It Seems Like Everyone Hates Taylor Swift’s New Songs, So Why Are They Still So Popular?
Slate · L · trust 42/100
Can I confess something that might make me instantly suspect as a music critic? I really don’t mind Taylor Swift’s “ Wood .” I actually … kinda like it.
The most maligned album cut from Swift’s fall 2025 blockbuster The Life of a Showgirl , “Wood” is very obviously about her then-fiancé, now-husband Travis Kelce, more specifically his, uh, manhood. Given its lyrics about how “his love was the key that opened my thighs,” critics were quick to pounce on “Wood” as the low point of Showgirl , the epitome of ick. Slate’s own Carl Wilson called it “ the cringiest ,” and Katherine St. Asaph, writing for the Singles Jukebox, regards “Wood” as the low point of Swift’s whole career, the “ floor for her musical output .” But … it must be said the song is also a banger, a Motown-slash-disco homage teeming with musical allusions to everything from the Jackson 5’s superlative “ I Want You Back ” to Amii Stewart’s electro version of “ Knock on Wood ” to Naughty by Nature’s breezy hand-waver “ Jamboree .” I don’t know about you, but after decades of ingesting pop hits with groan - worthy , squicky , and unquestionably racy lyrics, when I encounter “Wood” in the wild I mostly let the lyrics sail over my head and just tap my foot.
Why do I bring up “Wood,” which wasn’t even an officially promoted single from The Life of a Showgirl ? Because despite all the carping, it was kind of a hit anyway. It peaked at No. 5 in its opening week —higher than seven other songs from the LP, including the Sabrina Carpenter duet—and wound up spending about two months on the Hot 100. I remain convinced it could’ve caught on for real if promoted to radio. (Who knows—maybe one day, like “ Cruel Summer ,” it will be.) Given the reality distortion field that is Taylor Swift’s career, basically anything she releases these days is going to have a shot at No. 1: moody therapy sessions , a quirky Shakespeare metaphor , a modern girl-group homage , a soundtrack song about Jessie and Woody . Why not a song about her hubby’s woody? Ultimately, it’s the pop hooks that make a hit.
In short, the critics and the more cynical factions of the Swiftie army may have strong opinions about her output these days, but the marketplace keeps saying we aren’t done with Taylor. As if proving my point, Swift has another earworm at No. 1 right now that the commentariat loves to hate . One year after The Life of a Showgirl and its singles crash-landed on the charts, she returns with a batch of bonus tracks, branded as a Showgirl addendum and cowritten and produced by her 1989 and Showgirl brain trust of Max Martin and Shellback. And the first of those tracks shot to No. 1, even though the whole project has been widely panned, or at least widely meh’d . Like “Wood,” the lyrics of its leadoff track have taken a beating among critics and the very online. ( The title, deservedly .) And yet, I must confess I find the song quite infectious. It not only evicted Ella Langley’s record-breaking “Choosin’ Texas” from the penthouse, it’s held there for a fortnight and counting. Not bad for a song that detractors keep claiming is a “Zero.”
I don’t expect “Patient Zero” to make many Swifties’ all-time top 10 lists, unless they’ve experienced a very specific kind of breakup. As a composition, it’s too slight, melodramatic and burdened with an ill-conceived metaphor of a title. In the lyrics, Swift’s protagonist is the titular first victim of a toxic boyfriend, long since dispatched, and is now advising and comforting the woman he dated after her: “But if you’re sick of him, I got you—I was patient zero.” Post-COVID, that two-word term has entered popular parlance as “the first to have a disease.” But as several critics and even epidemiologists have pointed out, patient zero was an unfortunate ’80s coinage based in a misreading of an HIV study in the earliest days of AIDS. In the LGBTQ+ community in particular, the term has a history as homophobic slander , and Swift should have picked another (admittedly less catchy) term for her song. It’s tone-deaf to a community she purports to care about and a distraction at best. (And you thought singing about her beau’s dick was offensive.)
It’s too bad, really, because the song itself is engaging. It’s got a graceful melody and a contagious hook that attaches to your auditory cortex remarkably quickly. It’s a Celtic-style fiddle tune, played by Scandinavian conductor and soloist Fredrik Burstedt , that anchors and cycles throughout the song, as Swift and producers Max Martin and Shellback layer on pinging synth drums and warm keyboards, as well as, buried deep in the mix, mandolin and pedal steel, in case Swift wants to keep pushing her “ return to country ” narrative. The violin hook is admirably unusual for a 2020s chart-topper. Honestly, I can’t think of too many current pop hits that deploy a fiddle hook in this loopy, naggingly insistent way—it’s not like disco strings. Really, the violin is more akin to Dexys Midnight Runners’ 1983 chart-topper “ Come on Eileen ,” only the fiddle has been turned from raucously joyous into a wistful bummer.
Swift wants that bummer aura, because the song is basically an elegy. It’s a novel, more funereal take on the old pop-song trope of two competing women cataloguing the flaws of a trifling man, from the Chess showtune ballad “ I Know Him So Well ” through the Whitney Houston–Deborah Cox you-in-danger-girl duet “ Same Script, Different Cast .” Except Swift’s version is not a duet—it’s more of a Dear Jane letter to a would-be rival after the damage has been done to both of them.
There’s a temptation to make a song on this topic sassy and shady à la Brandy and Monica’s “ The Boy Is Mine ,” but “Patient Zero” is more somber and vulnerable. Whatever snark is present in the song is suffused with regret: “I bet he burst into your life like fireworks / I bet he even said ‘I love you’ first.” And Martin and Shellback’s musical arrangement supports this vulnerability. My favorite moment in…
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