As Swift released albums like Speak Now and RED, her dating life became more publicized. Swift started using her lyrics as a way to address her romances and breakups in her own way. While fans still turned to liner notes for hidden clues — the message for "Last Kiss" from Speak Now was "Forever and Always," which is another song Swift wrote about Joe Jonas — her lyrics started to include more pointed references.
While some lyrics were subtle — like the reference to Taylor Lautner's "tan skin" and "sweet smile" in "Back to December," or Kanye West's age when he stormed the stage during her MTV VMAs speech in "Innocent" — others were far more obvious. I mean, "Dear John" literally included John Mayer's name in the song title. She even used the instrumentation to get her point across. While "Dear John" mimicked the guitar riffs in Mayer's music, the intro to "Last Kiss" is 27 seconds long, which is the length of Swift's infamous breakup phone call with Jonas.
