Following on from a series of minor public scandals, it was generally expected that Taylor Swift’s first single since the release of her blockbuster album 1989 was going to be a changing of the tide. Given the edgy album name and cover art, the consensus was that Taylor would not follow the same saccharine pop formula as her previous work, and instead move in the moodier direction she signalled in her collaboration with Zayn Malik for the 50 Shades of Grey soundtrack, ‘I Don’t Wanna Live Forever’. Most people assumed she would be heading in a more art-poppy direction, with the potential for her to try to make her own Lemonade-like feminist statement. All of these theories have thus far been confirmed with this first single, but the results therein leave quite a bit to be desired.
For starters, the lyrics to this cut are painfully generic. The impulse to create stronger, more artistic and feminist music is a wonderful place for a superstar like Taylor Swift to go, but that place demands more than just boilerplate, run-of-the-mill pop cliches. Consider the pre-chorus to ‘Look What You Made Me Do’, for example:
“But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time
I’ve got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined
I check it once, then I check it twice, oh!”
Now compare that to the first verse of Beyonce’s ‘Formation’:
“Y’all haters corny with that Illuminati mess
Paparazzi, catch my fly, and my cocky fresh
I’m so reckless when I rock my Givenchy dress (stylin’)
I’m so possessive so I rock his Roc necklaces
My daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana
You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bama
I like my baby heir with baby hair and afros
I like my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils
Earned all this money but they never take the country out me
I got a hot sauce in my bag, swag”
The latter has some powerful language about blackness and femininity, which Beyonce delivers with a nasty snarl. The former sounds like it would fit snugly into a Demi Lovato single without anyone noticing. If you’re going to make a statement with your music, then your music has to state something.
Furthermore, the performance Taylor gives doesn’t do much to propel the track forward either. ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ is certainly sonically different to her past work, but she doesn’t provide the vocal acrobatics or energy necessary to bring a track like this to life. Lady Gage and Lorde are both known for making pop music in a slightly more avant-garde fashion than their contemporaries (something Taylor is obviously aiming for here) but they both have a unique style that makes their songs work. For Gaga, her powerful, diva-ish performances force the listener to pay attention. For Lorde, it’s the airy nature of her voice and her seductive storytelling that pull the listener in. Taylor’s voice, by comparison, has neither of these traits, and she doesn’t seem to offer anything up as an alternative to perk the listener’s ear. This style of pop music focuses the listener in on what the singer is doing. To pull a song like this off, you have to offer the listener something to hold on to for the duration of the track, and Taylor just doesn’t come close to doing that.
The instrumental is at times creepy, at times glistening, and at times filled with skittering hi hats. While it is the best aspect of the song, the instrumental suffers from the same disjointed problems as Taylor’s lyrics do. The sound of the song switches on a dime from the verse to pre-chorus and back to the chorus without rhyme or reason. The chorus tries to flip the structure of Right Said Fred’s ‘I’m Too Sexy’ on it’s head for a moodier tone, but the result comes across cold and flaccid. For most of the song the instrumentation is sparse, but given the weakness of Taylor’s performance that doesn’t end up boding well for the track as a whole.
This song truly falls short of what one would expect from a Taylor Swift single. The direction Taylor is moving in is not being done justice with this first single. With lacklustre lyrics, a subpar vocal performance, and an inconsistent instrumental, ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ suffers from a supreme lack of focus or interest in doing this style of art-pop justice. Here’s to hoping her team will self-correct and release more attention-grabbing music soon.
3/10
Words by Sebastian Campbell