Taylor Swirl and her black "Lover"

So, Taylor Swift dropped her new album yesterday, and with it, a music video for the album title track, "Lover".

I probably wouldn't have bothered checking out this new Taylor Swift video, if I hadn't seen screen captures on my Twitter timeline of Taylor Swift with a black dude. So of course I had to click and see what she was try'na do here. I had some things to say about her last video, the overtly 'Look at me! I love the gays!' visual for "You need to calm down", so I guess it's only fair I give "Lover" the same attention.

I never though I'd see the day where Taylor would have a music video with a black love interest. Then again, Taylor always be trying to do things to appease. She very much seems like that girl that acts like she don't care what you think of her, when in fact, she really does and it keeps her up at night. Probably.

Now, my cynical ass was initially like 'Gurl, you're really try'na show that you're down'. But then as I continued watching the video I thought 'You know what bitch? That was cool'. Everything Taylor does seems calculated, and this was no exception. But what I did like about this video is that it seemed a lot less 'HEY. LOOK AT ME' than "You need to calm down" was. The message of the video was supposed to be about the celebration of queerness, but it was really all about Taylor being propositioned as this 'Queen of the gays' and "You need to calm down" being pegged as this gay anthem. (Which it is not).

"Lover" takes are far more low key approach to normalising something that is still considered taboo and is better for it. The whole time I was watching this video, I wasn't solely focused on Taylor being with a black guy. I was taking in the video and the song as a whole. Sometimes simplicity and a less is more approach goes a longer way than trying to do too much. It's wild to me that after so many years in the game Taylor still doesn't always get that. But that's a symptom of caring too much about what people think of you and how they perceive you. It's kinda the Taylor package at this point. For her own mental well-being, I hope she reaches a point where she finds a balance and cares a little less about trying to people please.

I also really like the song. It's the only song from this new album that Taylor's put out that I actually like.

I've not yet listened to Lover yet. Dunno when I will, if I even will. The last Taylor Swift album I listened to was 1989. I could not with Reptuation. But I was looking through the album credits and noticed that there was no Max Martin. Not even a little bit. But there's lots of Jack Antonoff, so I'm kinda interested in what direction she's gone with the sound of this album, as the singles haven't given us much of a clue.

Lover is also 18 tracks long. The standard version has 18 tracks. Gurl. I used to turn my nose up at albums that had less than 15 tracks. Now I'm like 'Just gimme a nice, tight 11 to 12 track album'.