Jeffrey Lang’s Mother Opens Up as Taylor Swift Pens Tribute Song 15 Years After His Death
Amid backlash over Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl, one track is cutting through the noise: Ruin the Friendship, which Jeffrey Lang’s mother believes channels Swift’s teenage nostalgia for her late son.
Taylor Swift's new album 'The Life of a Showgirl' has been getting dragged for some oddball lyric choices. But one track, 'Ruin the Friendship,' is landing in a very different way for someone who knew Swift before the stadiums and the sequins: the mother of Jeffrey Lang, a childhood friend who died in 2010. Her reaction adds a layer to the song that most of us wouldn't clock on first listen.
The setup
According to The Tennessean, Susan Lang believes 'Ruin the Friendship' taps straight into Swift's teenage memories of her son. Swift and Jeffrey grew up together in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and spent a lot of time as just-that-close friends. Susan says back in those early days, Taylor would even want Jeffrey to hear her new songs first. He died at 21 in 2010, and the song brought the past roaring back for her — not in a tabloid way, but in a 'this is personal' way.
- Album: 'The Life of a Showgirl' (Swift's 12th studio album), currently catching heat for 'odd lyricism'
- Track in question: 'Ruin the Friendship'
- Jeffrey Lang: Swift's childhood friend from Hendersonville, Tennessee; died in 2010 at age 21
- Mom's perspective: She hears nods like 'Gallatin Road' that feel like deliberate homages — even if the song never says his name
- Their dynamic: Very close friends; Susan isn't sure Jeffrey felt the same way romantically, which complicates the read of the song
What Susan Lang heard — and why it hit her
She says listening to the track pulled up happy memories and a lot of emotion. The song never name-checks Jeffrey, but references like 'Gallatin Road' and high school imagery made her think Taylor was revisiting a very specific time and place. She remembers the two as inseparable in that effortless, goofy, teenage way — laughing a lot, always around each other — which makes the idea of losing him at 21 feel even heavier in this context.
The song's lens: a missed chance you cannot fix
'Ruin the Friendship' plays like a what-if: two friends, a spark that never fully turns into anything, and the question of whether it should have. The title gets at the classic fear — take a shot and you might wreck something good — but the grief underneath the song kind of flips that calculation. The track blends prom-night snapshots, drives down Gallatin Road, and the foggy glow of high school into something that feels less like gossip and more like a quiet elegy.
'It was not convenient, no, but I whispered at the grave, should've kissed you anyway'
That line is the whole thesis: regret as tribute. It reframes the 'ruin the friendship' idea as a plea — say the thing while you can. In a record that people are side-eyeing for some of its weirder turns of phrase, this is the one that lands clean and hard.
If you want to hear it for yourself, 'The Life of a Showgirl' is streaming on Apple Music in the U.S.