Taylor Swift's cotton candy assault on 2019 continued Friday as she released the second single from her newly announced album, Lover. "You Need to Calm Down" sounds like a refreshing callback to her 1989 era. There are synth beats and chant-able refrains, which are hallmarks that typically spell out a Taylor Swift Mega Hit. But as the synth beats soften between verses one and two, something happens. Swift gets political. Kinda.
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To be clear, the gesture is nice. Swift came under quite an online firestorm by staying practically silent during the 2016 election. Since, she has taken somewhat more overt stances, particularly in regard to LGBTQ rights and the 2018 election. And in a first, the second single from her newest album serves as a partial anthem for the LGBTQ community. But in the less than three minutes of "You Need to Calm Down," Swift stumbles in her lyrical execution. Seemingly unable to decide if this should be an anthem for the LGBTQ+ community or a personal anecdote about incessant online trolls, she chooses both with neither quite taking hold. The song becomes too frivolous to become an LGBTQ+ anthem, but too heavy to be another personal diary entry set to shiny production.
The first verse talks about Swift's personal life and dealing with online trolls at 7 in the morning. Then, the second verse takes a turn. The "I" from the first verse switches into a "we," and there are mentions of "glad/GLAAD" and signs on the street. Before you can officially clock that Swift is perhaps discussing (whispers) gay things, she says it, "Shade never made anybody less gay!" Sure enough, verse two is stacked with LGBTQ references. If that wasn't clear, it's quite literally spelled out (spelling is fun!) in the lyric video that says, "Why be mad, when you can be GLAAD?" Note the double-A spelling of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
The personal-political angle makes sense for Swift—her entire catalogue of music is comprised of heart-on-the-sleeve looks at her life. But as powerful as that might have been on 2009's Fearless, it proved to be a bit damning on Reputation: an album airing out the complicated celebrity rumblings that defined Swift's life. On "You Need to Calm Down," her attempt to marry the personal with the political is a baffling parallel. Equating online haters with the personal and societal struggle of LGBTQ+ people is, at best, tone deaf.
People are always going to listen to Swift's poetic retelling of her life, but if you're going to leverage the power of your fanbase to send a political message, why insert yourself into that conversation? It waters down the potency and ultimately sends the message that the uphill climb for gay rights can be equated to dealing with a faceless Twitter account. But that's hard to see from a pastel colored tower where political issues are carefully chosen to support Swift's personal brand.
And such a calculated move to leverage LGBTQ rights into her own image seems gross. It's clearly an effort to add a softened political message into her music without rubbing too many people the wrong way. It's something, but barely enough. The hard lesson that Swift hasn't mastered is that sometimes, especially as an ally, you don't have to interject yourself into the narrative.
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