Taylor Swift actually has a long history of trying to rap... http://t.co/xsAqovBmxo pic.twitter.com/w5JBwBMCTC
— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) August 19, 2014I thought 'oh, ok' out of morbid curiousity I have to have a look at this: Taylor Swift's new song; and lamentably there will be no hipping and hopping on this sick beat.
In spite of not only being a Taylor Swift song, but also being possibly the most obnoxious song I've heard in a good long while; I really like it. It's uptempo, in-your-face and ridiculously catchy and that's about all there is to it; I'm a little apprehensive of saying this, but I think it's the case that the catchiness that gets Taylor off the hook for goofy lines like: 'The haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate hate'. To criticise the outlandish lyrics would be to completely miss the point and take the song too seriously; this is a song that falls into the same category as Happy by Pharrell Williams and Friday by Rebecca Black: infectiously memorable and simply about having fun.
The only thing I'm going to say holds the song back is the uncomfortable talking part in the middle: very reminiscent of Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne and Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani. In fact, I'd go as far as saying the ostentatiousness turned up to 11 feel was what Gwen was going for, but it fails as a song by not being playful at the same time. And I'm not sure what it is about awkward mini-monologues mid-song that Taylor insists on, I've already mentioned this on the blog before here. Nonetheless it's good to see Taylor not taking herself too seriously and laughing at herself as opposed to whining about various subject matter in frequently insecure appearance.
It's already got well over 13 million views and it was uploaded under two days ago at time of writing, my hope is it doesn't suffer the dreaded death by overplay, I fear this song may become inescapable and wear thin fairly quickly; at the moment though I am hopeful that this song will have a pretty good lifespan.
