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Taylor Swift’s new album, Lover, has arrived, and as usual it’s packed with autobiographical details about the singer-songwriter’s life. One track title that immediately stood out even before the project’s release was “Cruel Summer,” the same name as the 2012 G.O.O.D. Music compilation album released by Swift’s perennial rival Kanye West.
As it turns out, the song does address summer 2016, when her beef with Kanye and his wife Kim Kardashian-West came to a head yet again. However, Swift frames the song around something else happening happening at the same time: her new romance with Joe Alwyn.
In a journal accompanying the release of Lover, Swift described that summer as “the apocalypse,” but it also marked the start of her relationship with Alwyn. Throughout “Cruel Summer,” Swift sings about balancing feelings of sadness and negativity with the hope of a new relationship:
And it’s new, the shape of your body
It’s blue, the feeling I’ve got
And it’s ooh, whoa oh
It’s a cruel summer
Swift references the relationship as a bastion of happiness amidst turmoil:
I’m drunk in the back of the car
And I cried like a baby coming home from the bar (Oh)
Said, “I’m fine,” but it wasn’t true
I don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep you
And I snuck in through the garden gate
Every night that summer just to seal my fate (Oh)
And I scream, “For whatever it’s worth
I love you, ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard?”
Although Swift addressed public perceptions of her on 2017’s reputation, “Cruel Summer” is a more humanizing take on an incident that has dogged Swift’s career for years. The song is produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, who worked extensively on the project with her. Although Swift has yet to identify a post-release single, “Cruel Summer” seems like a prime target.
Listen to the song above and read all the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” on Genius now.
