After weeks of teasing, Taylor Swift has returned with a brand new single and a recent shade palette forward of what could be her seventh studio album.
“Me!,” a bubbly pop track by the 29-year-old singer and songwriter, that includes the vocalist Brendon Urie of Panic! on the Disco, premiered on streaming companies and as a music video on YouTube at midnight on Friday, following a 13-day countdown — the singer’s fortunate quantity — and an array of different clues and Easter eggs aimed on the devoted fans referred to as Swifties.
With shiny horns and lyrics like “You’ll be able to’t spell superior with out me,” the playful observe — produced by Joel Little (Lorde, Khalid) and Swift, and written by Swift, Little and Urie — is a dramatic swing from Swift’s previous lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” launched in August 2017. Utilizing some harsher sounds and largely black-and-white visible content material, that track and Swift’s ensuing album, “Reputation,” noticed the singer grappling with perceived backlash — and embracing snake imagery — whereas alluding to long-simmering celebrity drama with the rapper Kanye West and his spouse Kim Kardashian West.
“Me!” is extra chipper, and was offered in a wash of opal, springtime pastels, rainbows, cats and sparkles. Because the music video begins, a CGI snake bursts right into a swarm of colourful butterflies.
On Thursday, Swift shocked followers, who had spun elaborate theories about her promotional bread crumbs, in entrance of a butterfly mural by the artist Kelsey Montague — full of “clues in regards to the track and the brand new music,” Swift mentioned on Instagram — in her adopted hometown Nashville.
“You guys are superb for figuring this out,” she informed these gathered, “as a result of nobody knew we have been coming, nobody knew this was part of the marketing campaign.”
Swift additionally appeared briefly on the N.F.L. draft on Thursday night time, alongside Robin Roberts of ABC. “‘Me!’ is a track about embracing your individuality and actually celebrating it and proudly owning it,” Swift mentioned. “With a pop track, now we have the power to get a melody caught in folks’s heads. I simply need it to be one which makes them really feel higher about themselves, not worse.”
The video — which options the singer’s pet cats, photographs of child chickens in sun shades and a fast shot of a Dixie Chicks portrait within the background — was directed by Swift and Dave Meyers, who is thought for his work with Kendrick Lamar, Missy Elliott and Pink.
Although Swift has hinted that extra new music is on the way in which, she didn’t present extra particulars a few potential new album, which is referred to by savvy followers as “TS7” in lieu of a public title. The singer was scheduled to look once more with Roberts on “Good Morning America” on Friday, with the present insinuating extra surprises to come back.
Swift announced in November that she had signed a brand new multiyear, multi-album cope with Common Music Group and its subsidiary, Republic Data, after greater than a decade because the premier artist on the Nashville-based label Massive Machine. As a part of the brand new settlement, Swift will personal her grasp recordings shifting ahead, and on YouTube, the video for “Me!” was credited to Taylor Swift Productions, Inc.
“I really feel so motivated by new alternatives created by the streaming world and the ever altering panorama of our trade,” she wrote in an announcement on the time.
Swift had beforehand sparred with streaming companies like Spotify and Apple Music over royalty charges, generally withholding her songs in protest. However the launch of “Me!” retains with newer trade tendencies and is out there throughout the main companies. (On-demand streaming now accounts for the overwhelming majority of music consumption in america.)
Whereas “Fame” had a sizable debut, promoting greater than 1,000,000 copies in its first week, and has since gone three-times platinum, reaching the modern-day equal of three million albums bought (partially by way of digital performs), it was acquired extra coolly by critics than a lot of Swift’s earlier work. On the Grammy Awards this yr, “Fame” was nominated just for greatest pop vocal album, shedding to Ariana Grande’s “Sweetener.” Swift has gained 10 Grammys in her profession, together with two for album of the yr.
Nonetheless, Swift stays a titan of pop. The worldwide Reputation Stadium Tour grossed a reported $345.7 million throughout seven months, and led to a Netflix live performance movie launched on New 12 months’s Eve. She has appeared not too long ago on the duvet of Elle and Time magazines and, along with her new music, will co-star within the forthcoming movie adaptation of “Cats,” scheduled for launch in December.