Oh, you haven’t heard? The old Taylor can’t come to the phone because she’s dead — but is she actually?

Swift has been laying low for the last couple of years while simultaneously being hit with waves of bad publicity. First, there was her seemingly never-ending, straight up ugly public fight with Katy Perry out of which the songs “Bad Blood” and “Swish” by Swift and Perry respectively have originated.

Following her feud with the Kardashian-West family, Swift has been met with severe backlash from fans and foes alike questioning her credibility. Swift deleted the majority of her social media, refrained from releasing any new music and kept a very low profile in response. That is, until August 24th when Swift dropped the first single from her new upcoming album Reputation titled, ‘Look What You Made Me Do’.

The song has a very angst-y vibe as Swift makes it seem as though she’s taking blame for all the things she’s done in the past that have been met with negative media attention. But what it is actually is just her playing the victim card again. Following the bridge of the song, there’s a weird interlude in which Swift says “Sorry, old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now, why? Oh, she’s dead!”

That’s a very dramatic and creepy way to give Swift the fresh start she obviously needs. But the thing is, the old Taylor isn’t dead at all – in fact, this whole song is textbook Swift.

Swift has established her career by targeting and blaming others for her personal issues and making herself come across as the victim. This whole mentality started as early as 2006 with her first album “Taylor Swift”. A song on the album titled ‘Picture to Burn’, while very catchy, is a petty song about how she dumped a guy because he wouldn’t let her drive his truck and she was going to tell everyone they broke up because he was gay.

The general message throughout most of Swift’s career so far has portrayed herself as the one who was done wrong by and it’s always the other person’s fault.

‘Look What You Made Me Do’ stays completely on brand with this mentality. Even the sentence “look what you made me do” is an example of Swift playing the victim – at the end of the day, we’re all accountable for our own actions. Other lyrics in the new song include “the role you made me play of the fool, no I don’t like you” and “maybe I got mine but you’ll all get yours”. These lyrics reveal Swift’s tendency to play the victim that she’s had her entire career. The old Taylor isn’t dead – she is very much alive and trying to trick us into thinking she’s going to take accountability for her actions. But so far she has yet to prove us wrong.

I admit, I’ll still shamelessly listen to ‘Teardrops On My Guitar’ and ‘You Belong With Me’. Nevertheless, I’m waiting for the day Swift decides to own up to her mistakes and puts the victim card away for good.