Taylor Swift changes controversial “Better Than Revenge” lyric 13 years later

Taylor Swift has changed a controversial lyric from her 2010 song “Better Than Revenge” on her “Speak Now” album re-recording, released at midnight today. The original line, “she’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress,” is now “he was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches.” The original lyric has been criticized as slut-shaming and misogynistic, though fans have also turned Swift’s lapse in feminism into a meme, with some embracing the line. The lyric change doesn’t alter the overall message of “Better Than Revenge,” a song about one woman’s anger at her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend, widely believed to be about Joe Jonas and actress Camilla Belle.

Swift wrote “Speak Now,” her third studio album, entirely by herself between the ages of 18 and 20, in reaction to criticism about the success of her first two albums, which some attributed to her male co-writers and producers. With the release of “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” Swift is halfway through her plan to re-record the six albums purchased in 2019 by Scooter Braun as part of his acquisition of her former label Big Machine. Swift owns the rights to her master recordings in her deal with Republic Records, her current label. While Swift has included previously unreleased songs (and one remix) on her re-recordings, she has not changed lyrics on previous Taylor’s Versions. But the “Better Than Revenge” lyric revision does have precedent: In 2008, Swift altered a line in “Picture to Burn” from her 2006 debut self-titled album, changing “So go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy / That’s fine / I’ll tell mine you’re gay” to “That’s fine / You won’t mind if I say.”

In advance of today’s release, Swift made a statement during a recent Minneapolis Eras Tour stop before launching into “Dear John,” a song widely believed by fans to be about John Mayer, which also appears on “Speak Now.” She encouraged fans to act with “kindness and gentleness,” adding, “I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19.”