kim Kardashian).
However, after years of being called a jerk, it seems like Mayer has gained some (albeit questionable) hindsight on that era of his career and has nailed his approach to all the haters.
About being labeled a “womanizer,” the Grammy winner said, “That’s the role I play on the big TV show I didn’t write, but that’s fine. Maybe I had a hand in it or something.” (This is the man who famously went out of his way to call Simpson “sexual napalm”—in addition to other sexist and racist comments—in his notorious 2010 Playboy interview, but I digress!) When Cooper asked him about feeling misunderstood, he responded that he doesn’t need a “worldwide consensus that [he’s] an OK guy.”
He also revealed that he’s not dating as much these days. “Dating is no longer a codified activity for me,” Mayer admitted. “It doesn’t exist in a kind of—it’s not patterned anymore.”
Presumably, this means Mayer has let go of his agenda to date every gorgeous woman in Hollywood and is taking things day by day. To which I say: good for him, and all the ladies who have been saved from his girlfriend to-do list!
Despite Mayer being on his best behavior during the interview, his and Cooper’s unexpected collab has ignited its own war on Twitter and even sparked accusations by certain Swifties that Mayer is a predator. Time will tell whether or not Cooper will be able to put out this flame online (and finally nab Swift as a guest).
