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This is not a drill: Taylor Swift has updated the lyrics to her Speak Now song "Better Than Revenge."
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If you're not familiar with the "Better Than Revenge" lore, we must return to the '00s. In 2010, Taylor said that the song "is about a girl who a few years ago stole my boyfriend, and I think she probably thought I forgot about it, but I didn’t."
As such, the lyrics are largely addressed to the woman in question — with the chorus including, "She's an actress, whoa / She's better known for the things that she does on the mattress." Taylor herself appeared to have mixed feelings about the song in later years, as she said in 2014, "I was 18 when I wrote that. That’s the age you are when you think someone can actually take your boyfriend. Then you grow up and realize no one take someone from you if they don’t want to leave."
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The song is heavily rumored to be about Joe Jonas's relationship with Camilla Belle in 2008. In fact, it's not the only song to have allegedly been written during the Joe-Taylor fallout — "Much Better" by the Jonas Brothers is oft thought to be one such tune.
Fast-forward to midnight, and Taylor dropped her rerecording of Speak Now. Although Spotify's lyrics still include the old ones, if you listen to the Taylor's Version of "Better Than Revenge," you can hear that the "mattress line" has been changed to "He was a moth to the flame / She was holding the matches."
When Insider reached out to Taylor's reps for comment, they directed them to a scene in Taylor's 2020 documentary Miss Americana where she talks about "trying to deprogram the misogyny in my own brain," explaining, "There is no such thing as a slut, there is no such thing as a bitch, there is no such thing as someone who's bossy — there's just a boss."
However, Hayley Williams actually has not sung the line "Once a whore, you’re nothing more / I’m sorry, that will never change" at some live performances in recent years and did not perform the song for quite some time. “I was a 17-year-old kid when I wrote the lyrics in question,” she said in 2017, “and if I can somehow exemplify what it means to grow up, get information, and become any shade of ‘woke,’ then that’s A-OK with me.”
As the final tweet alludes to, this isn't the first time Taylor has changed a previous song of hers. The original lyrics of her 2008 song "Picture to Burn" were, "So go and tell all your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy / That’s fine, I’ll tell mine / You’re gay, by the way.”
However, if you listen to the song on Spotify now, the lyrics have been tweaked to, "That's fine, you won't mind if I say."
Remember: None of this is an excuse to leave unhinged comments on anyone's Instagram.
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