And I am living for it.
Let’s get it out of the way early: I don’t think that “Look what you made me do” is Taylor’s finest song, and I certainly don’t think it’s an easily digestible hit the way all the rest of her lead singles have been.
And just like with her last two lead singles, my hope is that it won’t even be the best song on the album.
So why use it as her first single?
Because just like “Shake it Off” very clearly proclaimed that Taylor Swift was now Taylor Swift: Pop Artist, “Look what you made me do” very clearly defines this new era of Taylor Swift as:
Taylor Swift: The petty AF Slytherin.
I’ve long contended that Taylor Swift is a Slytherin masquerading as a Hufflepuff.
And I don’t say this as an insult — far from it. I’ve been a fan of Taylor Swift and her music since Fearless, but I’ve always found the most interesting thing about her to be the way in which she’s maneuvered herself into becoming one of the most dominant pop stars ten years running in a field that’s littered with the forgotten careers of dozens of other blond singers.
I’ve always seen her “aw, shucks, who me?” persona as just that — an image that she portrays (quite convincingly) because it’s what has generally connected most with her audience.
Yes, this is fake — but no more or less fake than any other widely famous individual who has an image to maintain (i.e. all of them). I’m not going to fault Taylor Swift because she simply did it better, for longer, and for more money than all the rest of the stars and starlets in Hollywood.
But after the events of last summer, that same persona could no longer really be believable. So, Taylor had to change. She had to reinvent herself — but she had to do it in such a way that she couldn’t alienate all the people that had bought into it in the first place.
Enter in “Look what you made me do.”
The song starts out by alluding to the Kimye v. Taylor beef from last summer using the most thinly veiled language ever.
I don’t like your little games
Don’t like your tilted stage
The role you made me play
Of the fool, no, I don’t like you
The old Taylor Swift persona would play hurt, here. She would be sad. She would feel wronged because you hurt her. She would hope that you were better. She would want to like you, really.
Slytherin Taylor Swift, on the other hand, does not like you and wants you to know it.
She’s not sad that you wronged her, she’s angry that she got played for a fool.
I don’t like your perfect crime
How you laugh when you lie
You said the gun was mine
Isn’t cool, no, I don’t like you (oh!)
Taylor knows better than anyone the power of celebrity, has shown time and again how easily and how deftly she can weaponize it.
The situation from last summer made her feel like the power of celebrity was in her hands, the control that she has always wanted and generally always gotten was supposed to be in her hands.
But it wasn’t. And she’s not hurt about it — hurt is for the old Taylor. Instead, she’s angry about it. And she wants you to know it because she is petty (and she wants you to know that now, too).
But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
I know that the common read for this is that Taylor is blaming others for having to harden herself. But we can also see this as her admitting that she suddenly realize that the persona had stopped serving its purpose. It was no longer suitable for her career to be a Hufflepuff. It was time to embrace her true Slytherin nature.
Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time
Honey, she says, I can come back from the dead. There’s nothing that you can do that can keep me down. In fact, in trying to kill me, you’ve simply proven how strong I really am.
And she’s not exactly wrong, is she? For all the criticism and all the eye rolling, we’re all still talking about Taylor Swift. Which means we’re not talking about anyone else, including the person Taylor has long feuded with and who happens to be hosting one of the biggest pop culture events of the year.
It’s also just a really good song lyric. Pithy enough to be put in your profile or social media header (which she and plenty of others have).
I’ve got a list of names and yours is in red underlined
I check it once, then I check it twice, oh!
Taylor has admitted to being aware and even a little obsessed with what people say about her. You don’t think she’s just as obsessed with the people that have wronged her?
Of course she is. You know she is — that’s part of the reason why her old persona rang so false. But that persona is gone now, and now she’s some warped mix of Regina George and Arya Stark, coming for everyone.
Ooh, look what you made me do
Look what you made me do
Look what you just made me do
Look what you just made me do
Ooh, look what you made me do
Look what you made me do
Look what you just made me do
Look what you just made me do
So, we come to the chorus, which is admittedly the weakest and most disjointed part of the song. It shifts gears and slows down when it should ramp up, keeping the song from being a real banger.
It also completely undoes the message in the verses, making it feel like Taylor pulled her punch just at the last moment. It’s like the verses are one song and this chorus is another.
Also, by being a “look what you made me do,” it posits Taylor back to her old “it’s your fault” storyline that I was hoping she’d leave behind completely, even if I can understand why she didn’t.
I wish that it had instead been something more like “look what I’m going to do” or even just something corny like “I’m coming for you” to really embrace the messaging. But, again, I see what Taylor was trying to accomplish with it (more on that later).
I don’t like your kingdom keys
They once belonged to me
You ask me for a place to sleep
Locked me out and threw a feast (what?)
This second stanza completely breaks from tradition by talking about how much Taylor cares about and loves fame.
She has talked a lot in the past about loving music, her fans, writing songs. The pursuit of fame, though, and how much she craves it, is never mentioned.
Until now.
Fame is associated with kingdom imagery in two of Taylor’s previous songs, the most notable one being “Long Live” from Speak Now:
Long live the walls we crashed through
How the kingdom lights shined just for me and you
Taylor has stated that it is a song about “my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick.”
In “New Romantics” from 1989, she goes on to say:
Baby I could build a castle
Out of all the bricks they threw at me
And in many ways, she has. The criticism has only fueled her career, and she’s used it to successfully write songs and reinvent herself. The bricks leveled at her have been the same ones she’s used to build her fame on.
She brings that imagery up here again, only this time she’s angry that the keys to the kingdom have been taken from her.
She’s the one that is used to being on top. She’s the one with the keys to the biggest castle.
Or at least she used to be.
Because here’s what happened: the girl with the biggest, best castle? She let herself get played. She thought she was granting a favor by letting someone she considered beneath her into her castle, but instead she got outmatched in the game she thought she knew so well and ended up getting thrown out of her own kingdom.
She was Margaery Tyrell and all her planning just got ripped apart by Kim K’s Cersei Lannister — and she knows it.
And she’s angry AF about it.
Petttttttttty.
(And when I say petty, please know that I mean it in the best way possible. Petty as in Mariah-Carey-saying-I-don’t-know-her petty).
The world goes on, another day, another drama, drama
But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma
And then the world moves on, but one thing’s for sure
Maybe I got mine, but you’ll all get yours
Compare this with “Shake it Off,” where Taylor says that she just keeps cruising, that she won’t stop moving. It’s alright, old-Taylor says breezily. I let that sort of thing go. Because I’m a better person.
But Taylor is not a better person. She has never been the better person. You do not have the number of ongoing feuds that Taylor has by being the better person. You do not bring a photographer to your 4th of July party to document the great time you’re having with your new boyfriend three months after your previous boyfriend broke up with you because you are the better person.
So rather than pretending that she’s going to simply shake it off, she admits to the fact that the world moves on — as they should — but she won’t. Because she is petty af and she now doesn’t care who knows it.
And guess what? She is also done hiding the fact that she’s plotting your downfall. It’s no longer going to be covert, no longer going to be hidden by artifice and PR and a sweet smile. She’s telling you right now that she is coming for your ass in all her petty glory.
I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me
This is not shirking the blame — this is just a description of Taylor. And not Taylor as she is now, but Taylor as she has always been.
Remember, this is the girl who — when Vogue asked her to give her number one advice to new artists — said: Get a good lawyer. The girl who spoke unceasingly about the need for self-preservation when Rolling Stone interviewed her in 2009.
I’ll be the actress, starring in your bad dreams
She is no longer the even the satirical girl from “Blank Space,” the one who was “a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”
She’s stopped pretending to even be a daydream anymore. She’s shed that persona.
She’s just a full on nightmare now, as fake as you always thought she was.
“I’m sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now.”
“Why?”
“Oh ’cause she’s dead!”
It’s a mystery as to why Taylor loves these talking interludes, but she does. But in case the song didn’t make it abundantly clear already, Taylor wants you to know that whoever she was before is not and never can be who she is now.
Finally.
I love this song, not necessarily for what it is (though it definitely grows on you), but for what it represents. I have long waited for Taylor to shed this “aw, me?” Hufflepuff imagery and embrace her true Slytherin self.
I feel like this song does that, and I also think it does what it’s intended to do — loudly announce what the new era of Tswift will be like.
But I won’t say that it’s a perfect song in terms of its messaging.
I have to admit that I would’ve been more into a version in which she more explicitly reveals just what a Slytherin she’s always been. I think she almost does, but the chorus undoes the hard work that the verses do — in both momentum and messaging — by lending themselves to a reading that she was forced to build a new persona rather than revealing the one that’s always been there.
Like I said, the chorus is one song and the verses are another.
From a Taylor Swift business position, I understand why she left it less explicit, even if I wish she had more guts to do otherwise.
Because while I’ve always known and liked that she is cold as ice, there are plenty out there — fans and casual listeners alike — who didn’t. And that makes sense — she really worked hard to sell it.
As an artist, she doesn’t want to isolate the fans that bought into it. Yes, it’d probably gain her some other casual or non-fans if she did, but perhaps not as many as would leave her behind. It’s a safe play when I would’ve rather she made a riskier one, but Taylor has always played it pretty safe.
I do wonder if this, like Red, is an album in transition. That album was halfway between country starlet and pop icon and was therefore all over the place in terms of sound and messaging. But it did then led to a more cohesive 1989.
So is this a stepping stone to Taylor really claiming her true Slytherin self – not just to say “this is who I’ve been made into” but “this is who I’ve always been”?
One can hope.
A final closing thought: I get that the song isn’t for everyone.
This article was meant to be more an analysis than a defense because, let’s face it — Taylor Swift is white, wealthy, straight and conventionally attractive. She is just about the last person in any of our lives who needs someone — especially some random writer on the internet — to come to her defense.
If you already hated Taylor Swift or were on the fence, this song is not going to change your mind about her. You’ll think she’s as fill-in-the-blank (bratty, white feminist, playing-the-victim — all of which are definitely valid) as she ever was.
If you’re a fan, you were probably gonna throw your weight behind it no matter what.
But if you’re like me, who has wanted Taylor step out from behind the curtain for years now, you are hopeful for the new era and currently having the time of your life.
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