With 2017 came new music from Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, and more. And while songs about love are wonderful (Swift devoted half her album to her current boyfriend Joe Alwyn and how everything that experience is), songs about exes can be just as great—especially for the gossip.

Here, the best jabs and lyrics about love lost in this year's biggest releases. (The Weeknd even got some Jelena drama in.)

Taylor Swift, 'I Did Something Bad'

youtubeView full post on Youtube

"If a man talks shit, then I owe him nothing/I don't regret it one bit, 'cause he had it coming." [This is possibly a reference to ex Calvin Harris's post-breakup rants about Swift.]

'He says, 'Don't throw away a good thing'/But if he drops my name, then I owe him nothin'/And if he spends my change, then he had it comin'' ['Change' could be considered a reference to her and ex Calvin Harris's shared song royalties on 'This Is What You Came For'.]

Taylor Swift, 'Getaway Car'

'The ties were black, the lies were white/In shades of grey in candlelight/I wanted to leave him/I needed a reason.' [The 'he' Swift wanted to leave could be interpreted as Harris; the 'ties were black' could be seen as a reference to the Met Gala, where Swift and her next boyfriend Tom Hiddleston appeared to hit it off.]

'There were sirens in the beat of your heart/I shoulda known I'd be the first to leave/Think about the place where you first met me/In a getaway car, oh-oh/No, they never get far, oh-ahh/No, nothing good starts in a getaway car.' [This lyric could be considered a jab at Hiddleston. The two started their relationship right after her breakup with Harris—and were together during the infamous Kimye Snapchat release. Reports after their breakup suggested Swift ended things with Hiddleston because he wanted to make the relationship too public.]

Calvin Harris, 'Feels'

'Goddamn, I know you love to make an entrance/Do you like getting paid or getting paid attention?/You mixed the wrong guys with the right intentions.' [These lyrics come from Big Sean's rap in the song. Harris also worked with Katy Perry, who had feuded with his ex Swift, on the track. The lyric about making an entrance could be a reference to Swift and Harris's song 'This Is What You Came For' ('Lightning strikes every time she moves/And everybody's watching her/But she's looking at you, oh, oh') and a possible jab at the unveiling of Taylor Swift's relationship with Hiddleston. Harris was not a fan of Hiddleswift and wrote a slightly petty song in 2016 suggesting Swift and Hiddleston may have been involved before she ended her relationship with him ('Olé'). Swift's song 'Getaway Car' seemingly refers to this.]

Harry Styles, 'Two Ghosts'

'Same lips red, same eyes blue/Same white shirt, couple more tattoos/But it's not you and it's not me/Tastes so sweet, looks so real/Sounds like something that I used to feel/But I can't touch what I see.' [The first two lines clearly echo the lyrics in Swift's own 'Style' ('You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye/And I got that red lip, classic thing that you like' and 'You got that long hair slicked back, white t-shirt'). Styles has been adding to his tattoo collection over the years, so this song suggests the passage of time for him and that when he sees Swift now, he doesn't feel like he used to.]

Jeans, Clothing, Street fashion, Fashion, Standing, Jacket, Outerwear, Denim, Interaction, Walking, pinterest
Getty Images

Miley Cyrus, 'She's Not Him'

'No matter what you say/No matter what you do/I just can't fall in love with you/Cuz you're not him.' [This track is seemingly about Stella Maxwell, whom Cyrus was thought to be seeing before she got back together with Liam Hemsworth. Cyrus never wanted to put a label on her relationship with Maxwell, perhaps because she wasn't over Hemsworth. 'I'm 22, I'm going on dates, but I change my style every two weeks, let alone who I'm with,' she told ELLE UK when asked about Maxwell for its October 2015 issue.

'Stella's awesome, but as soon as you hang out with someone, you get labelled as in a relationship. And I'm like, you can't just assume that everyone I'm sitting at dinner with is a date. It'd be like we're on a date right now.'

'Then you break up and it's everywhere. And it's like, 'They've moved on,' but actually often it's all good. Me and Liam are still so close and we love each other, and they make it like there is negativity.']

Lorde, 'Green Light'

'She thinks you love the beach, you're such a damn liar/Well those great whites, they have big teeth/Hope they bite you/Thought you said that you would always be in love/But you're not in love no more.' [Lorde said in an interview with the New York Times that the song was inspired by her ex James Lowe. 'It was my first major heartbreak,' she said. The song lyrics are 'really about those moments kind of immediately after your life changes and about all the silly little things that you gravitate towards.']

Lorde, 'Hard Feelings'

'I light all the candles/Cut flowers for all my rooms/I care for myself the way I used to care about you.' [Another possible reference to her ex Lowe, and her recovery after their breakup.]

Selena Gomez, 'Fetish'

'I push you out and you come right back/Don't see a point in blaming you/If I were you, I'd do me too.' [This line could be a slight jab at her then-ex Justin Bieber, and Gomez's way of saying that she saw all his 'crazy throwback' posts of her...]

Clothing, Dress, Street fashion, Fashion model, Fashion, Footwear, Leg, Fashion design, Shoe, Cocktail dress,
Instagram
Product, Font, Adaptation, Photography, Leisure,
Instagram

The Weeknd on Nav's 'Some Way'

'I think your girl, think your girl, fell in love with me/She say my f–k and my tongue game a remedy/Oh yeah, yeah, I just hit a lick and I know you feelin' some way.' [This song came out shortly after Selena Gomez and The Weeknd first started dating each other. Justin Bieber, Gomez's then-ex, made several petty remarks about The Weeknd. These lyrics could be The Weeknd's way of suggesting he stole Bieber's girl.]

Katy Perry, 'Miss You More'

'We were a match, but not a fit/We were a dream, unrealistic/We didn't lose, we didn't win/(Sometimes I wonder what we could have been)/Oh/I miss you more than I loved you.' [The song is likely about Perry's on-off relationship with her ex John Mayer—and how wrong they were together. She might be suggesting here that she missed the idea of him after things ended more than she loved him when they were a couple.]

Sam Smith, 'Too Good at Goodbyes'

'But every time you hurt me, the less that I cry/And every time you leave me, the quicker these tears dry/And every time you walk out, the less I love you/Baby, we don't stand a chance, it's sad but it's true/I'm way too good at goodbyes.' [Smith told BBC Newsbeat in October that the song was inspired by 'one guy from last year.' But he did clarify that the song was supposed to be more of a reflection on himself than his ex: 'To be honest, this song isn't about anyone else, this is about me and how I deal with heartbreak. It isn't about the other person. The other person was actually really lovely, which makes it all that much harder.']

Dua Lipa, 'New Rules'

'One: Don't pick up the phone/You know he's only callin' 'cause he's drunk and alone/Two: Don't let him in/You'll have to kick him out again/Three: Don't be his friend/You know you're gonna wake up in his bed in the morning/And if you're under him, you ain't gettin' over him/I got new rules, I count 'em.' [Dua Lipa made the breakup song she wished she had in the past. 'They're not necessarily rules I've been able to stick by,' Lipa told NPR of the lyrics in the chorus. 'But [they're] rules that I feel like it's important to be able to tell yourself, to tell your friends.... There's a reason people break up, and it's probably the same reason why you shouldn't get back together.']

SZA, 'The Weekend'

'You're like 9 to 5, I'm the weekend/Make him lose his mind every weekend/You take Wednesday, Thursday/Then just send him my way/Think I got it covered for the weekend.' [As SZA explained on Twitter, the song is about three women sharing one guy: 'My man is MY man Is YOUR man heard thts HER man too : thts 3 women ..Not two. all getting played,' she wrote in July.]

From: ELLE US
Headshot of Alyssa Bailey
Alyssa Bailey
Senior News and Strategy Editor

Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she's not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.