On December 20, the new, terrifying-looking Cats movie starring Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, and more A-listers hits theaters. The forthcoming Tom Hooper-directed film will feature songs from the popular musical as well as a new original track penned by Swift and composing legend Andrew Lloyd Webber, because if there's one thing Swift's music needs, it's more theater-kid energy. The single, which is called "Beautiful Ghosts" will be released tomorrow, November 15, and to build excitement, Swift posted a short video on Twitter. The clip boasted just 10-ish seconds of audio and showcased a few delicately plunked piano notes and Swift singing, "Follow me home, if you dare to."That's it: Just one line and a couple musical notes.
Advertisement
Who wants this? Who hears one, context-less line from a song and gets hyped? Song teasers and trailers, while hypothetically a solid way to get people excited for new music, have jumped the shark from exciting into annoying, self-indulgent, and bad. Normally, artists preview their albums by releasing full singles out in the world. But now, the singles that would tease the larger work (either a movie like the Cats song or a full-length album) need their own trailers, too. We're getting a preview of a preview, and frankly, it's exhausting.Swift is hardly the first to do this; it's become incredibly common. To name just three previous offenders from this year, Tame Impala, Foals, and Billie Eilish all offered these miniscule sneak peeks of their forthcoming releases. At least with those album trailers, there were compelling visual elements on top of the short music clips. With Swift's, the only visual component is a still image of Swift in costume as Cats' Bombalurina.Nothing against Swift as it's likely the song will be one of the best (if not the best) original tracks written for a Cats remake all year, but we'd rather just be surprised by listening to the full single.