Taylor Swift unleashed her latest “From the Vault” gem on Wednesday (April 7), and though it’s called “Mr. Perfectly Fine (Taylor’s Version),” trust her when she says things are not.
“Hello Mr. Perfectly Fine/ How’s your heart after breaking mine?/ Mr. always at the right place at the right time, baby,” she sings over the dreamy, mid-tempo acoustic track, “Hello, Mr. casually cruel/ Mr. everything revolves around you/ I’ve been Miss misery since your goodbye/ And you’re Mr. Perfectly Fine.”
In a tweet announcing the song, Swift wrote, “Me in 2020: life is chill, writing songs based in fiction to avoid drama, feeling pretty grown up My 2008 music from the vault, in a goblin voice: “REELEEEEEEASE MR PERFECTLY FIIIIIIINE.”
She’s not wrong. After releasing the character-driven Folklore and Evermore pandemic albums last year, in which the singer took on other people’s stories, “Mr. Perfectly Fine” sounds like a classic Fearless-era Taylor tale of romantic woe. Describing the guy as “Mr. Perfect Face,” “Mr. Here to stay” and “Mr. Looked me in the eye and told me you would never go away,” in the first verse, Taylor paints a portrait of a man who says all the rights things at the right time, before she gets to know “Mr. Change of heart,” right before he breaks hers.
The new song goes on to reveal that this Mr., of course, has his “arm ’round a brand-new girl,” and though she was willing to stick it out, she predicts he’ll miss her some day and then, well, he’ll be “Mr. Too late.”
Over the weekend, Swift sent fans down the rabbit hole with a scavenger hunt that she promised would require “expert” level decoding. “The vault door is about to be as unhinged as you’ll think I am after you watch this video,” Swift wrote. Before “Mr.” Swift had only released one song in her “From the Vault” series, “You All Over Me,” featuring Maren Morris, which is part of the upcoming re-recorded version of her 2008 album Fearless, due out this Friday (April 9) with six never-before-released songs.
Listen to “Mr. Perfectly Fine” below.
