She’d be just like Leo, in Saint-Tropez.
Taylor Swift just dropped the lyric video for her power anthem, “The Man.” The track, Swift’s latest single off of her Lover album, addresses the double standards between men and women. Specifically, the superstar singer compares the way she’s treated in the media vs. the way famous men are treated. In the video, a woman is shown walking among a sea of men, who are much taller and larger. After almost being stepped on, the woman starts running, trying to escape. She then climbs a building, working hard to reach the top but not quite getting there. At one point, she’s kicked off a building, falling, before she’s caught by another woman. The video ends with a group of women walking together in solidarity, showing a powerful message to viewers.
“I would be complex, I would be cool/They’d say I played the field before I found someone to commit to,” Swift sings in the opening of the track. “And that would be okay, for me to do/Every conquest I had made would make me more of a boss to you.”
“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can/Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man,” the lyrics continue. “And I’m so sick of them coming at me again/’Cause if I was a man, then I’d be the man/I’d be the man.”
Swift then dives into how, as a woman, people can’t separate her appearance and attitude from her work.
“They’d say I hustled, put in the work/They wouldn’t shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve,” T.Swift sings. “What I was wearing, if I was rude/Could all be separated from my good ideas and power moves.”
The 30-year-old Grammy winner then goes on to name-check Leonardo DiCaprio.
“And they would toast to me, oh, let the players play,” Swift sings. “I’d be just like Leo in Saint-Tropez.”
Swift—who can be seen creating the song in her new Netflix documentary, Miss Americana—then wonders what it’s like to behave the way a man does in the industry.
She asks, “What’s it like to brag about raking in dollars and getting bitches and models?”
As Swift says in the lyrics, if she was out flashing her dollars, she’d be a “bitch” not a “baller.”
You can check out the video above to see more of Swift’s lyrics!
