Their relationship didn't work out, but John Mayer evidently harbors no ill will toward Taylor Swift on the business front.

The pair dated briefly several years ago, and Mayer commented on Swift during the 7 Days of Genius special on MSNBC after Ronan Farrow brought her up in the context of discussing technology and music.

"Artists need the person with the loudest voice to speak for them ... I think that's a really cool thing for a musician to do," Mayer says. "Like two percent of the music industry has 80 percent of all the media about it. There's like four people who get all the press, and if any of those four people say, 'I want to speak for those people who would just never make this a story.' The only reason we're talking about Taylor Swift taking Spotify on is because she's Taylor Swift!"

Swift pulled her entire recorded catalog from Spotify — which is the largest streaming service in the world — in November of 2014, citing a level of compensation for artists and writers that she feels is insufficient. Since then, several other country artists have followed suit by removing their most recent projects from Spotify, including Jason Aldean, Justin Moore and Brantley Gilbert.

Mayer also commented on rumors that his 2013 song "Paper Doll" is a jab at Swift, supposedly in response to her 2010 song, "Dear John."

"I'm not in the business of telling people what the song is about. I never said anything about it," he says. "And now I just go, 'Look, I can say the name Taylor Swift. She's an artist. I'm an artist. Let's just ... everybody stop. Nobody's got an incurable cancer. We're rich people who get to live out our dreams. Let's just stop it. It's really about the longevity of all the work that goes together, and I'm just not interested in the things that won't last forever."

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