Long before she launched jihads again Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and fan mail, Taylor Swift was crusading against hipsters, as Sady Doyle documented last year.
Taylor Swift has always written angry songs about the men she’s dated. In recent years, she apparently went in for a tweedier, more vinyl-friendly sort of gentleman. And she is, on her new album Red, both memorably and at length, irate about this fact. An ominous “hipster” stalks the plains of Red, accompanied by shadowy minions, all continually conspiring to neg Swift’s celebrity. On “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Swift snarls about the impossibility of reconciling with a man who dares to enjoy an “indie record that’s so much cooler than mine.” On “22,” she invites her friends to dress up “like hipsters” for an undercover recon operation: A bar overrun by “cool kids.” She overhears them asking, “who’s Taylor Swift, anyway? Ew.”
As always, Swift’s lyrics are grounded in her life. “We Are Never Ever,” she says, is a “definitive portrait” of a relationship with a man who “made me feel like I wasn’t as good or as relevant as these hipster bands he listened to.” The song – co-written by synth-pop hit factory Max Martin – was designed specifically to irritate the living hell out of this man’s sensibilities whenever he heard it on the radio.
And so here we have the video for “22” and SURPRISE, there’s our little princess T. Swift donning an array of hipster-y glasses, clothes and hats in what I perceive as a blatant attempt to make fun of the “cool kids” she so desperately wants to be accepted by. With that said, let me be clear: I’m extremely pro-hipster bashing. I just find it hilarious when it’s being perpetrated by the likes of Taylor Swift.
See a shrink and work out your hate issues, T. Swift!
