"Me!" is an empowering song about self-love and acceptance which resurrects the vibrant euphoria of Taylor Swift's earlier pop hits. It is a stark turn from her 2017
Reputation album which featured much darker material. That record found Swift talking about:
Struggling to handle fame on tracks like "
Delicate" ("My reputation's never been worse").
Betrayal on cuts like "
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" ("But then you stabbed in the back while shaking my hand").
Now Swift is feeling good about herself. (You can't spell "awesome" without "me").
The song finds a self-confident Swift in total control.
Me-e-e, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh
I'm the only one of me
Baby, that's the fun of me
Swift is now older and more mature and has come to the realization that it is her flaws that makes her unique.
In an Apple Music video, Swift said that the song is about "not feeling like you're replaceable."
"I feel like we're sent so many messages every day that there's a better version of yourself on a social media app with better abs in a better vacation spot," she explained. "But you're the only one of you. That's it - there's just you."
Speaking with Robin Roberts on ABC, Swift said, "'Me!' is a song about embracing your individuality and really celebrating it and owning it. I think that with a pop song, we have the ability to get a melody stuck in people's heads, and I just want it to be one that makes them feel better about themselves."
The song finds Taylor Swift being accompanied by Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco. Swift said that Urie is one of her favorite performers and had hoped to find the right thing to collaborate on. When she wrote the chorus for "Me!" she knew she had found just the tune for the Panic! singer.
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Taylor Swift and Brendon Urie wrote the song with Lorde's frequent co-writer Joel Little. The New Zealand producer also contributed guitar, keyboards and synthesizer programming, and also co-produced the track with Swift.
Had Swift been planning this song years ago? Her 2017 single, "
End Game" featured the line "My reputation precedes me." "Me!" was the first song she released after her
Reputation album.
The colorful video, which Swift directed alongside Dave Meyers starts off with a snake representing her Reputation album. Just as the reptile strikes to recoil, it bursts into butterflies, signifying Swift has let go of her grudges, and is ready to have fun again.
We then see the pop star and Urie star as a French couple bickering about their "children" – Swift's real-life cats. After the singer angrily storms out of the room, the clip turns into a pastel dream featuring the two in a series of song and dance sequences.
Brendon Urie explained to Entertainment Tonight that this collaboration started with a text message from Taylor Swift that Urie received when he was on tour. She sent him the song and said, "We need to finish this together. I don't have a bridge, I don't have a couple other parts."
The Panic at the Disco singer readily agreed to help her, and for the rest of the tour, Urie found the song was stuck in his head. About a month later, they met in the studio and finished the song together.
"Me!" leapt from #100 to #2 in its second week on the Billboard Hot 100. The 98-spot jump was the biggest leap any song has made in the history of the chart, breaking Kelly Clarkson's previous 2009 record of 96 places with "
My Life Would Suck Without You."
"Me!" originated when Joel Little was tidying up some vocals for another song he and Swift were working on. He recalled to
Billboard that Swift "sat down at the piano and started quietly playing an early version of the chorus."
Little turned around and asked her what she was singing and Swift replied: "Just this little idea I came up with in the car." The pair started building things from there.
Brendon Urie explained to Entertainment Tonight that this collaboration started with a text message from Taylor Swift that he received when he was on tour. She sent him the song and said, "We need to finish this together. I don't have a bridge, I don't have a couple other parts."
The Panic at the Disco singer readily agreed to help her, and for the rest of the tour, Urie found the song was stuck in his head. About a month later, they met in the studio and finished the song together.
Swift tries to encourage a love for learning at the beginning of the bridge.
Hey, kids, spelling is fun!
Swift explained to The Hit Network's Carrie & Tommy that the lyric was a decision that she and Antonoff made in the studio. Said the singer: "We literally were like, okay, let's say 'Hey, kids! Spelling is fun' because we want everyone to know that this song is not really serious because it's not, like, a serious love song."
