Martin Johnson analysis for Forever and Always, Love Story, I Knew You Were Trouble (IKYWT), Would've Could've Should've (WCS) and Dear Reader.
Preface: I'm not emotionally attached to this analysis I just got it in my head that the Devil is specifically referencing Martin Johnson (except for Cruel Summer but that's devilS)
Additionally, I'm actually more attached to the idea of Dear Reader being about Taylor's possible coming out / frustrations with closeting. This is just an interesting take based on my little Devil theory. And I feel bad for loathing John Mayer if he wasn't actually the muse for WCS...
@leightum for pointing out the IKYWT muse looks a lot more like MJ than JM
@whatiwillsay for influencing many of my opinions particularly the Style take
@acoolchickouthere13 for making a very detailed timeline (linked below) with information relevant to muse timelines and songwriting / publishing timelines. This was immensely helpful and I was going to make something like this and I will be eternally grateful that someone did it first. 💕 https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1tZUBZcAV0UP12oPvkplNSw5A3ehrqy2s8Q-oFjYTpa8/mobilebasic
I did do some of the timeline research myself, but that timeline includes anything I would have used anyway, so there you go!
CW: Would've Could've Should've is discussed, therefore there is brief mentions of sexual assault topics.
Taylor meets Martin Johnson early 2008, with plenty of time for Love Story to be about him since recording the latter half of the album didn’t start until March 2008 and she said Love Story was a last minute addition.
We know for a fact that they worked together on several professional projects and hung out from pictures.
If Love Story WAS about him, then by 2015, Andrea Swift is calling him a confirmed creep. And Taylor does so as well later. (They also act like she was 17 when she wrote it but the timeline doesn’t add up when you consider she says it was a late addition to the album and the album definitely didn’t finish recording until March.)
We know for a fact that Martin references a relationship from 2008-2009 where he purposefully pushes the girl away because 'sometimes silence is nice'. He’s also chugging cough syrup to get himself to sleep and in 2010 talks about how his relationships with past girls in the industry were mostly physical. Martin Johnson would have been four years older than Taylor which is not as agregious as John Mayer's thirteen years but when the younger individual is eighteen, four years is a long time.
Taylor adds Forever and Always as a very last minute addition to the album and it specifically talks about silence and not getting any calls from someone.
In Dear John she talks about how she should have listened when people said run as fast as you can - Well, Andrea and Scott apparently warned her about SOMEONE.
Likewise in IKYWT she talks about how she knew he was trouble… Or, put another way, she should’ve known ?
In IKYWT she says and the saddest fear comes creeping in that you never loved me, or her, or anyone or anything. In Forever and Always she says were you just kidding about saying forever and always…
In IKYWT she says ‘Once upon a time, a few mistakes ago’ - So we know that it was a few ‘mistakes’ before IKYWT was written, making the John Martin case make sense over someone like Harry Styles or Jake Gyllenhal. (Yes, this could still work for John Mayer as well.)
Additionally, the muse presented in IKYWT fits Martin Johnson best. Sure, the style could be somewhat similar to John Mayer, but the hair doesn’t fit him. The hair DOES fit Martin Johnson.
Additionally, in the IKYWT music video you get very grungy vibes from the muse. They’re in dark bars together and there’s allusions to smoking and maybe drugs as well. John Mayer could fit this, he has mentioned that he quit drinking in 2016 or something, but Martin Johnson DEFINITELY fits this. 100%, he had a drinking and drug problem and CONFIRMED it was something he was dealing with in 2008 - 2009.
Then we get the lyrics ‘You are an expert at sorry and keeping lines blurry’ from Dear John, and the lyric ‘New apologies, he’ll never see you cry, pretends he doesn’t know that he’s the reason why’ in IKYWT
You may be asking yourself - is it reasonable for Taylor to be writing about a guy from Fearless - Red and now Midnights?
I will argue yes for these reasons. Love Story and Forever and Always were very late additions to the albums. In Speak Now, Martin Johnson actually cowrote If This Was A Movie, so we know he was still in her life during writing and maybe even production of that album. Then, she did the Jingle Ball performance at the end of 2009 with him, Speak Now comes out at the end of 2010. You’ve got to give at least 6 months prior for writing / recording / production for MOST songs on an album.
Then, for Red there’s two arguments I have. One, Taylor’s own quote from an interview where Taylor says she’s been writing songs for Red since before Speak Now came out. She says she has about 30 songs to choose from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeHFU8yILUM&ab_channel=extratv
And two, when a relationship is traumatic and dysfunctional, you have an evolving view of it as you get distance from it. Even Taylor says she originally believed the Love Story interest to be a great guy, but admitted years later she thinks he is a creep. We know that WHOEVER Dear John was about, she published a song about them in Midnights, over a decade later. That person made a very distinct impact on her.
Okay, so now onto Midnights. I am going to make an argument that Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve AND Dear Reader are referencing this relationship.
First, Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve’s (WCS) obvious tie is the mention of her being 19, matching her saying she was 19 in Dear John, saying that he painted her a blue sky and if she was paint did she splatter on a promising grown man, also referencing the age gap in both, etc. (I’m not going to go into any further analysis on the two being related since I think the age 19 is plenty clear.)
I think WCS also ties into IKYWT in a few ways.
First, she says ‘If you would’ve blinked then I would’ve looked away at the first glance’ in IKYWT she says ‘I was in your sights, you got me alone’
Second, not during the song but during the spoken word portion of IKYWT, Taylor poses the question, ‘But I just thought, how can the devil be pulling you toward someone who looks so much like an angel when he smiles at you?’ - In WCS, we get the line ‘Never would’ve dance with the devil at 19’
ALSO, ‘Now that I know I wish you’d left me wondering’ - This could be a reference back to - I (should’ve) known you were trouble when you walked in. But, I ignored the signs. Now I wish you had left me wondering.
Also, ‘danced with the devil’ the secret message of IKYWT was ‘When you saw me dancing’
In IKYWT in the spoke word portion we get the lines ‘I think when it’s all over, it just comes back in flashes, you know?’ - Taylor uses flashback imagery A LOT in her music. This isn’t a take I use often but here, given the darkness of the music video for IKYWT, I think she means actual flashbacks. Which I also believe is heavily implied in WCS ‘And now that I'm grown, I'm scared of ghosts. Memories feel like weapons’
Additionally in IKYWT we get the line from the spoken word portion ‘I think the worst part of it all wasn’t losing him. It was losing me.’ - Then in WCS ‘God rest my soul, I miss who I used to be’
Finally, in both songs we get the admission that despite everything, there were really high highs. IKYWT ‘Flew me to places I’d never been’ - WCS ‘And the god’s honest truth is that the pain was heaven’
Therefore, on these two songs, I rest my case.
Preface: This one’s a bit of a stretch and requires some filling in of the gaps but… Play along with me for a moment.
This theory originates in the idea that the Devil is usually referencing Martin Johnson, with some exceptions like Cruel Summer. To check this theory, I’ve put almost all of Taylor’s published discography into a word document and searched for Devil. It only comes up 9 times. (Not including the spoken word of IKYWT as that is not included in the document I was searching. However, it is key to this analysis.) Some of that is Cruel Summer, which I think is a different metaphor, then she says Devil’s in the details in Peace. I’m disregarding those.
Of the remaining instances, we get the Devil pushing Taylor towards someone who looks like an angel - IKYWT
We get the devil she wished she had never danced with - WCS (this is where I think the reference in IKYWT changes from the devil guiding her towards someone, to the muse of IKYWT actually IS the devil she is referring to here. Hence my prior analysis playing into this.)
Then we get the line ‘if you aim for the devil make sure you don’t miss’ - Dear Reader
First, the obvious. Dear Reader = the readers of her Dear John Letter. Maybe.
Now, we know that Taylor sometimes does 2 things - 1. Taylor loves a double meaning. 2. Sometimes Taylor writes about multiple situations / muses in one song. I’m not sure the first verse is going to work perfectly here but I do think the part about burning files until you don’t recognize yourself could be about the fact that her relationship with Martin Johnson has been so heavily scrubbed from the internet despite it being much longer (although tumultuous and probably on again off again) than say, Harry Styles.
If it feels like a trap, you're already in one
Get out your map, pick somewhere and just run
Burn all the files, desert all your past lives
And if you don't recognize yourself
That means you did it right
Now, it’s not the best connection. Although ‘if it feels like a trap, you’re already in one’ - From personal experience, sometimes the only way to realize you’re in an emotionally abusive relationship is by accepting that if it feels like one, it probably is.
However, obviously, this lyric probably makes more sense from a Snakegate perspective - when the old Taylor died.
However, we can still propose that the 2nd verse applies:
Bend when you can, snap when you have to
You don't have to answer, just 'cause they asked you
(You should find another)
The greatest of luxuries is your secrets
When you aim at the devil make sure you don't miss
You don’t have to answer, just ‘cause they asked you - Taylor famously was asked if her song was about John Mayer because he said he was humiliated by it and she said it was pompous of him to assume it was about him. Then she reiterates that she never truly reveals who her songs are about.
This is a bit of a truth and a bit of a lie. Early on in her career Miss Swift definitely did tell us who her songs were about. For example, SAM being written out nine times in the secret message of Should’ve Said No. However, I do think she makes an excellent point about her own character in that we later get the song Style, famously assumed to be about Harry Styles when in fact I believe WhatIWillSay's analysis that it is about Dianna Agron. Therefore, we can recognize that Miss Swift literally putting someone’s name in the song title does not actually guarantee that we know who the muse was.
The Greatest of luxuries is your secrets - again, Miss Swift is saying she won’t say who her songs were about and this is one of her greatest secrets. But as we know later on in the song, this is not entirely true - it’s a double edged sword which we know because she doesn’t actually recommend taking her own advice here. This is important for the last line
Dear reader, when you aim at the devil make sure you don’t miss.
If the devil is Martin Johnson, this line makes me think that she may regret not making that more clear. She missed her mark by giving in to her normal behavior of having one muse for the limelight and another muse in the dark.
Now this is me filling in the gaps in two ways. First is my hunch that the Devil when used in this way is regarding one specific person from her past and I believe that is Martin Johnson. Second, WCS is, in my opinion, fairly explicitly about SA in some way. The flashbacks, the deep regret, give me back my girlhood, it was mine first, etc. If in no other way than the power dynamic where Martin Johnson was older, more experienced, coupled with the fact that by his own admission he was also deeply, deeply troubled during their time together. (He admits not in regard to this time but certainly at some point in his life that he used sex and gambling to fill a void.)
Dear Reader additionally has the lyrics:
So I wander through these nights
I prefer hiding in plain sight
Hiding in plain sight. Dear John = Dear JOHNson…
These desperate prayers of a cursed man
Spilling out to you for free
Taylor doesn’t use religious imagery ALL The time. It’s not something I’ve had time to specifically comb through yet but I know it’s infrequent enough that I feel the religious imagery here may tie to the imagery in WCS. Prayers of a cursed man compared to all I used to do is pray and crisis of my faith, etc.
But darling, darling, please
You wouldn't take my word for it
If you knew who was talking
If you knew where I was walking
Taylor again reminding us not to take her advice. Not to do what she did. I am filling in the gaps again but I know that for anyone who has experienced SA and has not gone to authorities about it, the idea that something bad could happen to another girl because you haven’t reported really weighs heavily on you. I personally when I heard WCS the first thought I had was ‘wow I can totally see now why she felt she SHOULD have name dropped John Mayer as a WARNING to any future young ladies in the industry.’ But, as you can see from that sentence, I had the wrong John. I think almost all of us did. Therefore, if that was her intent, her way of dealing with that, I certainly think it mostly failed and that could haunt a person.
To a house, not a home, all alone 'cause nobody's there
!!! Listen this part is a stretch I’m just brainstorming from this mindset!!! Taylor moved to Nashville to her first apartment alone around the time she would have been writing Dear John. We know that for example her secret message for Never Grow Up is ‘I moved out in July’ and in Never Grow Up she talks about how her new apartment is so much colder than she thought it would be.
Where I pace in my pen and
My friends found friends who care
Again, from personal experience, when you are in an emotionally abusive relationship it becomes so easy to neglect your other personal relationships. You get caught up in the constant chaos and maintenance. You forget to text other people, you’re too exhausted to go to events, etc. For example, Billie Eilish’s song about being in a similarly age-inappropriate relationship she says ‘Never paid any mind to my mother or friends, so I
Shut 'em all out for you 'cause I was a kid’
No one sees when you lose
When you're playing solitaire
This is where I think my earlier analysis COULD be right about regretting her secrets. No one sees when you lose when you’re hiding your relationship from nearly everyone and pretending your songs are about an entirely different man.
Thanks for reading, I had fun thinking this through and going through the ups and downs of figuring out if the timeline works!
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