he/him
HIGHEST
9.5 x 1 (@ufint)
LOWEST
0 x 3 (@CorgiCorgiCorgi, @Domino, @SlowGinFizzzz)
It's time for our first cut from THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Is it the correct first out?
In all honesty, I’m exhausted about Taylor writing songs about Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. I think we all are. In fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret. This is one of the first songs I prepared a write-up for because I know this is going to be out very early (Author's Note: I, indeed, was correct). I just think there’s nothing more to explore about that incident – the topic already felt somewhat outdated back when reputation originally came out.
The large difference between this song to the rest of the Kim and Kanye digs is that this song paints Kim as one of Taylor's old high school bullies whose name has been changed to Aimee. Regardless of this switch, I still find the song to be largely boring and unnecessary for this album - it feels tonally out of place considering what most of this album is about.
I think, in part, that one of the big reasons as to why this was released comes down to the re-recordings project that Taylor is currently going through. One of the reasons is down to the vault and its success. It’s no surprise that after Red (Taylor’s Version) was a huge success for her with its massive track list, suddenly every album since then has been towering and chockfull of songs. I’m not mad about this in the slightest because I adore the deluge of content we are getting, but I do think it would’ve been somewhat beneficial for there to be more curation around the track list. What's even crazier (Taylor's Version) (From The Vault) is that I'm sure there's more material from this album in her hard drive.
The other reason why I think the re-recordings project has something to do with this song because it has her reminiscing about the past constantly. In the same way that “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” was clearly influenced by her re-recording Speak Now, I feel that this song comes from it being recorded while she is working on reputation (and self-titled). I think the connection with reputation and re-recording that album is fairly self-explanatory, but I do feel that this would make the most sense as to why she has returned to this topic again.
As for how this connects to her self-titled, the song title gives it away. In case it wasn’t blatantly obvious, in a weird throwback to Taylor’s old easter eggs that revealed who the song was about, “thanK You aiMee” is written this way to reveal that it was written about Kim. Later in the year, when she released the live version of this track to block Kanye West from the number one spot in the Billboard Hot 200, she changed the capitalisation of the track to say “thank You aimEe”. It’s petty, I guess.
Onto the good about this track, one of the big reasons I didn’t give this a much lower score comes from a couple of the lyrics which I think lift this song up significantly.
And maybe you've reframed it
And in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue
I don't think you've changed much
And so I changed your name and any real defining clues
And one day, your kid comes home singin'
A song that only us two is gonna know is about you
This verse somewhat justifies the existence of this song. Is it meant to throw us off the fact that this song is about Kim? Is it really not about her? I like that ambiguity and I think it elevates the song even if I think its themes, outside of who it was written by, feel tired.
Outside of the lyrics, I think the melody and the production is gorgeous on here - it's just a shame that the song can't be written about something more interesting like the rest of the album.
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