At the VMAs Taylor Swift Showed How She Intends to Stay on Top

After a long, carefully plotted rollout, Taylor Swift’s new album Lover landed on Friday. On Monday, she performed for the first time after its release at the VMAs, playing an abbreviated version of “You Need to Calm Down” before going into a solo acoustic rendition of the album’s тιтle track. She opened with sweeping gestures and big images: herself, at the center of a large party, communicating a message about equality, much like in the video for “You Need to Calm Down.” But her “Lover” performance was quieter and smaller—Swift, an acoustic guitar, and most of Newark’s Prudential Center singing along to her declarations of everlasting love.

That second song was widely viewed as a return to form after the mixed reaction to Lover’s first two singles, “Me!” and “You Need to Calm Down.” Live, it evoked some of Swift’s awards-show performances from years past, such as “Mean” at the 2012 Grammys. That’s not just because the arrangement was similarly pared back, but because it gave Swift a chance to deal in small truths rather than broad proclamations, and to use her expressions to communicate her meaning. “And you’ll save all your dirtiest jokes for me,” she sang with a laugh and an eye roll. The broadcast switched to a close-up.

Much has been made of Swift’s old-fashioned media blitz in the run-up to this album, and opening the VMAs strikes a similarly big tent note. Even if there’s no such thing as the center of pop anymore, she’s going for it, and it’s working about as much as it can. Swift won three awards during the night, including the top honor for video of the year. More than that, she was at the heart of the show, and the arena, even when she wasn’t performing. She was met with concert-like cheers when she emerged after her performance to take her seat, stopping on the way to hug Queen Latifah. She danced through most of Lil Nas X’s performance of “Panini,” even in the few moments she wasn’t on camera.

Lover has been mostly well received, especially in comparison to those opening singles. It’s an interesting thought experiment: What if, for example, “Cruel Summer” and “Paper Rings” had been the first two singles instead, or she had performed those songs instead? It’s not hard to imagine that “he looks up, grinning like a devil,” the crowning moment of the former, could have gone the way of “poison me daddy.” But “Me!” positioned her new course, trading the darkness of Reputation for the cotton candy of this new album cycle, and “You Need to Calm Down” was a declaration of political intent. When she accepted her award for video of the year, Swift said, “You voting for this video means that you want a world where we’re all treated equally under God, regardless of who you love, regardless of how we identify,” and pointed out how the White House has yet to respond to the Equality Act peтιтion’s half a million signatures. She had a plan, and she’s sticking to it.

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