What Everyone Is Missing About “All Too Well”
Taylor Swift isn't just talking about an ex-boyfriend and a scarf, y’all
You can always count on Dionne Warwick’s Twitter account.
Dionne Warwick is talking about Taylor Swift’s song “All Too Well”—which she recently re-released—in which the narrator of the song leaves a scarf at her boyfriend’s sister’s house and he keeps it even after their relationship ends. Fans widely believe that the boyfriend in the song is actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who is ten years older than Swift, and whom she dated briefly when she was twenty years old.
Dionne Warwick’s tweet cracked me up. Of course, let’s state the obvious — Taylor Swift doesn’t need her scarf back from Jake Gyllenhaal. She can buy her own damn scarf. Warwick is a master storyteller; she knows the scarf is a metaphor—that’s why the tweet is hilarious.
The song is the story of a young woman who throws her whole self into a relationship, thinking that she and this man are in love. She assumes it’s as meaningful for him as it is for her. Her song is about the pain of realizing that the relationship was much more transactional than she had realized. When the relationship ended, it…
