"Artist:" Taylor Swift "featuring" Kendrick Lamar
Chart Position at Time of Writing: 4 (Peak: #1, for one week)
Link to a...thing: I think it's supposed to be a music video, but it's really hard to tell. (Go 30 seconds in for the actual part where rhythmic noise happens.)
Review: We all have friends on social media who love to post statuses that read as follows: "Sum ppl dont no how good they have it i wont name names but i am better w/o u!" Most of us read those, roll our eyes, and move on to the baby pictures, un-funny memes, and psychotic political rhetoric that define the Facebook experience for a typical twentysomething.
Not Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift read one of those posts and thought "I can make a song out of this!" Brace yourself for a very passive-aggressive ride, folks.
'Cause baby now we got bad blood
You know it used to be mad love
"Mad love." Really? Remember when Taylor Swift talked about how hard it was to be uncool? And how if she did anything like rapping, it was totally ironic. Man, 2009 was so long ago.
Also, I love that the video has a moment at this point where it calls itself "A Joseph Kahn FILM." (Emphasis mine.) Dude, you direct music videos. Your two feature films have Metacritic scores of 22 and 38. It's fine, not everyone can be good at everything. Maybe try fishing? Or, at the very least, try directing a music video where you don't try to cram all the Michael Bay stereotypes you can into 4 minutes.
So take a look what you've done
'Cause baby now we got bad blood, hey!
We're 4 lines into the song and we've already used the same line twice. Unlike another member of my family, I don't necessarily consider repetition to be a sign of sheer idiocy. If you have a good line with multiple meanings, or a line whose meaning changes as the song progresses, then you should use it to full artistic effect.
But I think we can all agree that this isn't one of those cases, right? This is just her, establishing that she does not like the passive-aggressively unnamed subject of the tune. And this line (with slight variations) is repeated 14 times over the course of her portion of the song. Using this lyrics page, I counted up 49 lines for Ms. Swift. Thus, the phrase "now we got bad blood" makes up roughly 28% of her lines! (Math, lyrical analysis, and blogging--I am officially the least interesting person on the planet.)
Also, since this is a pop single in the year 2015, it's time for the obligatory rap!
Hey, I can't take it back.
Look where I'm at.
We was on D like DOC, remember that?
Role-play time. You're Kendrick Lamar. You are a preternaturally talented rapper who has been declared "the savior of hip hop" by critics and fans alike. You have just released an album that received universal acclaim for both its sound and its message. Having released multiple tunes focusing on the struggles and triumphs of being black in America, what is your next move? I'll give you a second.
...
How many of you said "appear as the backup artist on a song about a pop starlet's generic rage?" Everyone? Good. Me too.
My TLC was quite OD ID my facts
I work in education. I can appreciate a good acronym more than most people. But stringing together a list like this isn't going to make sense to anyone who doesn't take the time to look this stuff up. And the only sort of people who look this stuff up are 1) masochistic idiots like me and 2) overprotective Moms who want to make sure TLC doesn't stand for "Trust and love Communism."
Eh, who am I kidding? I've done this for 2 years. No one's listening to the friggin' lyrics, there's a half-naked Taylor Swift on the screen and a catchy beat in the background.
Now POV of you and me similar Iraq.
So looking at this relationship reminds one of the brutal sectarian violence that has broken out in an entirely artificial nation-state--violence which horrifies us, but from an historic standpoint is just another link in the miserable chain of religious and ethnic hatred that has dominated the Mesopotamian region for 7,000 years, literally dating back to the foundation of the first civilization in human history?
That seems a tad overstated.
I don't hate you, but I hate to,
critique, overrate you
These beats of a dark heart, use basslines to replace you
Give these lines a pass. We've all had a day where we sit and listen to music and think about past relationships. Right? Oh, God, please tell me I'm right and that I wasn't an emo kid. I was an emo kid, wasn't I? And it took Kendrick Lamar's guest verse on a Taylor Swift song to make me realize it. Worst self-revelation ever.
Take time and erase you, love don't hear no more
No I don't fear no more, better yet respect ain't quite sincere no more.
Respect "ain't quite sincere?" Way to pansy out at the end, man. Let me improve this:
Take time and erase you, love don't hear no more
No I don't fear no more, better yet flaming bag of poop outside ya door.
Same number of syllables, far meaner. Taylor's back, now! Perhaps she'll shed some light on the degradation of this once-harmonious partnership.
Oh, it's so sad to
Think about the good times
Such as? Any examples? Because as it currently stands, you are saying literally nothing. If this song were Wikipedia, there'd be [citation needed] tags at the end of every freaking word coming out of T-Swizzle's mouth.
You and I
...might as well be referring to two letters of the alphabet for all we know about Taylor Swift's relationship with the person in question.
The first four lines of the song loop again, and then we're given the remainder of the chorus:
Now we got problems,
And I don't think we can solve them.
You made a really deep cut.
Worthy to note that, in the Rolling Stone article I linked to above, Tay-Tay describes herself as "never sure" if she was friends with the subject of this tune, indicating a casual-at-best relationship. Yet the lyrics make their subject seem like the second coming of Judas Iscariot. Taylor's next single is going to be about the employee at her regular Starbucks who once gave her a Two Shot Venti Hazelnut Caramel Latte with no whipped cream when she asked for a Three Shot Venti Hazelnut Caramel Latte with no whipped cream.
I anticipate "Shot in the Dark (ft. Wiz Khalifa)" will go double platinum and win a Grammy.
Kendrick returns to rap:
Hey, Remember when you tried to write me off?
Remember when you thought I'd take a loss.
In an ideal world, Kendrick would stop here, turn to the camera and say "Wait a minute. I wrote those lines for myself. I don't have to be here, and I sure don't have to do this. I'm out!" But then you and I would have to sit through the Kendrick-free version of the song which: a) I can't find on YouTube and b) is even worse than this one.
Don't you remember, you thought that I would need ya.
Follow procedure, remember? Oh, wait, you got amnesia?
Well, I wish I could forget the past 2 minutes of music and weird leather outfits, yes. But then I'd have to explain to my wife why I was watching what appears to be a mashup between Fifty Shades of Grey and one of the Transformers movies. In the end, it's best that I not have amnesia. I'm sure you understand.
It was my season for battle wounds, battle scars
Body bumped, bruised, stabbed in the back
Brimstone, fire jumping through
This section of song brought to you by the American Foundation for Hyperbole. Our motto is "If a job's worth doing, then it's worth comparing a non-specific personal slight to the horrors of combat and the unending torment of an eternity in Hell."
We're working on the motto.
Still all my life I got money and power,
I can only assume this was the product of Kendrick and Taylor's "who can write the most generic line possible" contest. Kendrick wins on sheer unoriginality, but Taylor puts in a great showing in the repetition category
And you gotta live with the bad blood now.
I have to live with 2 more minutes of Taylor Swift repeating the same nondirectional barbs while adding only 4 new lines, 3 of which are repeated twice?! YOU ARE A MONSTER, KENDRICK LAMAR.
Band-aids don't fix bullet holes
Taylor Swift was awake for that part of health class.
You say sorry just for show
Excuse me--the person at whom you have directed these barbs apologized to you? And apparently did so in private, because it was not plastered across entertainment media as the top story for a full week. And you're gonna say it was "for show" and continue to play the victim?
Are we done yet? I'd really like to be done.
You live like that, you live with ghosts.
Well, it took darn near the whole song, but we finally know who the target is. An old friend/acquaintance who betrayed Taylor Swift and now lives in a constant maze of injurious gluttony, surrounded by ghosts? The signs all point to one person: Pac-Man.
Anyhow, those lines loop one more time and we arrive at the grand finale (before the chorus repeats 2 more times, of course):
When you love like that, blood runs cold
Because this is a song about blood. Specifically blood that has gone bad. Just making sure you got that.
Meanwhile, in the video: Respectable to semi-respectable actresses and models make inexplicable appearances in impractical outfits. Video blows up London for some reason. Swift reveals she looks her best as a redhead, still fails to save the song. She and Selena Gomez punch each other in the face as the video cuts to black. I didn't make a single word of that up.
Recommended Alternative Listening: First and foremost, a Bastille song with the same title that I assumed (hoped?) Swift had covered. Actual content detailing a lost friendship with a plea to end the feud. Try out Cee Lo Green's pointed (if not poetic) hit for genuine pop anger with actual background given to the emotion: Available in censored and horrifyingly uncensored forms. Or, listen to the lyrics of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive," and recognize that the tune is about a strong lady who's done being a doormat. Beats the heck out of whining for 4 minutes.
Well aware of the hypocrisy in the previous sentence, thanks.
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