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This week: “You Need To Calm Down” by Taylor Swift (Republic Records, 2019)
Why we’re into it: This is a great pop song, even if we can’t excuse the weak allyship.
From the moment the first beat hits, it’s clear this is a Taylor Swift song. In what’s become a signature of hers, the song comes in hot, wasting no time sinking its Swifty pop hooks into your ears. She arrives within the first few seconds on a bouncy synth beat, flipping iambs into trochees (“Patrón” is rendered “PUH-trone”). It’s catchy and fun, an earworm of a pop song, and it revives a bit of hope that her next album Lover won’t be the mess that “ME!” was. It is also, yet again, her take on trying to “own” the haters. In this case? Homophobes.
Under all the rainbows and catchy hooks, “You Need to Calm Down” is allyship misunderstood.
Earlier this month Swift posted a much-circulated letter addressed to her Republican senator, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. In it she asked Hunt to support the House Equality Act, a sweeping bill that would protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in our workplaces, our schools, and in other public accommodations. It was a bold and unexpected move from the apolitical pop star. But that old, apolitical Taylor is dead. From old Taylor’s ashes has risen a new outspoken pop star who hopes she’ll release a more blatant political pop song.
Swift has a lot of experience in dealing with haters and that experience shines when she’s singing about that. “Say it in the street, that’s a knock-out. But you say it in a tweet, that’s a cop-out.” It’s when she tries to include this idea that homophobes need to “calm down” that she falters and stumbles into the tropes that many queer people struggle with in their allies.
“You need to calm down, you’re being too loud,” she directs the homophobes and haters. “You need to just stop, you need to just stop, like can you just not step on his gown? You need to calm down.”
This “can you just stop?” attitude is where many allies fall short, not just Swift. LGBTQ people are still facing hatred, barriers, and violence, at astonishing levels. Governments around the world and here in the US are attacking us. We’re still fighting every day for our humanity to be recognized. The idea that we can just ask oppressors to stop stems from the same assumption that homophobia is nothing more than a character flaw; it’s right around the corner from the idea that “all sides” deserve respect.
It’s time for allies to evolve. LGBTQ people need accomplices now. An accomplice is someone who is putting as much on the line, maybe even more, than the other. An accomplice ends up in jail with you. An ally is someone you hope will answer your one phone call.
While “You Need to Calm Down” features a shoutout to the LGBTQ organization GLAAD and an allusion to those infamous homophobic protest signs, its message of allyship is half baked and loaded with the sentiment that queer people need to accept any handout of humanity allies provide.
“I ain’t tryna mess with your self-expression,” she sings. But homophobia isn’t “self-expression”; it’s violence.
Taylor is at her best when she’s her exaggerated self. That’s what’s always made her so fun. Within all the nonsense, there was a sliver of self-awareness. But “You Need To Calm Down” has no semblance of that. Instead it comes off like another #Pride campaign tailored to make money off of queer people.
Taylor’s not ill-intentioned at all; in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Allies aren’t bad people, no, no, no. It’s just that right now LGBTQ people don’t need allies. We need accomplices.
