As of Friday, Kanye West isn’t the only pop mega-star with a song titled Gorgeous. In a trio of Instagram posts Thursday, Taylor Swift announced the arrival of Gorgeous, the third single after Look What You Made Me Do and …Ready For It? from her forthcoming album Reputation (out Nov. 10).
Of all of Swift’s purported enemies, the track sounds less like Kanye and more like Katy Perry in its floating major-key chorus.
But the essence of Gorgeous is all Swift, from its starry-eyed subject matter — a boy who is “so gorgeous, I can’t say anything to your face” — to its flashes of humor, which have been few and far between in Swift’s new songs during this album cycle.
Gorgeous also loses the rap-singing of Swift’s previous two Reputation tracks in favor of pop riffs that’d feel at home on 1989, anchored by synth chimes that sound straight out of Windows 98.
For Swift lifers who have cheered on her previous Reputation releases, Gorgeous is further proof of their queen’s pop domination.
But for listeners who have so far been skeptical of Swift’s new direction, this new song is a promising omen that the old Taylor may not be dead just yet.
