Entertainment

Does Taylor Swift’s New Song Really Sound Like This ‘High School Musical’ Classic?

by Mathew Jedeikin
Disney Channel

The new era of Taylor Swift is upon us. Between her cryptic social media strategy and easy to devour music video for her new single, "Look What You Made Me Do" — which is so full of reference that it's easy to re-watch dozens of times — it seems like the world has become instantly obsessed with this new, arguably edgier version of Swift. (Whether it's in a positive way or not.) After undoubtedly listening to the song dozens of times, someone on Twitter suggested that "Look What You Made Me Do" sounds similar to a song from High School Musical 2. But it wasn't just one person who felt this way; the video comparison has already gotten nearly 50,000 likes and 20,000 retweets at the time of this article's publication.

YouTube star Jon Cozart, known by fans for his YouTube channel, Paint, first pointed out the alleged similarity in a video with the songs overlapping as he lip-synced the Zac Efron part. As Cosmopolitan reports, “LWYMMD” lists Swift along with Jack Antonoff and Right Said Fred, with songwriting credits. In Cozart's tweet he suggests that perhaps Troy Bolton (Zac Efron's character in High School Musical 2) should also get a writing credit. Cozart even @replied Swift herself. Besides promotional messages she hasn't been very active on social media lately, so don't expect her to respond to the comparison.

A number of users replied to Cozart's original tweet expressing that they also heard the similarity between the songs. "I knew it reminded me of another song but i couldn't place it UNTIL NOW," on person said on Twitter.

Other people were legitimately shook.

Inspiration definitely can come from anywhere, but it's more likely that the songs share similar structures and simply sounds good together when mashed up.

Cozart's video comparison in unarguably well-done, but personally, I don't hear much similarity. The Twitterverse clearly disagrees with me, though.

Watch and listen to the video of Efron performing "Bet on It" in High School Musical 2 above if you really want to get to the bottom of this whole situation (and laugh at his dance moves).