Joe Jonas Is Indeed ‘Mr. Perfectly Fine’
Being a fan of Taylor Swift is a glorious – albeit exhausting – undertaking. Some mornings you’ll wake up to be gifted a whole new surprise album to sink your teeth into, catapulting you on an emotional journey replete with feelings you didn’t even know were there.
Then there are the times that a Taylor classic manages to hit you in a whole new way. Like when you end up staring wistfully out the car window while listening to the re-recorded version of “Love Story”. “It’s a love story, baby / Just say ‘yes’.” My emotions.
My point is, Taylor keeps us Swifties absolutely fed.
So while Taylor undertakes the huge task of re-recording all of her old albums, we can look forward to getting refreshed takes on our classic faves for the foreseeable future – along with some hidden gems that weren’t released the first time ‘round. It also means we get to reminisce on the context around those old bangers from Ms Swift.
That’s definitely the case this week, as Joe Jonas has shared his thoughts on Taylor re-recording her old music, including “Mr. Perfectly Fine” – a previously unreleased 2008 song included as a Vault release on Fearless (Taylor’s Version). Apparently, Mr. Perfectly Fine in question is former boyfriend Joe Jonas, who is now married to Sophie Turner.
Chatting to Buzzfeed this week, Jonas commended Swift’s decision to re-record, stating that he’d love to do that with the Jonas Brothers back catalogue, too.
When asked what album he’d re-record first, he answered: “Good question. I think I would probably re-record our entire first album [It's About Time]. Just do something like what Taylor [Swift] did recently, which I thought was really clever.” Well, obviously.
While Joe Jonas has kept quite quiet on Taylor’s new (old) break-up hit “Mr. Perfectly Fine”, his wife Sophie Turner didn’t shy away from sharing her thoughts about the track when it was released. She posted an image of the song on her Instagram story and wrote: "it's not NOT a bop." Taylor replied in kind, sharing Turner's story on Instagram and writing: "forever bending the knee for the [queen] of the north". A wholesome exchange!
Will we get more new songs about Joe Jonas? All signs point to absolutely not, as Taylor’s confirmed that she’s done writing about her personal life. Talking to Apple Music at the end of 2020, she said that writing songs about her relationships these days “felt like too hot of a microscope.”
“It felt a bit like I was like, ‘Why am I just like… if I’m writing about my life and all it is…’ On my bad days, I would feel like I was loading a cannon of clickbait when that’s not what I want for my life,” she explained.
Of course, Taylor’s sister albums evermore and folkmore have seen the singer move on to telling stories that aren’t her own. She sings, for example, of real-life socialite Rebekah Harkness in “the last great american dynasty” and tells the story of retribution against a violent partner in “no body no crime”; so the results have been fruitful, to say the least.
Written by Dani Leever, a writer and homosexual pop culture enthusiast. Find their words at @danileever or catch their gay DJ drag adventures at @djgaydad.
