Taylor Swift’s ME! is a musical-inspired return to her happily uncool brand
The first single from Swift’s seventh album is a defiant reassertion of her positivity – a rabidly upbeat ode to individualism
Pretty much every artist who has released an album in the past 18 months has found themselves battling pop’s new glass ceiling: namely the unyielding chart dominance of the soundtrack to The Greatest Showman, the UK’s biggest-selling album of 2018 and only the second album in 30 years to spend 11 consecutive weeks at No 1.
It was never going to be long before pop acts started trying to play This Is Me et al at their own game. And so, contrary to fan theories that Taylor Swift’s seventh album would herald a return to her country roots, or pop psychedelia à la Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour, the first single from TS7 is an unabashed slab of Showmancore: a rabidly upbeat ode to individualism, wide-eyed to the point of camp. (That would also explain Swift’s – one presumes – intentionally très mauvais Frawnch accent at the start of the video.)