August 27, 2017 — I didn’t get up at the midnight premier time to listen to the new Taylor Swift song, Look What You Made Me Do, but I did listen to the song on Friday morning. The song had 6 million views on YouTube then. My thoughts….

About thirty second into the song, I started asking myself was when is something going to happen in this song? It’s about the most repetitive song I’ve ever heard, without any real melody, no chorus, no hook, not even a bass line. I found the song to be unfinished, as if she laid down a drum track, some words, but hadn’t gotten to the rest.  Mind you, with all of the buzz about her reinvention, I was hoping the reinvention might be musical. I was wrong. Her reinvention was not reinvention, just an amping up of her drama. Her last record, 1989, Swift’s full emersion into pop music, lead with the single Shake It Off, a statement for her “haters” that she’s not listening, but a message of drama nonetheless. Now we have this, Look What You Made Me Do, with lyrics showing she’s more vindictive — keeping lists like Arya Stark from Game of Thrones (Arya recites names of people she’s going to kill or has killed to avenge her father’s wrongful assassination). and concluding with old Taylor can’t come to the phone because she’s dead. The critics panned the song, pointing out the drama, pointing out the unflattering move from victim to villain, but I don’t really care about the message as much as the music. The song is simply an electronic beat with spoken lyrics. It’s unfinished. It’s forgettable, as forgeable as the hook it borrows (and gives song-writing credit to) from the early ‘90s song I’m Too Sexy For My Shirt, a song I’d never have thought would be sampled and recycled, ever!

Here’s a snippet of the songs as a mash-up, featuring the head of Kanye West, the alleged subject of the Swift’s song.

As of the time I’m writing this article, Sunday morning at 11:30 PDT, Swift’s song has 35,375,336 views on YouTube, and it’s number 1 on all streaming services, in fact, broke the records for most streams on both Spotify and YouTube.  Either people like drama, or people have no need for melody, for a bass line, or for a chorus in a song; Taylor Swift can literally talk to a drum beat and that will sell.

The video will premier tonight on the MTV Video Music Awards. As for me, I won’t be watching then because I’ll be watching the season finale of Game of Thrones, some real drama there, but judging from the VMA setlist, pairing all the drama participants together for one night, I think the VMA producers must be channeling Game of Throne’s level drama. Taylor Swift has some fight going with Katy Perry (who now looks like Miley Cyrus from her strange phase), and Katy Perry’s the host. So who will sit on the iron thrown, I mean, carry the night, Taylor Swift, via her video, or Katy Perry, via her performance and hosting gig? Speaking of Miley Cyrus, she will be a performer. So are lots of other people, like Ed Sheeran, and that rapper who the youngsters love right now, Kendrick Lamar. There will be a life-time achievement award for Pink; she will perform as well. I had no idea, but she’s old now, 37 — a life-time right there. The other performers will be Fifth Harmony, Shawn Mendes, Lorde, The Weeknd (that’s the correct spelling), Thirty Seconds to Mars, Logic, Khalid, Gucci Mane, Post Malone, Julie Michaels, Alessia Cara and Kyle. In a departure from the norm, the categories will not be split into gender, I’m not sure what I think about that, and they will have additional categories, like best video to make a statement.

And all of that just makes me anticipate Game of Thrones even more. In the last episode, Jon Snow said he would bend the knee to Daenerys, which is inconsistent with my thought that the show will end up with a democracy and no ruler on the Iron Throne. And let’s hope Arya doesn’t put her brother Jon Snow on her list for that bend the knee thing. Well, except that Jon Snow isn’t her brother, but nobody knows that yet. Yep, drama, drama, drama; love me some Game of Thrones. But if you ask me, song drama is not my thing. Unless, could it be? Taylor Swift is a fan of Game of Thrones, and she thinks she’s Arya Stark? If that’s true, then I might, make that Might with a capital M, give Taylor Swift a pass for this drama-ridden, melody-lacking song. I hope the rest of her album is better.

P.S.P.GOT (that means Post Script, Post Game of Thrones): the Video.

My partner in crime on this Taylor Swift stuff, i.e., my sister sent me the video by way of a People magazine article explaining the video (different images of Taylor throughout the years as characters in the video). My new impression of the song: it’s a sound-track … for a video, and it honestly makes me want to cry. We think people who put themselves out there are immune from attacks, immune from the things that are said about them. All I see now is Taylor’s pain, a soundtrack and a video of pain. I really loved her early stuff. I remember floating around on the 90+ degree water that is the sand-bottomed lake near the house I’m very originally from in East Texas; June 2009, right after my grandmother, who was my spirit animal, died. I was new to Taylor Swift’s music, and asked the big East Texas man (they’re a type, you know, stand there for ten minutes holding a door until your handicapped sister gets through, not exaggerating), this one in a boat supervising his his three sons who were swimming near me, if he would please turn it up. That will always be Taylor Swift to me, the pretty girl with the sparkly guitar, but Taylor moved on to what she wanted to be. More power to her; she did well for herself. I don’t think she deserved some of these things that happened to her. My hope is that she’s still in there, that she’s not, as she says, dead. And “reputation”, Taylor, if only you could read what I’m writing. It’s Lana Del Rey’s tag-line on her Twitter account, words I think that are really true, words you have to write on the wall to remind yourself if you’ve put yourself out there: “reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.” Taylor was my angel that day in June 2009; no matter what, I’ll always root for her.

People article: http://people.com/music/mtv-vmas-taylor-swift-look-what-you-made-me-do-music-video/amp/?xid=amprecirc3