Taylor Swift has fallen in and out of love many more times in her music than in real life. But “Gorgeous”, the third preview of her upcoming seventh studio album Reputation, is no “Love Story” — it’s a slapstick romantic comedy. For all the furor over “Look What You Made Me Do”, Swift has never taken herself less seriously. Rarely has she — or any songwriter — depicted infatuation as goofily as this.
The verses to “Gorgeous” are Swift at her pettiest. She meets a man and immediately negs him: “You should take it as a compliment/ That I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk.” She’s tempted to cheat: “I got a boyfriend, he’s older than us/ He’s in the club doing I don’t know what.” She’s even too melodramatic for her own song. Max Martin and Shellback’s gentle, rippling synths sound like thought bubbles — the soundtrack to Taylor meeting someone and immediately planning the rest of their lives together. “You’ve ruined my life by not being mine…” ding!
Swift’s luck is no better in the chorus. “I can’t say anything to your face/ ‘Cause look at your face!” For the first time ever, this songwriter’s so tongue-tied she can’t even think of a rhyme. “But what can I say?/ You’re gorgeous!”
The protagonist of this song is not a good person. She craves attention, she’s overly dramatic, never admits she’s wrong — and she blames everyone else for her own temptation. But isn’t that what infatuation does to all of us? Swift’s playing a character, someone raised on a lifetime of fairytales about true love — some of them maybe even sung by Taylor herself. “There’s nothing I hate more than what I can’t have”; it’s enough to drive you crazy.
Get the song HERE.
Watch the lyric video below: