Single Review: ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ – Taylor Swift
12 years ago Liv Carter 1
Songwriters: Taylor Swift, Max Martin, Shellback
As the first release from her upcoming album, Red, Taylor Swift has selected ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.’ The primary version is a pop song, and a country mix was released to country radio.
When I see a song has been written with Swedish pop gurus Max Martin and Shellback, I expect to hear a stomping, ultra-modern pop hit, and that is exactly what ‘We Are Never…’ is. The country mix has some banjo thrown in, almost as an afterthought, but it is not enough to disguise the pop melody for anything other than what it is (which isn’t necessarily a problem, by the way).
Lyrically, the first verse is nifty piece of writing, but from there the song descends into aggressively juvenile histrionics: ‘We are never ever ever getting back together/You go talk to your friends, talk to my friends, talk to me/But we are never ever ever ever getting back together.’ For all her ‘independent woman’ pretense, Swift still doesn’t write an actual strong female character and, in this case, also utilizes language far below her 22 years of age. The spoken bridge consists of a conversation that would embarrass an 8th grader. This may play well to the Twilight crowd who have been misguided into thinking that emotional dependency is somehow romantic, but while I can overlook its pop qualities, I can never look past such raging immaturity.
Like, ever.
Liv Carter
She holds several certificates from Berklee College of Music, and a certificate in Positive Psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her main influences are coffee, cats, and Alexander Hamilton.
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