Taylor Swift appears to rebuke Trump with lyrics to new song You Need to Calm Down

Song comes right after the announcement of Swift’s seventh album, Lover

Roisin O'Connor
Music Correspondent
Friday 14 June 2019 07:01 BST
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Taylor Swift has released the second single from her forthcoming seventh album
Taylor Swift has released the second single from her forthcoming seventh album

Taylor Swift has released a brand new single from her just-announced seventh album, Lover.

“You Need to Calm Down”, which happens to have been released on Donald Trump’s birthday, is a cool rebuke to hysterical homophobes and right-wing “freedom of speech” advocates.

It includes the lyric: “I ain’t tryna mess with your self-expression, but I have learnt the lesson that stressin’ and obsessin’ ‘bout somebody else is no fun.”

Swift also references “7am” and people posting shade on Twitter (”a copout”), in an apparent reference to Trump’s early morning Twitter rants.

Check out the song below:

The track also continues her vocal support for the LGBT+ community with the retort: “Shade never made anybody less gay.”

Swift, who as fans will know is fond of hiding clues in her music, dropped a subtle hint to the new single in a recent chat with The Independent, where she said of her single “ME!”: “I wrote the song this past winter, but I’ve known for quite a while what I wanted this album to look like, feel like, and evoke.

“I wanted it to be like the sky looks after a storm. Colourful, calm, somehow more beautiful than it ever had been before.”

The announcement for her new album was via Instagram Live video on Thursday.

Lover will be released on 23 August.

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