Taylor Swift Recalls Getting 'Upset And Sad' Ad-Libbing The New Lyrics About Jake Gyllenhaal Breakup

Taylor Swift remembers it All Too Well!

The 31-year-old superstar dropped the re-recorded album Red (Taylor’s Version) on Friday, which included the highly-anticipated, 10-minute version of All Too Well. As Swifties know about the beloved track, it is largely assumed to be about her former relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal, whom she split from in 2010 following a three-month romance. And while Taylor has never outright said it was about the actor (but like come on the new lyrics says it all), the singer shared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Thursday that the new version she wrote came at a time when she was “upset” and needed to pour her heart out.

She explained:

“I showed up for rehearsals and I just was really upset, and sad, and everybody could tell, it was really, like, not fun to be around me that day. So I started playing guitar and just kind of playing the same four chords over and over again. And I just started, kind of, the band sort of joined in, and I started ad-libbing what I was going through, and what I was feeling, and it went on, and the song kept building and building and building in intensity, and the song just went on for about, you know, 10 to 15 minutes of us doing this.”

There’s nothing like some healthy venting all while creating a literal masterpiece (until *cough, cough* Jake tore it all up). Sorry, we had to!

The Valentine’s Day star then explained how she continued with the regularly scheduled rehearsal, but her mother asked the sound guy if he possibly recorded the session. Thankfully, he did and handed her the CD. Wow, imagine if he hadn’t!? We mean, the world may have never received some of these devastating lyrics like:

“And there we are again when nobody had to know / You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath / Secret prayer, and we’d swear to remember it all too well.”

“They say all’s well that ends well but I’m in a new hell / Every time you double cross my mind / You said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine / And that made me want to die.”

“And I was never good at telling jokes but the punch line goes / I’ll get older but your lovers stay my age.”

But now, that emotional chapter in her life has closed and Taylor has gifted fans “what was originally written for the song before I had to cut it down to a normal-length.” Even more so, it sounds like she had a much better experience recording All Too Well this time around, later telling Seth Meyers, as we previously reported:

“At the time I was, like, honestly, really sad. Cause I’d actually gone through, you know, the stuff that I had sung about. But this time, I’ve got sunglasses on and a mojito and just, like, it’s chill this time. It’s really nice to be able to put this album out and not be sad not be, like, taking breaks in between interviews to cry. I’m telling you, it’s much better this way.”

We can imagine! You can ch-ch-check out her entire interview with Jimmy Fallon (below):