The second track on Taylor Swift’s 1989, ‘Style’, is a song about a couple so effortlessly cool, chic and in love that theirs is an affair that promises to “never go out of style.”
(I call it 1989’s second song and not its third because album opener ‘Welcome To New York’ is not a song. It is a blistering hell jingle penned in blood as part of Swift’s ‘Welcome Ambassador’ contractual obligations to New York City’s Tourism Board.)
‘Style’, however, is great. It’s the catchiest song about mutual infidelity since TLC’s ‘Creep’, but so much of the relationship (ostensibly the one between Swift and Harry Styles) at the heart of the song hinges on the kind of appearances that don’t last forever – unlike, say, tattoos.
Flash forward a few years and we find ourselves in London chatting to the bros of Temper Trap, who regaled us with the story of that one time they were faced with an ethical dilemma on their first meeting with Taylor Swift who, when faced with the looming prospect of Styles’ birthday, presented to the band a typically Swiftian ethical quandary:
