Following a highly cloak-and-dagger campaign that included NDAs, chloroform and pinky swears, "ME!" featuring Panic's Brendon Urie, Taylor Swift's first release since her new deal with UMG via Republic, arrived precisely at midnight, as promised. Tay places a high value on punctuality.
The track, penned by Taylor, Urie and Joel Little, went wide to all DSPs, as well as radio, reaching #1 at iTunes, um, Swiftly, and has also moved to #2 at Apple Music and Amazon's download store. The video earned 65.2m views in 24 hours, a new record for a video debut by a solo artist (or any female artist), and the second-biggest 24-hour debut for any video.
Monte Lipman has his game face on. So, of course, does Spanky.
Ready? Click away—preferably on an audio-streaming service.
Be sure to check out the opening dialogue in a popular Romance language, the pink snake morphing into butterflies and those puffy clouds, all of which are clearly metaphors for something.