How NOT to write about music – 82. Taylor Swift

I am not disappointed. No way.

The video is like something Katy Perry would have produced back in the day: all Technicolor brilliance and extravagant (kinda empty) gestures and appropriate tributes paid to diversity and the dullness and ugliness of closed minds. (Katy appears a few minutes in, dressed as a burger to Taylor’s fries.) Put simply, ‘Calm Down’ is a top tune, a banger or however the fuck Radio One DJs frame the expression these days. ‘Calm Down’ is ace pop music – and it ain’t that straightforward either. The song is beautifully judged, in ways that new songs from Little Mix and (sigh) Miley Cyrus do not manage. Something about the space, the dynamics, the rubber ballast beat, juxtaposition, a flurry of lyrics, the killer line “cos shade never made anybody less gay”, the way it recalls what’s gone before. I mean, fuck yeah. We can never get too much of the anti=hater shit, right? Good to speak up and be counted, especially in the context of Trump and Johnson.

Boris Johnson would condone the stoning of gays and the chaining of all women to the kitchen sink in a heartbeat if he thought there were votes in it.

It’s in her swagger, the sweeping gestures, the ….

I am happy to give Little Mix another 20 chances, though.