“I Bet You Think About Me” is the twenty-sixth track on Taylor Swift’s re-recorded ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ album released in 2021. This song From The Vault, talks about the aftermath of a relationship. The song features vocals by Chris Stapleton.
Taylor Swift re-recorded and released her 2012 album ‘Red’ after a fallout with her then-record label Big Machine. However painful has this been to Taylor, it gives us a few brand new tracks that she wrote for ‘Red’ album but never included in it. In the 2021 re-release of ‘Red (Taylor’s Version),’ we are blessed with some of these gems from the past. “Just a friendly reminder that I would never have thought it was possible to go back and remake my previous work, uncovering lost art and forgotten gems along the way, if you hadn’t emboldened me. Red is about to be mine again, but it has always been ours. Tonight we begin again,” wrote Taylor Swift, announcing the album.
In “I Bet You Think About Me,” Taylor Swift sings about the contrasts between her and this ex-lover. She could not help falling in love with him despite these differences. The heart wants what the heart wants. When the dopamine high wears off, the brain starts to kick in, and this is when you start seeing things for what they are. Some hints dropped within these lyrics point the song at Taylor’s ex-lover Jake Gyllenhaal, whom she dated and broke up around the time of recording the ‘Red’ album.
Taylor Swift talked about the song with Country radio; “‘I Bet You Think About Me’ is a song I wrote with Lori McKenna, who is one of my favorite singer-songwriters ever. I’d always wanted to work with her. And I wrote this with her at her house when I was playing Foxboro Stadium on the Speak Now Tour [in June 2011]. We wanted this song to be like a comedic, tongue in cheek, funny, not caring what anyone thinks about you sort of break up song, because there are a lot of different types of heartbreak songs on Red. Some of them are very sincere, some of them are very stoic and heartbreaking and sad. We wanted this to be the moment where I was like, ‘I don’t care about anything.’ And we wanted to make people laugh with it, and we wanted it to be sort of a drinking song, and I think that that’s what it ended up being.”
Listen to “I Bet You Think About Me” by Taylor Swift Ft. Chris Stapleton
Buy ‘Red (Taylor’s Version) Album on Apple Music and Amazon
Taylor Swift “I Bet You Think About Me” Lyrics Meaning and Song Review
Verse 1
In the first verse of the song, Taylor Swift spends another sleepless night. It’s 3 am and her mind races to where he is and what he is doing. And naturally, she thinks he is doing just fine because she never heard from him since their breakup. Taylor imagines him already moved on. He already has a better woman in his bed. A woman who is classy, from a wealthy family, and nothing Taylor can compare herself to.
Verse 2
Taylor says how she tried to bridge the gap between her Tennessee upbringing and this guy’s city upbringing. Taylor tried for the sake of their relationship, but she often felt like an outcast within these high-society circles. They noticed her country upbringing, too.
Fancy people have fancy problems. These upper-echelon circles sit around sipping wine and discussing the meaning of life. This is a question that scholars have tackled and failed for centuries. These people think they have life figured out. They talk about that one book or podcast that they accidentally stumbled upon that “literally” saved their lives. And everyone seems to have read this book, except for Taylor. Sitting away from these discussions, Taylor was living life or at least trying to.
Chorus-1
Taylor Swift bets that her ex is thinking about her. But she is definitely thinking about him. She wants to believe that she left the same effect on her ex-lover.
I bet you couldn’t believe
When you realized I’m harder to forget than I was to leave
It’s easy to leave and hard to forget — this is universal. But Taylor has to wonder why she has not heard from him since the breakup. Was it easy for him to forget as well?
Verse 3
In the third verse of “I Bet You Think About Me,” Taylor talks more about the contrasting features of their upbringing, which she believes may have caused them to part ways in the end.
You grew up in a silver-spoon gated community
Glamorous, shiny, bright Beverly Hills
I was raised on a farm, no, it wasn’t a mansion
Taylor says this boy was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was born into riches and classy people. He was a Hollywood boy from the start. Taylor specifically mentions the city of Beverly Hills, California. Jake Gyllenhaal was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and was born to a family of affluent people. Taylor Swift, on the other hand, was born and raised a farm girl in Tennessee. She enjoyed the star light while her ex enjoyed the fluorescent lights. Taylor enjoyed the smell of fresh grass and flowers while her ex endured the expensive perfumes. Taylor was free to become who she wanted, Jake was born to become a movie star.
Verse 4
In the fourth verse of the song, Taylor admits that falling for this guy was easy. Maybe his star qualities, the crooked smile, the wavy hair, and his macho talk swept Taylor off her feet. But reality sets in at some point.
You laughed at my dreams, rolled your eyes at my jokes
Taylor’s ex-lover mocked her for chasing her dream to become a singer — which is quite ironic since he comes from a celebrity lifestyle himself. Soon they realized that they had no emotional connection on any level to keep this relationship going.
Chorus-2
Taylor Swift is somehow quite confident about the fact that her ex-lover still thinks about her and misses her. Maybe their short-lived relationship burned hard into their bones.
Taylor mocks his ego; “Mr. Superior Thinkin’.“ If Taylor is talking about Jake, we can clearly see the way he carries himself correlates with this nickname. The boy needed space from her in the end. He was too sophisticated to be locked down.
Bridge
Taylor knows that he suffers from the realization that the love he was looking for was the love he already lost. But there is no recovery now. He can only try to block out these thoughts and try to move on.
Verse 5
In the fifth and final verse of the song, Taylor Swift sings about what her ex-lover missed. He had one chance at happiness forever but he let it slip right through his fingers. Now he has to live his life in fear of being irrelevant, getting old, and wondering if he would find true love again. None of this would have mattered if he was in love.
Outro
More contrasting features follow; he like indie music, he wears organic shoes (what?!), rests himself on a million-dollar couch, and on an on.
I bet you think about me when you say
“Oh my god, she’s insane, she wrote a song about me”
Jake Gyllenhaal or whoever this song is about, is now forever imprinted in music history. This song, along with “All Too Well (10-Minute Version)” is most likely about the same person and are most likely will get plenty of radio play and streams. The subject of the song is more than likely to hear this and is probably going to drive them crazy. Taylor will forever live in his memory and sanity.
Let us hear what you think about the song in the comments below. Check out the complete lyrics on Genius.