My Bat-signal appeared at midnight last night: a new Taylor Swift song. Emily is out, so today we dissect Miss Americana’s semi-return to country. Plus, Ryan McGinley’s return to New York, and a palate cleanser of brutal honesty.
MASTERMINDING
Taylor’s Oscars Campaign Is Giving Diane Warren
At least the new single is better than all of TLOAS.
It’s me, hi. Unfortunately, my Taylor Swift decoding has come back for this newsletter to discuss the two media properties most beloved by both children and aging millennials: Swift and Toy Story. Last night, Swift interrupted pop-girl summer to release “I Knew It, I Knew You,” a song full of harmonica and sax and classic Taylor Swift–isms (memorizing things, talking about cars, someone standing in the light of something).
How did we get here? On April 30, a countdown appeared on Taylor Swift’s website with a classically hideous yellow-and-blue font. That week, Swift emerged from the San Vicente West Village looking like Dorothy Gale, but with a yellow mini Dior purse that we now know was meant to invoke the Toy Story logo colors. Some level-one Taylor Nation antics followed — capitalizing the letters T and S in the lyrics of every track five in her discography, swapping the seagulls on the 1989 (Taylor’s Version) album art for clouds, and, eventually, putting up billboards across the world reading “TS” in Toy Story typeface with no less than 13 clouds. It felt like kindergarten-level Easter eggs, but maybe that was the point, given the target audience.
The song, which comes extremely close to sharing a title with a Gracie Abrams song, reunited Swift with her longtime producer Jack Antonoff. After the national nightmare that was The Life of a Showgirl, it’s a welcome return. Disney execs teased the song as Swift’s comeback to country music, which, truthfully, is a stretch. It sounds a lot more like Bruce Springsteen drag (otherwise known as Bleachers’ last three albums). My Gaylor ears immediately perked up hearing the phrase “like brothers,” a dynamic also invoked in the Reputation track “Call It What You Want.” That entire verse feels Karlie Kloss–ified — “What I thought would be the last time I saw my friend / But love has ways of bringing things back to life / All you said was ‘Hi’” — and follows rumors this week that Swift’s former best friend will indeed be invited to her upcoming wedding and that the pair are on good terms.
The song is far from the tearjerker many fans were expecting. The promotional lead-up to “I Knew It, I Knew You” has been tied to Jessie, the cowgirl abandoned by her owner in Toy Story 2 to the devastating “When She Loved Me,” by Sarah McLachlan. It felt safe to assume Swift would be attempting to one-up “When She Loved Me,” but this cheery song is more in the spirit of Randy Newman’s songs for the franchise. It’s hard to imagine a sob-inducing sequence that features it — but corny millennials contain multitudes. It’s extremely clear what Swift wants here: an Oscar. Her most recent attempts have been lackluster at best. “Carolina,” for Where the Crawdads Sing, was a forgettable dirge for an even more forgettable movie. “Beautiful Ghosts” is genuinely one of Swift’s best vocal performances to date (even with the weird British accent) — too bad it was for Tom Hooper’s Cats. Even the woke 1.0 song “Only the Young,” for her own documentary Miss Americana, was only good enough to eventually be used in an Eric Swalwell (!!) campaign ad. But her most aggressive play for an Oscar to date was not an original song but her 2021 “short film,” All Too Well (10 Minute Version). She screened the film at both the Tribeca and Toronto film festivals. She even participated in Variety‘s “Directors on Directors” alongside Martin McDonagh. Whether she genuinely thought she could get that nomination or if the whole thing was a ruse to save her relationship with Joe Alwyn is anyone’s guess.
Given the reception to The Life of a Showgirl, “I Knew It, I Knew You” hopefully ushers in a much-needed Swift shift. The Academy has made it clear that if Swift wants an Oscar, she’s going to have to work hard for it, Diane Warren–style. This song was released 283 days away from the Oscars (2+8+3 is 13 … sorry), and it’s exciting to think about Swift back in campaign mode, rubbing shoulders with Cristian Mungiu and Christopher Nolan and other people who don’t even know the terms “bad bitch” or “savage.”
Swift is masterminding her Oscar chances by picking Toy Story; every installment of the franchise thus far has earned an Original Song nomination, and half of them have won. Since 1989 (the year Swift was born, in case you forgot), 12 animated films have taken the category. Which, obviously, means that if this song wins, it would be the 13th. If TLOAS taught us anything, it’s that Swift’s mid-30s have been consumed by jealousy, and the surprising stickiness of KPop Demon Hunters‘s “Golden” both on the charts and in the vocal cords of children surely pushed her into Bob Iger’s office.
The real test for “I Knew It, I Knew You” will be if you can hear it being belted at pickup — like recent chart-toppers “Let It Go” or “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” To my childless ears, the song is almost too pleasant to become a kid-friendly earworm. Not since the Eisner era of Disney has a children’s song been such an easy listen. For babysitters across the country and fans worried about Swift’s career trajectory after enduring “CANCELLED!,” the song’s country-tinged soft rock is a relief, but does that matter enough to a 6-year-old? It’s going to be a long 283 days until the Oscars, and we’re all guaranteed to hear that opening harmonica riff too many times. We’ve got more important problems to attend to right now, anyway. Overnight, the Olivia Rodrigo wall was painted blue.
REVIEW OF REVIEWS
The Feel-Good Pleasure of a Pan
Haters, steal a page from our magazine.
Ever since critics fawned over The Life of a Showgirl last October, I’ve been personally preoccupied with the state of modern criticism. That’s why it feels so refreshing to read a true pan. Today, our architecture critic Justin Davidson pointed out the megalomania filling every corner of the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
“After a while, though, all the professions of sincerity and thanks, the constant invocations of the one true POTUS, and the worshipful exhibits upstairs give the whole place a cultish, nostalgic gleam. The forgers of the future have become custodians of an optimistic past. Maybe the building is just right after all: an immense tombstone for a generation’s dream that Americans are united by a foundational idea.”
Last week, our restaurant critic Matthew Schneier trashed one of the city’s most anticipated openings, Marcel, at the Breuer Building. It did not live up to expectations.
“For all the toque-wearing chefs milling about the open kitchen, the cooking feels catered. It is dressy but unexciting, meekly seasoned and reticent except when it is passionately oversalted. A painterly prettiness distinguished an appetizer of leeks vinaigrette with poached pears and Kampot peppercorns, but it came beached on a truffle sauce so sandy in color and texture that it reminded me of lake silt. A gratin of cod ‘petals’ lacked crunch, dissolving into a mushy puddle; lobster-tail ‘Giverny,’ roasted with pineapple in a turmeric-ginger cream, sounded appealing but tasted flat upon its arrival. An $88 half-portion of sole meunière, that upper-crust standard, felt underadorned, skimpy, and baitlike.
Delicious! Plus music critic Craig Jenkins hailed Ariana Grande’s snoozy new single as “one of her worst.” Maybe she should take a page from Swift’s book and stop working with Max Martin.
WEEKEND PLANS
Have You Ever Gone Skinny-Dipping in Staten Island?
One photographer lived to tell the tale.
Speaking of returns to form, Ryan McGinley’s first solo exhibit in New York since 2018 was shot all over the city in the middle of the night, including some not-so-PG nude scenes. He even went to Staten Island! Remarkably, McGinley and his models had only one run-in with the police.
It happened, McGinley told Sam Hine, while shooting on the West Side Highway. The cops “got on their loudspeaker and were like, ‘You call this art?’” How about that. Not only is the NYPD ruining Knicks watch parties, they’re out there cosplaying Jerry Saltz. McGinley’s show opens at Jeffrey Deitch on June 13.
Click Your Way Out
No, Regina Hall won’t talk about the Kevin Hart roast.
Embarrassed you don’t have a 212 number? Imagine the horror of a 465 area code!
Don’t trust a brain-dead Swiftie like me about music; trust Cat Zhang and stream Naomi Scott.
I’ll be on the carpet at the Tony Awards on Sunday. Email dinnerparty@nymag.com and tell me which shows I should ask nominees about getting revived, and follow along on Instagram. I am probably just gonna do Seussical again until it actually happens.
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