Taylor Swift just released a brand new song, and one thing is very obvious: She has her finger on the pulse of our culture. And it’s obnoxious.
The latest cringefest to come from the ever-changing pop star is titled “ME!” It’s just a little on the nose. If you haven’t had the (dis)pleasure yet of listening to Taylor’s new song, here you go:
Wittingly or unwittingly, Taylor created a song that has no meaning and no message but will nevertheless bubble to the top of the charts because of its shallow hat tip to a society of people obsessed with themselves.
In case you’re not convinced, or you’re concerned I just really don’t like Taylor’s music (which is an astute observation), here is an actual line from the song: “Girl, there ain’t no ‘I’ in ‘team,’ but you know there is a ‘me.’”
I like a pointless, fun song just as much as the next person, but most of this cheeky ode to self-centeredness is just vapid lyrics strung together to an obviously made-for-radio beat, punctuated by occasional shouts of “ME!” from Taylor.
If you’ll humor me, I am going to Jesus juke this song for just a moment (feel free to roll your eyes). Taylor’s song is not the sickness; it’s just the latest symptom. We are a culture drunk on our own self-fascination and I’m not sure when — or how — we’ll sober up.
The apostle Paul warned us in Romans 8:8 that people who are “in the realm of the flesh” — in other words, concerned only with ourselves and our desires — “cannot please God.” And in 1 Corinthians 10:24, he wrote, “No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.”
Taylor’s message in her zany new song, featuring Panic! at the Disco frontman Brendon Urie, who is the tune’s only saving grace, preaches the exact opposite (albeit shallow) message.
“I’m the only one of me, baby, that’s the fun of me,” Taylor declares in singsongy style. She’s not wrong, despite the lazy rhyme. We are all unique, and that should be celebrated, but our worth goes much deeper than that. If I’m just “me” and you’re just “you,” there’s no point to any of this.
Songs don’t all need to be preachy and singers don’t need to always wax philosophical, but Taylor’s latest bop is about an inch deep, and really, it’s just boring and pretty un-unique — she just took 2013 Katy Perry and repackaged it.
I’ll wrap this up by noting that if a Christian song were this bad (and there are plenty that are), and it was for some reason considered alongside secular music, it would certainly be tossed aside. Don’t believe me? Look how quickly faith-based movies are bashed for being too cheesy.
Taylor’s song is bad, so what do you say we give it the Christian movie treatment?