A Tennessee mother is speaking out about the person she believes inspired Taylor Swift’s nostalgic new song, “Ruin the Friendship” her late son.
Susan Lang told The Tennessean that her son, Jeffrey Lang, and Swift were very close friends while at Hendersonville High School, often hanging out at her house and joking around together.
She shared that she still keeps a photo of them in her home and added that her son would have been the first to hear any song Swift wrote during their teenage years.
Jeffrey Lang tragically passed away at just 21 years old on November 2, 2010, shortly after Taylor Swift released her album Speak Now. He had been a junior at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, studying biology.
In her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, Swift, 35, reflects in a poignant ballad on a high school friendship with a boy she had deep feelings for but never confessed to. She sings about her regret over not being honest, even if it might have risked their friendship: “And it was not / An invitation / Should’ve kissed you anyway.”
Susan Lang, Jeffrey’s mother, told The Tennessean that she immediately recognized the song was about her son and expressed gratitude to Swift for keeping his memory alive. “After all this time, she hasn’t forgotten about him,” Susan said.
Susan Lang admitted she wasn’t sure if her son felt the same way about Taylor Swift back then.
In “Ruin the Friendship,” Swift recounts the heartbreak of learning about his death from her longtime friend Abigail Anderson Berard: “When I left school, I lost track of you / Abigail called me with the bad news / Goodbye, and we’ll never know why.”
In real life, Taylor spoke about Jeffrey’s passing while accepting the Country Songwriter of the Year award at the 2010 BMI Awards in Nashville, just a week after his death. She began her emotional speech by saying, “It’s been a really emotional week for me.”
“Yesterday, I sang at the funeral of one of my best friends. And he was 21 and I used to play my songs for him first. So I would like to thank Jeff Lang,” she emotionally concluded.