Jake Is ‘Mortified’ Taylor ‘Targeted’ Him For Dating a 25-Year-Old on Her New Album

Not too well. Jake Gyllenhaal’s response to Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” shade on her new album shows how “mortified” he is by his ex-girlfriend’s new album about him.

A source told Life & Style on November 16, 2021, that Jake is “mortified” by Swift’s new album, Red (Taylor’s Version), a re-release of her 2012 album, Red, which she wrote after their relationship. According to the source, Jake is especially embarrassed by Taylor’s 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” in which she sings about their nine-year age difference when they dated from 2010 to 2011. “Jake is mortified that Taylor has targeted him in ‘All Too Well,’” the insider said. “He’s such a private person and goes out of his way to avoid drama, so having their three-month fling dragged up in the song and hearing people gossip about it is a hard pill for him to swallow.”

In the song, which is believed to be about Taylor and Jake’s relationship, the Grammy winner sings about how her older boyfriend at the time blamed their breakup on their age difference. “You said if we had been closer in age, maybe it would’ve been fine / And that made me want to die,” she sings. The song also disses Jake’s current relationship with model Jeanne Cadieu, who is 25 years old and 15 years younger than the Donnie Darko actor. (Taylor was 20 going on 21 when she dated Jake, who was 29 going on 30.) “And I was never good at tellin’ jokes, but the punch line goes / ‘I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age’” Swift sings in “All Too Well (10-Minute Version).”

Red (Taylor’s Version)

Image: Courtesy of Republic Records.

According to Life & Style’s source, Jake is bothered by the album because he doesn’t want to be “questioned about someone he briefly dated 11 years ago.” The insider continued, “He thought she was over it, but it seems like anyone who has dated Taylor can’t escape from their past.”

A day after the release of Red (Taylor’s Version), Jake was seen for the first time at an event hosted by Los Angeles Confidential magazine on November 13, 2021. A source told Us Weekly at the time that Jake seemed to be in “good” spirits, despite his ex-girlfriend’s shade. “Jake was in a good mood,” the insider said. “He was proud to be there to present the award for sound editing to Mandell Winter.”

Though Taylor has never confirmed who Red is about, she told New York magazine in 2013 that she heard from the subject of the album after its release. “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,” she said at the time. “Nicer than, like, the ranting, crazy e-mails I got from this one dude. It’s a lot more mature way of looking at a love that was wonderful until it was terrible, and both people got hurt from it—but one of those people happened to be a songwriter. So what are you going to do? Did you not Wikipedia me before you called me up [for a date]?”

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