Covering Taylor Swift's Me!

Named IFPI’s top artist of 2019, Taylor Swift continues to be a voice for the heart and all its various emotions. Her lover album released in August of 2019.

Taylor Swift | Lover | Album | Switching Styles | — Taylor Swift’s Album Lover was released in August of 2019

“Three singles were released off the Lover album last year: ME!, featuring Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco; You Need To Calm Down, and the title track, Lover. ME!, the first release from the album, opened at number one on the global Spotify charts,” reads an IFPI press release.

These are rather popular hits from the album. Though there is speculation on which are the top tracks from the album (as there always is regardless of the album or artist). LA Times considers the top 5 songs of the album as follows “Cruel Summer”, “Soon You’ll Get Better”, “Cornelia Street”, “Lover”, and “Paper Rings”.

Do you notice that “Me!” wasn’t on the tip-top of that list regardless of being the album’s lead single?

This song broke several records which includes the largest jump in the Billboard Hot 100 history. It jumped 98 spots in a single week. Peaking at #2 in the USA and Canada, and #3 in the Uk Singles Chart.

“Me!” is extremely catchy. It returns to a more pop and poppy era of Taylor. That isn’t a good thing for some critics.

Los Angeles Times’ review is not so promising about the single and say, “Devoted Swift fans know that her albums’ lead singles are often red herrings, and thankfully that turned out to be the case again with the wise and tender “Lover,” which nonetheless announced itself back in April with this excruciatingly childish marching-band jam. Nix it from your customized “Lover” playlist and forget that one of pop’s smartest lyricists ever rhymed “I’m the only one of me” with “Baby, that’s the fun of me.”

However, they aren’t the only ones to criticize the song or compare it to “Shake it off”, one of Taylor Swifts more so annoying its catchy songs.

Pitchfork does the same thing. They agree that Taylor Swift is a skilled musician with her best work is entwined in “its heartfelt vulnerability and goofy humour, in simple wisdom that showed her to be empathetic and hopelessly romantic”. However, “Me!” specifically is described as “a showcase for the worst and weakest aspects of Swift’s work, the syrupy kitsch and occasional over-reliance on wordless vocal fillers… “ME!” is two steps away from a corporate jingle, innocuous feel-good music in an airtight clamshell package.”

The Atlantic compares it to others within the pop genre but only the worst of the worst, saying, “Taylor Swift’s ‘ME!’ Is Everything Wrong With Pop. The star’s first single since Reputation has almost none of the elements that once made her interesting, but it does have a dolphin screech for a chorus.”

But, why does Switching Styles want to look at covers of a song that other music writers have reviewed rather negatively?

Let’s see who can do it better. We’re looking at these cover songs because we want to see if cover artists can take something that reviewers not so much loathe but something quite close to that word and makes it more palatable. The lyrics don’t change of course, but the music, style and sound do.

Here’s are 10 of them and we’ll let you decide.

Acoustic cover by Landon Austin and Maddy Newton.