Taylor Swift Me new music video

Is Taylor Swift’s “Me!” a Return to Her True Uncool Self?

In the pretty pastel video, she lets her authentic cheerful side shine

The dark times of Taylor Swift’s gothy revenge period are over. Behold the fresh, new morning after her big reveal. The world is awash in Swift’s pastel rainbow, an explosion of light, empowerment and an impassioned celebration of our collective individuality.

The midnight April 26 drop of “ME!”, the song and the music video, was the culmination of 13 countdown days of Instagram teasing. Lady sure knows how to stoke an online fire. It is, in fact, deeply satisfying to watch a woman with so much power work her chess moves with such breezy confidence.

But it is with her recent fashion that Swift has really been toying with us. We have been treated to a number of high-profile appearances in a mysterious, new, cheerful wardrobe. The red-carpet onslaught could not be missed: the dreamy peach J. Mendel princess gown that the Time 100 magazine covergirl wore on the red carpet last week; a sparkly pink sequin romper for the iHeart Radio awards the week before; the candy-striped mini bathrobe she wore to her cameo on the NFL Draft live show last night.

The bold closet moves stood out because Swift had been very much in seclusion over the past few months, since the end of her Reputation tour last fall. Reputation smashed earnings records once again for a female solo artist; she now holds the first and second spot on that elite list.

Leading up to the midnight drop was fierce speculation among Swift’s rabid fanbase, 115 million strong on Instagram alone—She’s getting married! She’s launching a clothing line! Wait, what do the palm trees mean? All of this was cleverly stoked by her Instagram takeover—her feed got very pastel. Turns out, the pics were stills taken from the ME! video. 

Known for her love of Easter egg clues, the singer chose the weeks around actual Easter to drop hints about her new direction. She didn’t disappoint: The snake of yore, an internet trope come to larger-than-life on her Reputation stage, was long the symbolic embodiment of that Kimye feud. In “ME!” it is now pink, and there is a metamorphosis: into a sea of butterflies!

 

Check out Swift’s actual cats, too, Meredith Grey and Olivia Benson: ever the shrewd shillers for Mom, they are to remind viewers she has been busy filming for the Christmas release of the live action version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats! And hey, there are the Dixie Chicks, hidden among a portrait grouping—how could there not be a collab on the horizon?

The meaning of “ME!”, Swift told Robin Roberts last night in Nashville, is “Embracing your individuality and really celebrating and owning it.”

The famously apolitical singer broke her silence with an impassioned plea just before the midterms last October to get out the vote. She also stated that she herself couldn’t support candidates who didn’t support equal pay, protections for women and gay rights. All this rainbow love might be yet another subtle sign of her support for LGBTQ rights.

Really, going back to the girl power message that she drove up the charts in the first place, and returning to more relatable (read: less overtly fashionable) clothing, is a very smart business move.

All the softness and light underscores a major point: On the eve of her 30th birthday, Swift is a helluva businesswoman worth some $470 million, in addition to the boatload of talent and her luminous charisma and looks. She writes her own songs and has managed to negotiate control of her own work. She is no slave to a record company nor to traditional media: Swift launches her work directly onto social media and sells out concert tours without the traditional supporting role the media used to play.

That a new image comes with a new album is almost a given at Swift’s level of fame. When she was wrapping up her Reputation tour, Swift said, “I always look at albums as chapters in my life, and to the fans, I’m so happy that you like this one,” she said. “But I have to be really honest with you about something: I’m even more excited about the next chapter.”

And the road is especially fraught for former child stars. After all, Swift has been in the public eye since she was 14, which is now just more than half of her life. Miley shrugged off Hannah Montana astride a Wrecking Ball; “Ooops” Britney lost her Mouse ears.

Taylor Swift, too, had to announce she was out of her bubblegum period. So around 2016, before the release of Reputation, her stylist, Joseph Cassell, began positioning Swift as a sophisticated fashion plate. He dressed her in white Balmain for the Billboards that year, her abs on full display; later he chose hot orange and pink Atelier Versace for the Grammys. Swift was grown up, and busting couture.

Looking sweet is about as transgressive as you can get right now in fashion

But this return to the cheerful side just might mark a whole new level of confidence. Check out the frothy floral Zimmerman minidress and melon Mango jacket she wore to Gigi Hadid’s birthday party last week. Now that is a power move, bucking the denim dresscode the rest of the girl squad bought into.

But also: Looking sweet is about as transgressive as you can get right now in fashion among Swift’s elite social set, where all the supermodel It girls are doing a fierce (and rather un-ironic) ’90s retro thing. Swift is deliberately placing herself outside of the fashion circus.

Or maybe she is saying she is above it all?

The need to continuously reinvent is a baked-in part of the female pop diva lifecycle. Blame Madonna’s relentless pace of transformation. In fact, M’s latest alter ego, Madame X, made her first appearance just yesterday, complete with eye patch.

Beyoncé, master of the stealth drop, has discarded many of her own alter egos. And her latest Netflix film around her Coachella appearance is most notable for how much vulnerability she shows in lifting back the curtain on the gruelling work it took for her to recover from giving birth to twins and getting into concert shape in an impossible time frame.

So perhaps Swift is onto something new, and next. Maybe wide-eyed wonder and the bravery to be our authentic, deliberately not cool selves, is the right mood for right now. Be frothy and silly and love cats and pretty clothes.

The young Taylor Swift was someone my then-tween daughter and her friends screamed along to in the car on our way to basketball tournaments. Swift channelled the voice of a mildly heartbroken young generation while serving up sweet, innocuous looks, from collegiate headbands to sassy miniskirts and zippy little Mad Men matchy-matchy numbers. That’s right, Buster, we’re never, ever, ever getting back together! You can’t get any more girl power than that, and it is still just as damned good.

The question for Swift has always been whether her fan base will grow with her. She has been vocal about how much she fears for her own fans—and she is very loyal and polite to them—since the Manchester bombing at Ariana Grande’s concert.

Swifty conspiracy theorists, who are legion, are already pointing to a clock set to 8:30 in the “ME!” Video as a signal of the date that the full album will be birthed. But the release of this one song, along with a new visual and fashion vocabulary, shows a Taylor Swift keen to lead us all back to the brighter side of life.

 

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