Taylor Swift’s New Track “Mean” Could Just As Well Be An ‘It Gets Better’ Anthem

Robbie Daw | October 19, 2010 7:14 am

Today brings the third promo single from Billboard cover girl Taylor Swift’s upcoming album Speak Now (out next Tuesday). The track is called “Mean,” and we can’t help but feel that the arrival of the plucky sing-along country jam is expertly timed, given the score of artists adding their voices to the It Gets Better campaign as a means of showing support to gay teens. Listen to Taylor tell off the bullies in “Mean” below!

“Some day I’ll be living in a big old city, and all you’re ever gonna be is mean / Some day I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me, and all you’re ever gonna be is mean,” Swift sings on the chorus of “Mean,” which was added to iTunes today as a final push before the release of her third album.

[wpaudio url=”//idolator.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Mean.mp3″ text=”Taylor Swift – Mean” dl=”0″] Some will likely find that the lyrics have a particular resonance, given that a rash of gay teen suicides has dominated headlines over the past month (particularly last week’s moving testimonial by Fort Worth city councilman Joel Burns, which quickly went viral and has garnered nearly two million views in just under seven days).

But current affairs aside, Taylor has hit another high with “Mean.” Like last week’s offering “Back To December,” this one finds the 20-year-old Grammy winner hitting a new mature level with her songwriting.

Particularly effective is the bit where she let’s the bully in the song have it: “And I can see you years from now in a bar talking over a football game / With that same big loud opinion, but nobody’s listening / Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things.”

Brava, Taylor. Thanks for stepping up your own game, and for giving a voice to even more listeners than you thought you would.