Taylor Swift unleashed her latest "From the Vault" gem on Wednesday (April 7), and though it's called "Mr. Perfectly Fine (Taylor's Version)," trust her when she says things are not.
"Hello Mr. Perfectly Fine/ How's your heart after breaking mine?/ Mr. always at the right place at the right time, baby," she sings over the dreamy, mid-tempo acoustic track, "Hello, Mr. casually cruel/ Mr. everything revolves around you/ I've been Miss misery since your goodbye/ And you're Mr. Perfectly Fine."
She's not wrong. After releasing the character-driven Folklore and Evermore pandemic albums last year, in which the singer took on other people's stories, "Mr. Perfectly Fine" sounds like a classic Fearless -era Taylor tale of romantic woe. Describing the guy as "Mr. Perfect Face," "Mr. Here to stay" and "Mr. Looked me in the eye and told me you would never go away," in the first verse, Taylor paints a portrait of a man who says all the rights things at the right time, before she gets to know "Mr. Change of heart," right before he breaks hers.
The new song goes on to reveal that this Mr., of course, has his "arm 'round a brand-new girl," and though she was willing to stick it out, she predicts he'll miss her some day and then, well, he'll be "Mr. Too late."
Over the weekend, Swift sent fans down the rabbit hole with a scavenger hunt that she promised would require "expert" level decoding. "The vault door is about to be as unhinged as you'll think I am after you watch this video," Swift wrote. Before "Mr." Swift had only released one song in her "From the Vault" series, "You All Over Me," featuring Maren Morris , which is part of the upcoming re-recorded version of her 2008 album Fearless , due out this Friday (April 9) with six never-before-released songs .
Taylor Swift - Blank Space Lyrics - The West News
[Verse 1]
Nice to meet you, where you been?
I could show you incredible things
Magic, madness, heaven, sin
Saw you there, and I thought
“Oh my God, look at that face
You look like my next mistake
Love’s a game, wanna play?”
Ayy
[Chorus]
So it’s gonna be forever
Or it’s gonna go down in flames
You can tell me when it’s over, mm
If the high was worth the pain
Got a long list of ex-lovers
They’ll tell you I’m insane
‘Cause you know I love the players
And you love the game
‘Cause we’re young and we’re reckless
We’ll take this way too far
It’ll leave you breathless, hmm
Or with a nasty scar
Got a long list of ex-lovers
They’ll tell you I’m insane
But I’ve got a blank space, baby
And I’ll write your name
[Verse 3]
Cherry lips, crystal skies
I could show you incredible things
Stolen kisses, pretty lies
You’re the King, baby, I’m your Queen
Find out what you want
Be that girl for a month
Wait, the worst is yet to come
Oh, no
[Verse 4]
Screaming, crying, perfect storms
I can make all the tables turn
Rose garden filled with thorns
Keep you second guessin’ like
“Oh my God, who is she?”
I get drunk on jealousy
But you’ll come back each time you leave
‘Cause, darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream
[Bridge]
Boys only want love if it’s torture
Don’t say I didn’t, say I didn’t warn ya
Boys only want love if it’s torture
Don’t say I didn’t, say I didn’t warn ya
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Long before Fearless (Taylor's Version), Taylor Swift was charting her own coming of age
There is a moment during "Love Story (Taylor's Version)" when Taylor Swift's voice catches. It's the subtlest of pauses, no longer than a beat: "Baby just say… yes ". You'd miss it unless you'd studied the original a thousand times in the last 13 years: the re-recorded version is otherwise almost identical – the same banjos, cascading fiddles, hi-hat taps – if a little more polished. Easily, you could believe the vocals were from the 18-year-old who first sang it – except for one note shifted down a scale and that jutting, clipped "yes", as if setting her jaw.
On Friday, Swift releases the full album, Fearless (Taylor's Version), the first of the six she is re-recording after she lost the rights to her old masters . In 2019, Scooter Braun, the manager and businessman who she said had subjected her to "incessant, manipulative bullying" over the years, bought Big Machine Records – where Swift signed at the age of 15 – and acquired the rights to 100 per cent of her work until her 2018 move to Republic Records.
She attempted to buy them back, but was required to sign an "ironclad NDA" stating that she would never say another word about Braun unless it was positive. Her music was for sale; her silence was not. He sold them on to a private equity company for an estimated $300m. Her response, as so often has been the case in her career, felt both symbolic and businesslike, poetic and canny. Six new albums would be the loudest – and most enduring – retaliation.
Rather than another portrait of girlhood Fearless captured what it felt like when girlhood was ending. Throughout, there's an awareness of time running out, like she's waiting for the clock to strike midnight. At times it sounds like a desperate bid to collect and protect each precious "first" before adulthood set in. "In this moment now, capture it, remember it," she sings on the title track.
How do you capture it, remember it, at the age of 31? How do you return to the emotions of that teenager before she transcended, and repeat them in song? How important is it to be faithful to herself as she was then, and avoid the temptation to revise, update, improve, given all the change since, and all the lessons she has learned? She could reinvent her old work – but if she did, fans would still treasure (and stream) those originals instead of "Taylor's Versions", and this project relies on their loyalty and participation.
She must embrace the girl on the cover of Fearless , serene, ringletted, consecrated, the idol to which Swift has always been compared by a world who has struggled to accept a woman growing up. In 2017, she lampooned them on her single "Look What You Made Me Do" , on which she spat "I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now… 'cause she's dead".
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The themes and motifs she'd explore later all took root on Fearless . There's fragility – "you might think I'm bulletproof but I'm not"; there are mixed messages from callous men – "it rains in your bedroom everything is wrong, it rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone". She pays tribute to her mother, her best friend, her band; there is heartbreak, hope, confusion, indignation, comparison to other women, and freedom.
New this week to TV, streaming and more: 'Kung Fu,' 'Rebel' and 'Thunder Force' | Television |
This combination of photos shows promotional art for "Kung Fu," a TV series premiering April 7 on The CW, left, "Rebel," a TV series premiering April 8 on ABC, center, and the film "Thunder Force," a comedy premiering April 9 on Netflix. (The CW/ABC/Netflix via AP)
Here's a collection curated by The Associated Press' entertainment journalists of what's arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
— Against the odds, Melissa McCarthy and her husband, filmmaker Ben Falcone, have managed to put out two movies during the pandemic. Last November came HBO Max's "Superintelligence," about a regular woman (McCarthy) joined with a megalomaniacal artificial intelligence (voiced by James Corden). This time, in " Thunder Force ," McCarthy is again thrust into saving the planet. In the Netflix film, McCarthy and Octavia Spencer play women given superpowers — accidentally in the case of McCarthy's character — to defend Chicago from supervillains (Bobby Cannavale, Jason Bateman). It debuts Friday.
— In " Mayor, " director David Osit profiles local government in a land typically seen through a national lens. Osit trails Musa Hadid, the charismatic and mustachioed mayor of the Palestinian city of Ramallah, as he tirelessly deals with many of the issues of any municipality — can Ramallah brand itself like, as one advisor mentions, Minnesota's "Land of 10,000 Lakes"? — while wrestling with the more extreme, geopolitical issues endemic to the West Bank. It's a funnier film than you'd imagine, as Osit observes the sometimes farcical, sometimes painful plight of a beset community that proves that, at least in Ramallah, not all politics are local. "Mayor" began streaming Monday on the Criterion Channel.
— Many of the Oscar-nominated shorts are already available to stream, but one worth watching — " Two Distant Strangers " — lands on Netflix on Friday. In it, directors Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe use a "Groundhog Day"-style time loop to dramatize the repetitive trauma of police brutality. Brooklyn rapper Joey Bada$$ plays a New Yorker who awakes happily again and again in a woman's apartment. But every time he leaves to go home to feed his dog, an altercation with a police officer is unavoidable and tragic.
— Taylor Swift's defining 2008 album, "Fearless," helped her break through onto the pop charts with successes like "You Belong with Me" and "Love Story." The album went on to win four Grammys, including her first album of the year honor. So it's fitting that "Fearless," though it was her sophomore release, is the first project she has re-recorded after her masters were sold off. " Fearless: Taylor's Version " will be released Friday and includes 27 songs, including 13 from the original album. Keith Urban appears on the songs "That's When" and "We Were Happy," while "You All Over Me" features Maren Morris.
In this video grab provided by the SAG Awards, the cast of "The Trial of the Chicago 7" accepts the award for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture during the 27th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on April 4, 2021. (SAG Awards via AP)
In this video grab provided by the SAG Awards, Viola Davis, right, kisses her husband Julius Tennon as she accepts the award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a leading role for "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," during the 27th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on April 4, 2021. (SAG Awards via AP)
In this video grab provided by the SAG Awards, Simone Ledward Boseman, wife of the late Chadwick Boseman, accepts the award for outstanding performance by a male actor in a leading role for "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" on his behalf during the 27th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on April 4, 2021. (SAG Awards via AP)
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