Taylor-Swift-Reflects-2012-Red-Album-Her-One-True-Breakup-Album

Taylor Swift Reflects on 2012 ‘Red’ Album: Her One ‘True Breakup Album’

Over the years, Taylor Swift has become known for writing about her exes and breakups. But in a recent Rolling Stone podcast, Swift said she only ever had one “true breakup album.”

The singer described her 2012 album Red as her answer. She said the album in its entirety focused on the turmoil of breaking up with someone.

“I look back on this as my true breakup album. Every other album has flickers of different things,” Swift said in the podcast. “But this was an album that I wrote specifically about pure, absolute, to the core, heartbreak.”

According to Billboard, the album was released to critical acclaim. The album debuted at No. 1 on the outlet’s Top 200 chart and also sold 1.21 million copies in its first week. The album marked the singer straying away from her country roots into other genres such as pop. It was also the second best-selling album that year, and Rolling Stone listed it at 99 on its 500 Greatest Albums list.

Taylor Swift Allegedly Wrote the Album About Jake Gyllenhaal

Rolling Stone theorizes most of the album was written about actor Jake Gyllenhaal, with a couple of Swift’s other exes thrown into the mix. The outlet believes Swift also sings about exes Harry Styles and Connor Kennedy. According to Republic World, the couple started dating in 2010 and broke apart in 2011.

Reportedly, Gyllenhaal broke up with Swift because he felt uncomfortable by the media attention the two received. The actor reportedly said he wished to keep his private life private and out of the eyes of the media. The couple broke up during Christmas time in 2011.

For the song “The Last Time,” which was featured on the album, Swift told NPR she wrote it about an unreliable ex.

“The idea was based on this experience I had with someone who was kind of this unreliable guy,” Swift said. “You never know when he’s going to leave, you never know when he’s going to come back, but he always does come back.”