Joe Jonas on Taylor Swift Dis: "That's Just How It Goes"

By now, the split between the otherwise reclusive Joe Jonas and Taylor Swift has been well documented. Jonas dumped the country star with a 27-second phone call. She went on to pour her heartbreak into "Forever & Always," on which she sings, "Did I say something way too honest that made you run and hide like a scared little boy?" Joe then shot back with "Much Better," which includes the line "I'm done with superstars and all the tears on her guitar," a reference to Swift's "Tears on My Guitar." He's upped the ante on the Jonas Brothers' current tour, changing the line to "I'm done with country stars."

Why take the rift public? Joe tells Rolling Stone in our new cover story that the song was just something he had to write. "Relationships give you ideas of what to write about," Joe tells RS, "but sometimes it's hard to be honest. I mean, you have to be, but it's like, 'I don't really want to say anything bad about this person, but I'm going to write it.' That's just how it goes."

Of course, the band talked about much more than public displays of heartbreak. Our Jenny Eliscu found the band rehearsing for its summer tour and trying to march the long path to musical credibility. Read more about our Jonas Brothers cover story here, and check out photos from the issue here.

The complete Rolling Stone cover story, "Boys to Men," is on newsstands now.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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