【搬运】【译】Pitchfork评Taylor Swift 2019年回归单曲“ME!”

搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）

翻译：Ryan-Chopin

审译： WhitneyL

Taylor Swift has made essentially the same feint Justin Timberlake did last year, when the run-up to Man of the Woods hinted at a back-to-basics country project, only to produce some of the least-inspired pop of his career. The concept was even more believable from Swift, whose recent and much remarked-upon visual pivot seemed to return to the Cinderella-and-sequins aesthetic of her early albums. Harder to believe is where she ended up: “ME!” a brittle blast of synth-pop that drew immediate comparisons to Timberlake’s infantile Trolls theme song “Can’t Stop the Feeling.” Her duet partner, Panic! At the Disco’s Brendon Urie, singing his best Ed Sheeran impression, brings all the passion of a marionette, and if Swift’s venomous reputation as a bad girl sometimes felt forced, this song feels like a punishment.

佯装下的Taylor Swift本质上与去年的Justin Timberlake不相上下，《Man of the Woods》（译者注：这张专辑婊叉给分3.8分）处于筹备阶段时就暗示要“回复本原”到乡村音乐，结果Justin Timberlake却推出了他职业生涯中最缺乏灵感的一些流行音乐作品。“回复本原”在Swift身上更加明显，她刚发布的作品带来的视觉转向似乎转为运用她早期专辑中的“灰姑娘和亮片美学”元素。更难以置信的是她这次回归带来的是“ME!”这首歌，这股不稳的合成器流行乐让人立刻能联想起Timberlake给电影《Trolls》创作的主题曲“Can 't Stop the Feeling”。她的二重唱搭档——乐队Panic! At the Disco的主唱Brendon Urie“完美”留下了似Taylor与Ed Sheeran合作般的深刻印象，像牵线木偶般在激情地演绎着，如果Swift上张暗黑专辑《reputation》展现的是一个时不时感到压迫的坏女孩形象，那么这首歌给人的感觉像是这个女孩受到了惩罚。

Still less appealing was the corporatized midwifery of its debut, which began last night during network TV coverage of the NFL draft and continues today on “Good Morning America.” “ME!” immediately soundtracked teasers for both ESPN and the ABC lineup (where footage from “The Bachelor” is unironically cut over a line about “a lot of cool chicks out there”). The clear message is that a Taylor Swift song is a prime-time event, and yet it is objectively corny to piggyback on professional football, an institution beset by its own myriad problems, with a song about how there “ain’t no I in ‘team.’”

Swift从前一晚美国国家橄榄球联盟(NFL)选秀大赛的网络电视报道亮相，到第二天早上继续出现在《早安美国(Good Morning America)》节目中，可见为了发行这首歌所进行的商业化预热更是没趣了。“ME！”一经发行，立刻霸占了娱乐体育节目电视网（ESPN）和美国广播公司（ABC）的节目(甚至更搞笑的是，《单身汉(the Bachelor)》在播出时突然被中断，屏幕上呈现出“a lot of cool chicks out there/外面有很多酷女孩”的歌词)。显而易见，Taylor Swift的新歌发行才是黄金时段的盛事，但从客观上讲，沾职业橄榄球的光来推广一首歌词里写到“ain ' t no I in ' team/‘队伍’里没有‘我’（译者注：作者想表达的意思是球队队员不会独自作战）”的歌，算是有些不尽人意了，更何况该职业橄榄球组织本身也存在无数瑕疵。

The brilliance of Swift’s best songwriting is in its heartfelt vulnerability and goofy humor, in simple wisdom that showed her to be empathetic and hopelessly romantic. Now she is here to remind us that “you can’t spell awesome without ‘me.’” The song is a showcase for the worst and weakest aspects of Swift’s work, the syrupy kitsch and occasional over-reliance on wordless vocal fillers—“Hee-hee-hee, hoo-hoo-hoo,” goes the chorus, like it’s laughing at you. The hook will stick, because it is more fascinating than it is boring; there will be better songs on the eventual album, because it is not hard to write a better song than this. “ME!” is two steps away from a corporate jingle, innocuous feel-good music in an airtight clamshell package.

Swift最出色的歌曲创作在于其发自内心的脆弱、蠢蠢的幽默和单纯的智慧，并得以展现出她富有同情心一面与她经历的心碎爱情。现在她在这里提醒着我们，“you can’t spell awesome without ‘me.’/没有‘我’，你是不会知道‘优秀’为何物（译者注：我霉在卖瓜呢）”。而这首歌把Swift所有作品中最糟糕、最薄弱的元素都体现了出来，这首歌甜美媚俗，偶尔过度依赖无实意的填充词——副歌部分的“Hee-hee-hee, hoo-hoo-hoo”难道不像在嘲笑你吗？这个旋律容易上口，因为它比无聊之作还是要更吸引人一点，而最终的专辑中定会有比这更好的歌曲，因为写一首比这更好的歌曲并不难。若想说“ME！”有些许商业化、节拍韵律简单、无伤大雅且让人感觉良好，其实它也相差不远了。