No more “Bad Blood”? John Mayer’s ready to fill in the blank spaces in his relationship with Taylor Swift. Though it was short-lived, running from late 2009 until early 2010, the romance has sparked several post-relationship songs from both musicians and plenty of feud talk.
More than five years since their breakup, Mayer, 37, spoke with Ronan Farrow for an MSNBC interview about his music, persona, and ego. Though his comments about being a “recovering ego addict” made headlines last week, the “Who You Love” singer’s complete interview was recently released, revealing his comments about his chart-topping ex.
“We have to be able to talk about Taylor Swift professionally,” Mayer declared when Farrow tip-toed around the topic, adding that he thinks her recent push against Spotify is “really cool.”
“Artists need the person with the loudest voice to speak for them,” he said, referring to Swift, 25. “You can go to the Met Ball. That’s great. That’s a great way to use your voice is to go ‘I’m wearing Valentino.’ Or you can use your voice to give things.”
The recent Grammy performer went on to acknowledge that he will never have the star status of his ex.
“Nothing bothers me anymore,” he said. “There are going to be times when I make music as popular or empirically valuable as [Swift’s] in terms of making pop music that won’t sell as many copies and I’m fine with that. Look, if I save a baby from a burning building and Kanye [West] saves a baby from a burning building, Kanye’s going to get more Google News hits. And I’m fine with it.”
Mayer also briefly touched on his 2013 song “Paper Doll,” which was widely rumored to be about Swift.
“The song never got listened to as a song,” he explained. “It became a news story because of the lyrics. I’m not in the business of telling people what the song’s about. Now I can just go, ‘Look, I can say the name Taylor Swift.’ She’s an artist. I’m an artist. Everybody stop, nobody’s got cancer. We’re rich people who get to live out our dreams. Let’s just stop it. I’m a musician who’s bigger than one song or one record.”
As for the future, the musician, who is currently in an on-again relationship with pop star Katy Perry, declared that he has plans to have “one wife and a certain number of children.”
His one piece of advice for his younger self: “There was never a shot of doing this perfectly.”
