Thursday night, Taylor Swift released “Gorgeous,” the third single from her highly anticipated sixth album, Reputation. The track is a three-and-a-half-minute ode to a frustratingly attractive crush. It comes on the heels of “Look What You Made Me Do,” in which Taylor raps, and “…Ready for It?,” which sounds suspiciously close to Kanye West’s “On Sight.” While those are decidedly influenced by hip-hop, this latest offering treads in more conventionally Swiftian territory. It’s a pop song. The world-famous 27-year-old pop star steps back into the role of lonely and slightly-not-good-enough girl next door. “Guess I’ll just stumble on home to my cats / Alone, unless you wanna come along,” she laments in the third verse.
“Gorgeous” is the latest stop on what has already been a memorable pre-album-release press tour, which has included a Right Said Fred sample, an app, and a fleet of UPS trucks with Swift’s face on them. Though less confounding than the two previous songs, “Gorgeous” is yet another underwhelming Swift offering. The song veers into the “...Ready for It?” territory, it lacks the catchy earworms that draw in listeners on her biggest hits. The silly, baby-voiced opening and tacky, teenage lyrics — “And you should think about the consequence / Of you touching my hand in a darkened room” — aren’t doing her any favors. Swift has less than a month to right the rocky Reputation ship. The album comes out on November 10.
