Saturday Night Live music: Taylor Swift performs ‘Ready For It?,’ ‘Call It What You Want’

Taylor Swift’s has had herself a heck of a week. Her new album “Reputation” is out, she’s been featured in countless publications, and there’s a chance she could end up with the more sales than any other artist this year.

Also, she’s performing on Saturday Night Live this weekend. Her performances were hyped up consistently throughout the week and CarterMatt’s main point of curiosity was about song choice. We wondered whether or not she was going to open with established hits from the album or go instead with some material that hasn’t had as much play. In the end, she did a little bit of both.

Swift chose to go with “Ready For It?” for her opening song, the sensible choice given that this is her current single and she recently released a music video for it. It is still very strange seeing Taylor perform with more of this pop aesthetic with backup dancers given that we’re talking about someone who started out talking about teardrops on her guitar and doing slow, emotional ballads. She’s not so much a country singer anymore, and this was certainly different from most of the other songs that she’s performed on SNL over the years.

One thing, music aside, that we were somewhat surprised by was her not appearing in a sketch during the show — given her level of fame, you have to think that something was pitched to her during the week. Maybe she just wanted to focus on the music given her busy schedule.

Second Song – Taylor came back out to perform a song that was much more in her traditional vein: “Call It What You Want.” This was a slow ballad and a love song about focusing on what matters and isolating some of the noise that is out there in the world. Lyrically it was certainly touching and our personal favorite of the two she performed.

Overall, the thing about Swift as an artist is that you either love her or hate her — she’s been so omnipresent in the music industry for so long that there isn’t really any middle ground. Nothing that she did tonight will change any minds in that regard. If you love her, you can consider these performances tonight to be very good. Otherwise, you probably muted the TV before she even started to sing.

What did you think about Swift’s performances tonight? Share in the comments section below!

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