“You Need to Calm Down”

In her latest decree as pop’s current Glinda the Good Witch, Taylor Swift has told an unnamed group of online haters to “calm down.” If that seems like an unhelpful appeal in the midst of everything fucked up about social media, it is. But since she took off her Reputation villain costume, Swift is all about spreading self-love, touting the joys of spelling and showering in rainbow sludge. In the Lover album era, she would release an anti-bullying ally anthem so positive it’s almost unnerving.

At its core, “You Need to Calm Down” is well-intentioned. Like, yes, of course it’s good to take the high road, kill them with kindness, and other clichés that moms like to tell tweens. But Swift aggressively avoids anything more nuanced, adopting internet speak to fight internet haters. “You’re taking shots at me like it’s Patrón,” she says with all the flair of someone who just listened to a rap song for the first time. In an effort to “brush off the haters” and display resilience, she doesn’t reveal any of the uncertainty and vulnerability that previously lay at the heart of her songwriting. Instead, the words are penned with the energy of a nail-painting emoji and delivered with a plastic smile.

Swift dedicates the second half of the song to prove her allyship to the gay community, which again, deserves some props. But her way of showing alliance is confounding: “Why be mad, when you can be GLAAD,” she sings, upping the LGBTQ-centering media organization, but also parroting a literal Tupperware slogan. And when she says “shade never made anyone less gay,” she adopts slang with queer black origins in an attempt to create a mic-drop moment, but ends up sounding like another corporation proving they’re “down for the cause” during Pride Month. All of this, coupled with a hook that’s mostly vowels, makes for a song that’s somehow bewildering and underwhelming at the same time. “You Need to Calm Down” is like one of those fancy unicorn cupcakes, an impossibly cute confection designed to distract you from the fact that it’s a mediocre dessert. I cannot think of something I would rather buy into less.