How Taylor Swift’s Return to the Music Scene is a Game Changer
The single cover for the new hit single “Look What You Made Me Do” has been streamed more than 84.4 million times by listeners.
On August 18th, Taylor Swift wiped all of her social media platforms clean, leaving a completely empty slate and a global state of confusion. Then, just three days later, mysterious small clips of evil looking snakes started to be posted, and the suspense continued to build. For the past two years, Swift has been laying low, not releasing any new music since her previous album 1989. That is, until the night of August 24th, when her new song hit the scene, and people were there to listen.
The song is called “Look What You Made Me Do”, and the first thing that people noticed was how much the tone of Swift’s music had changed in just one song. The entire aura of who Taylor Swift once was is very surely gone, and if the public couldn’t draw that conclusion, Swift makes it clear through the lyrics “Sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Because she’s dead!” Such drastic and extravagant change did not sit well with a lot of listeners, but this hit song, just like a lot of Swift’s previous work, has shot to the top of the charts. The song debuted at number 77 on the Billboard Hot 100, strikingly low for the iconic Swift. That soon changed when she shot up to the number 1 spot, only after a week of being out to the public. The song receieve a total of 84.4 million streams within that first week, beating out the record of the former hit of the summer “Despacito”. That 84.4 million streams also set her on track to become the highest amount of streams in a single week by a female artists. This single song has completely shaken up this year’s music charts, and there is only more to come with the release of her new album, Reputation, in November.
Not only is Swift’s song a hot topic of conversation, but the music video for the song has also spurred insane amounts of debate and discussion. The video was premiered at the MTV Video Music Awards, and has over 317 million views so far. Swift uses this video to send a message to the world, that the Old Taylor Swift is long gone, and the new one is here to stay. The video includes multiple references to well known dramas that she holds with her fellow celebrities. These include her disputes with Katy Perry, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Tom Hiddleston, Calvin Harris, and much more. Easter egg like hints are laid through the video, and created a frenzy among fans to discover them all. She also uses her old personas from different eras of her career to exhibit how much she has grown, and symbolically gets rid of them throughout the video. The final thirty-five seconds show all the different Taylor’s together, engaging in one big fight. Swift, and director of the video Joseph Kahn, use this short amount of time to show the world that Swift is extremely aware of what the world says about her, but simply doesn’t care. The song is only rising in popularity, and with the highly anticipated release of new singles and the album, the name Taylor Swift is not going away any time in the near future.
http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7934021/taylor-swift-deletes-social-media-accounts