Step once again, if you will, into the magical world of country tween turned John Mayer victim Taylor Swift, who has been busy making more of the tabloid-friendly personal decisions that feed her impeccable pop songs. Taylor is dating a Kennedy! (Actually, she was maybe dating a hunky Schwarzenegger, and then traded him in for a full Kennedy?) And she just bought a house in Hyannis Port, right next to the family compound of her new 18-year-old boyfriend. As a Swift story goes, it’s almost too perfect — the kind of fairy tale posturing that enrages her detractors and charms her fans, some of whom are too young to know how it’ll turn out (with major real estate losses) and other who just enjoy reliving that ignorance. The Taylor Swift Fantasy, in a nutshell, is that we can all grow up to be wildly popular music stars who buy beachfront property next to American royalty because of love.
It is also the promise that once that love goes sour, the dude in question is going to get it — publicly, with embarrassing and one-sided details broadcasted to the world. So here we are with Swift’s latest revenge single, the shouty, totally un-country “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,†in which Taylor Swift actually gets to break up with a dude for once. Except that’s not how it went, of course; try to imagine Taylor actually dropping that salty “What?†or an “I hate you†on the poor, Shins-loving guy trying to call off a mostly text-message relationship. No! The attitude here is the biggest fantasy of all — and what makes the song so endearing, in all its fuck-off revisionist glory. Also, even Jake Gyllenhaal (the indie record, right? It’s gotta be Jake) couldn’t resist that “ooooOOHoooh oooh ooh†chorus.
In album news: Red is due October 22, and it will include many more of the liner note codes that so embarrassed John Mayer way back when. Okay, and here’s your new Song of Summer. Enjoy.