Anyone who has silently cried while listening to Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" knows that the pop star is a master lyricist. So it surprised many fans that her new single "ME!" with Panic! at the Disco's Brendon Urie is not a particularly complex song — at least, lyrically speaking. The track routinely rhymes the word "me" with, well, "me," and features Sesame Street-esque lines like "You can't spell AWESOME without ME!" Before you consider this bop a lyrical dud, however, Swift is here to tell you that those words were very much intentional.
In a new interview with Australia's The Hit Network's Carrie and Tommy, the "Blank Space" singer revealed that she wanted to keep "ME!" as fun as possible.
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"With this song, we really just wanted to have this song not really be fully taking itself seriously," Swift explained on the show. "So the lyrics — that's a tone decision we made in the studio. We were literally were like, okay, let's say 'Hey, kids! Spelling is fun' because we want everyone to know that this song is not really serious because it's not, like, a serious love song."
If it's not a serious love song — à la iconic Swift tracks like "New Year's Day," "Wildest Dreams," and, of course, "Love Story" — then what is "ME!" supposed to be? According to Swift, it's all about...you.
"It's kind of embracing and owning that you, at times, feel like, you know, you're irreplaceable," Swift revealed to the outlet. "I want those times to be more often when they hear this song, people hear this song and [it] gets stuck in their head. I think with a pop song you have the ability to get something stuck in people's heads, and I just want it to be a mantra that kind of is much more self-love than what we often times feel, which is self-loathing and insecurity."
Whether this means Swift's forthcoming seventh album will feature exclusively self-love anthems instead of venturing into romantic territory is unclear — though unlikely, given that Swift wrote this particular album while dating apparently quite serious boyfriend Joe Alwyn. Still, we'll take a corny, confidence-boosting bop any day.