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Taylor Swift’s New Song Sucks, Please Stop Pretending It Doesn’t

Taylor Swift just released a new song ‘Me!’ which has topped the charts and broke a bunch of new records – which is because it’s T-Swift, and unfortunately not because it’s actually a good song. If you haven’t already seen the music video that the internet is going crazy over, here it is:

‘Me!’ is the first single Taylor Swift’s dropped since Reputation, and boy is it a mess. It’s bright and colourful to the point of being kinda icky and claustrophobic, and worse than that, it’s not even very original.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good Taylor Swift banger – ‘Shake it off’ was the SHIT. But ‘Me!’? Disappointment if I’ve ever felt it.

Upon watching the music video when it dropped, I couldn’t help but feel that it seemed very familiar, and it didn’t take long to realise why. The title card was reminiscent of Panic! at The Disco‘s older stuff like Pretty Odd and Vices and Virtues, and as a major Panic! fan, it made me super keen for the rest of the video.

The song then opened with the same singing style Swift used in Delicate (which, unlike this, was a great song), and that was pretty much the last good thing ‘Me!’ had to offer.

Taylor and Brendon obviously have conflicting styles, and the sequence before the music began meshed them together really well – it boasted the best parts of both of them with Taylor’s dramatic and funny performance, and Brendon’s quirky class.

However, the further you get into the song, the messier it gets – both literally and metaphorically, with splashes of weird pastel coloured goo and dances where the coordination is just a tad off. They seem to be trying to mix Brendon and Taylor’s style, but it’s not working anymore.

The bright colours and pastels get overwhelming and a bit too Disney princess, and the whole thing just doesn’t make sense. And as if the weird colours and constant shouting of ‘me!’ isn’t enough, once paired with that ridiculously cheery spelling scene, it’s unbearable.

Seriously, these are real lyrics:

“Hey kids, spelling is fun!
Girl, there ain’t no ‘I’ in team
But you know, there is a ‘me'”

I definitely read that in Elmo’s voice.

On top of the fact that the song is just void of anything meaningful and is essentially  just people shouting ‘me’ while a million different colours swirl blindingly, it actually also recycles some older themes both artists have previously played with.

In one of the parts where Taylor seems to try adding depth to the song by creating a meaningful relationship with Brendon, she sings:

“And when we had that fight out in the rain
You ran after me and called my name”

I was sure that I’d heard Taylor Swift sing something similar before, and sure enough, in her older song ‘Mine’,  which is from way back in 2010, she says “I ran out, crying, and you followed me out into the street”.

While it’s disappointing that an artist as talented and comprehensive as Taylor Swift would reuse old song lyrics, it may have been forgivable if they didn’t copy another scene too.

In ‘Me!’, Brendon Urie is floating through the air after jumping out of a building by carrying an umbrella, Mary Poppins style –  which is basically the same scene as one in his music video for ‘Ready to Go’, back in 2011, where he also gets launched off a building and then floats down holding an umbrella.

‘Me!’ is just bad, honestly. It’s lazy writing, inconsistent, it repeats old lines and it’s a boring song with no depth. It pales in comparison to Taylor Swift’s previous work.

The whole music video is a giant deja vu experience of ‘Ready to Go’, ‘Mine’, and Sesame street – and it sucks. C’mon T-Swift, we know you can do better.

Image Source: Giphy @taylorswift, Youtube @TaylorSwiftVevo

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