Alone With *Our* Thoughts: Jake Gyllenhaal Responds to Red (Taylor's Version)

I’m Shelby, I live on my own, and I am constantly walking around my apartment talking to myself. I’ve decided it’s time to talk to all of you. Welcome to Alone With My Thoughts, a series of my completely unsolicited opinions on pop culture, media, and life. This week I brought in my fellow editor and Swiftie, Amy, to help out.

If you haven’t heard, Jake Gyllenhaal opened his mouth last week and spewed some shit in response to Taylor Swift’s All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version). This one pissed me off so much I needed to call in backup. As your resident So She Slays Swifties, Amy and I have a lot to say. We read through the E! News article that recapped Gyllenhaal’s GQ interview, and we’re sharing our reactions. If you’re a Jake Gyllenhaal fan, you should probably stop reading now. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

First of all, we’re not really sure why this is coming up now. Red Taylor’s Version came out three months ago. Why bring it back up? It’s only going to make him look worse, in our opinion. But what Jake had to say in this interview brought up a really interesting discussion about how men love to play the victim in turmoil they caused.

"It has nothing to do with me. It's about her relationship with her fans….it is her expression. Artists tap into personal experiences for inspiration, and I don't begrudge anyone that."

So this is the first thing he says when asked about All Too Well. I had to read this a few times to make sure I was actually seeing those words. “It has nothing to do with me.” It has nothing to do with you? Ok. Simply, wrong. But that’s not even the craziest park of this quote. “It’s about her relationship with her fans.” Jake, babe. You could play All Too Well 10 minute version for a sixty year old man and even he could tell you there’s no way in hell that song is about her relationship with her fans. Any other song you may have been able to get away with that, but ATW10?

Let me know how “you call me up again just to break me like a promise” is about her fans. “When your Brooklyn broke my skin and bones, I’m a soldier who’s returning half her weight”? “I’ll get older but your lovers stay my age”? I could go on and on.

He denies any relation to the song yet feels the need to speak on it anyway? If the song is just about Taylor’s connection with her fans, why would her fans be pointing the fingers at him? Why would he feel the need to bring it back up if he was never a part of the song to begin with. Taylor never named names and never sent an army after this man. She released a song of which he is now claiming “has nothing to do with him,” yet is still talking about it? Seems funny to me. He’s taking the attention back and making himself the victim for the whole world to see, when all Swift did was release a damn song like she’s supposed to.

"At some point, I think it's important when supporters get unruly that we feel a responsibility to have them be civil and not allow for cyberbullying in one's name," he noted. "That begs for a deeper philosophical question. Not about any individual, per se, but a conversation that allows us to examine how we can—or should, even—take responsibility for what we put into the world, our contributions into the world."

I think It’s interesting that he brings this up. As we’ve seen in recent events, writing a breakup song about a public relationship seems to be a larger trend now than it ever was before. But our girl Taylor has been in the game for years. She has always used her music as a personal therapy session. She writes songs about men who broke her heart, people who betrayed her and the wrongs she’s done as well. In the past, Taylor has rarely come under fire for writing these personal pieces, but as the world becomes more involved in celebrity feuds, it suddenly becomes personal to the fans as well. 

Most of us are familiar with one of the biggest public breakups of 2021 involving High School Musical The Musical The Series’s Joshua Bassett and Olivia Rodrigo. Things got ugly pretty quick and Joshua was under attack by the public due to Rodrigo's very descriptive and heartbreaking lyrics which millions of people all over the world could relate to. This caused a lot of turmoil for Bassets personal and public career. But who is really to blame & who should be taking responsibility for the public's reaction? 

These songs are written by women who were mistreated by these men without any kind of remorse. If they feel it’s best to deal with these experiences through their song writing, then who is to stop them? What the public takes from these songs is completely up to interpretation and their actions are their own responsibility. Taylor, and Olivia for that matter, have no control over how their fans react to a song about another person. Is it really Taylor’s problem that Jake was attacked for his own actions? Maybe he should have just tried being a nice person. Or dating someone his own age.

It’s funny to watch these men be incapable of dealing with their own actions. Jake Gyllenhaal comes forward complaining about a public outbreak of hate towards him- but what makes him think he doesn’t deserve it? We’re not saying bullying is the answer, but maybe be a better person and people won't say bad things about you! Men, especially men of popularity, have a hard time accepting their wrong-doings and instantly feel the pressure to make themselves the victim in the turmoil they caused. Taking accountability for their actions seems to be a foreign concept to them and having a song written about how poorly they treated a woman seems to be the perfect opportunity to flip the narrative and make her look like the bad guy because of the reaction to their poor decisions. Frankly I think Mr. Gyllenhaal can grow the hell up and get over it.

Taylor puts it best herself when she says, “if guys don’t want me to write bad songs about them, they shouldn’t do bad things.”