What you need to know
The mother of Taylor Swift’s late high school friend Jeff Lang has spoken out about Swift’s new song “Ruin the Friendship.”
Swift, 35, briefly attended Hendersonville High School in Hendersonville, Tennessee, with Lang, who died in 2010, when he was 21 and a junior at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga majoring in biology, according to obituaries in The Tennessean and Hendersonville Memory Gardens and Funeral Home.
In the track “Ruin the Friendship” from The Life of a Showgirl, Swift sings about how much she regrets not kissing her late high school friend and classmate. The song also mentions roads in the greater Nashville area and a lake on the Cumberland River, possibly referring to Old Hickory Lake.
“You drive down I-85 / Gallatin Road and the beach by the lake / Watch the game from your brother’s Jeep / Your smile stretches for miles,” Swift sings in the song.
Jeff’s mother, Susan Lang, told The Tennessean in an interview that she was “surprised that Jeff still remembered him after all this time.”
“She’s keeping his name alive,” Susan continued. According to the newspaper, Susan pays tribute to Swift by keeping a framed photo of her late son standing with him in her home.
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“They were really good friends,” Susan told the magazine. “It’s rare these days. I used to come over to her house a lot. We were always joking around.”
In the song’s lyrics, Swift admits that although she attended prom on a different date, she still has feelings for Lang.
“But I whispered at the grave, I should have just kissed you,” the song ends, advising listeners to “ruin friendships” given the unpredictable nature of life.
At the 2010 BMI Awards in Nashville, Swift was named Country Songwriter of the Year and thanked Lang in her acceptance speech. “Yesterday, I sang at the funeral of one of my best friends, and he was 21 years old,” Swift began her speech at the time. “I was playing my own songs for him in the beginning, so I want to thank Jeff Lang and, as always, all the creative people in this room who inspire me every day.”
“Ruin the Friendship” isn’t the only song in Swift’s discography rumored to reference Lang. The vault track “Forever Winter (Taylor’s Version)” from her 2021 Red (Taylor’s Version) album depicts the pain of watching a friend struggle, with lyrics that many fans associate with her late friend.
“All this time I didn’t know/You were breaking down,” Swift sings in the song. “If I didn’t have you, I’d fall apart on the floor/If you weren’t by my side/I’m too young to know it gets better.”
Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, was released on October 3rd.
