"We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift from her fourth studio album, Red (2012). It was released as the album's lead single on August 13, 2012, by Big Machine Records. Written and produced by Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" is an upbeat pop song that features synthesizers, twangy processed guitar riffs, bass drums, and a spoken-word bridge. Its lyrics express Swift's frustration with an ex-lover who wants to rekindle their relationship. An alternate version was released to US country radio on August 21, 2012.
Music critics praised the track for its catchy melody and radio-friendly sound, although some found the song overtly commercial and its lyrics subpar. The song appeared in year-end lists by Rolling Stone, Time, and The Village Voice. On the US Billboard Hot 100, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" debuted at number 72 and rose to number one the following week, registering one of the biggest single-week jumps in chart history. The single also reached number one in Canada and New Zealand and reached the top five in Australia, Ireland, Japan, and the UK. The single spent a record-breaking nine consecutive weeks topping the Hot Country Songs chart. It has received multi-platinum certifications in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the US.
The music video for the song was released on August 30, 2012. "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" won a Billboard Music Award for Top Country Song and was nominated for Record of the Year at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, Video of the Year at the 2013 CMT Music Awards, and Favorite Song at the 39th People's Choice Awards. Swift has performed the song on four of her world tours, from the Red Tour (2013–14) to the Eras Tour (2023–2024). A re-recorded version of the song, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Taylor's Version)", was released as part of her 2021 re-recorded album Red (Taylor's Version).
Background and release Taylor Swift continued working with longtime collaborator Nathan Chapman on her third studio album, Speak Now (2010). For her next studio album, Red, Swift wanted to collaborate with new pop and rock producers, hoping to expand beyond the country pop sound that had informed her previous albums. Among the new producers were Max Martin and Shellback, two Swedish producers known for their chart-topping pop songs.
Swift wrote three songs for Red with Martin and Shellback, including "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", which was produced by the three. When the three were in the studio, a friend of Swift visited and told her she and an ex-boyfriend of hers were reconciling. When the friend left, Swift told Martin and Shellback that they were not getting back together. She strummed an acoustic guitar and improvising the refrain, "We are never ever...", asking Martin and Shellback, "Is that too obvious?" The producers built on that idea and finished the song in 25 minutes. The song was recorded at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles and MXM Studios in Stockholm.
The track served as Red lead single. Swift premiered a snippet of "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" via a live webchat on Google Hangouts on August 13, 2012; it was released to hot adult contemporary radio in the US the same day, promoted by Republic Records. The following day, Big Machine Records released the song for digital download and to contemporary hit radio in the US in partnership with Republic. An alternate version was released to country radio on August 21, 2012. A limited-edition individually numbered CD single was released to Swift's online store on September 4, 2012; each CD was packaged with a "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" T-shirt and backpack.
Composition and lyrics
"We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" is 3 minutes and 12 seconds long. The song is anchored by a recurring acoustic guitar riff that features a light twang. Driven by an insistent four on the floor beat, the production features prominent electronic elements—pulsing synthesizers, keyboards, processed vocals, and a drum machine, alongside acoustic instruments of guitars and banjo. The thumping bass drum instrumentation evokes hip-hop.
The refrain features a vocal hook that Swift sings the word "we" with an extra syllable, delivered in half an octave higher. The musicologist James E. Perone wrote that Swift's vocals on "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" are both robotic and humane, thanks to the balance between processed vocals during most of the verses and unprocessed vocals at the end of each refrain as well as in the bridge and the spoken-word interlude, which goes: "I'm just, I mean, this is exhausting. Like, we are never getting back together. Like, ever."
Critics aligned "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" with a multitude of pop subgenres including bubblegum pop, dance-pop, electropop, Europop, pop-punk, and pop rock. Steve Hyden, reflecting on the single in a 2021 article for The New York Times, characterized the song as electro-folk. The alternate version released to country radio incorporates a softer production. Perone commented that "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" is a musically flexible track, in that its song structure and melodic qualities resemble a conventional country song, but with modern influences of contemporary music that make it adaptable to many different genres.
The lyrics are about a protagonist's frustration over an ex-boyfriend who wants to rekindle their relationship. At one point, Swift sings, "And you would hide away and find your peace of mind/ With some indie record that's much cooler than mine", deriding the ex-boyfriend's pretentious music taste while referencing her own profession as a musical artist. Swift said that the cited lyrics were the song's most important detail because they reveal her real-life ex-boyfriend's judgment of her music, "It was a relationship where I felt very critiqued and subpar. He'd listen to this music that nobody had heard of ... but as soon as anyone else liked this band, he'd drop them." To this extent, she wrote "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" in hopes of commercial success to spite the ex-boyfriend, "Not only would it hopefully be played a lot, so that he'd have to hear it, but [also] it's the opposite of the kind of music that he was trying to make me feel inferior to." Various critics thought that the song's vocabulary exemplified the language that millennials or "Valley girls" used.
Critical reception When "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" was first released, many critics commented on its pure pop production and contrasted it with Swift's status as a country musician. A multitude of critics highlighted its hook as catchy and infectious, although this was not necessarily a compliment. Robert Myers of The Village Voice considered the single a "commercial calculation of the worst kind", and Grady Smith of Entertainment Weekly regarded it as a regression following Speak Now. Billy Dukes of Taste of Country stated that Swift successfully "captures the anger of young love gone wrong" but contended that the melody was "difficult to embrace quickly".
Jonathan Keefe of Slant Magazine complimented the song's melodic composition but criticized Swift's "stilted phrasing" and vocal performance, describing them "flat and unconvincing". David Malitz of The Washington Post found the song immature and remarked, "the chorus is catchy but if this is representative of what awaits on Red, it's hard to be too excited". On a positive side, Jody Rosen, in his review for Rolling Stone, rated the song four stars out of five. He wrote that the song's "hooks, plural, have a zing that's more Stockholm than Nashville" but it was still "unmistakably Taylor: a witty relationship postmortem, delivered in inimitable girlie-girl patois". In another piece for Slate, Rosen argued that the catchy pop sound of "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" could be traced back to Swift's earlier singles like "Picture to Burn" or "Should've Said No" (2006); to this extent, the single was less of a novelty and more of a refinement.
Some critics remarked on the song's tone. Marah Eakin of The A.V. Club praised the production and "mildly snarky lyrics", while James Montgomery of MTV felt that the track represented a "defiant, liberated" Swift that no longer "[played] the victim" and that it was predisposed to be a successful radio hit. Also giving the song four stars out of five, Billboard opined that there was a "sardonic sneer" in Swift's vocals and that the song incorporated "biting sarcasm within her deep-rooted confidence". Glenn Gamboa of Newsday wrote that in the song, Swift still managed to "sound genuine and conversational" as before. In an article for NPR, Ann Powers wrote that "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" was neither earnest nor wistful as Swift's early country songs but instead "spins sugar from spit". According to Powers, by collaborating with Martin, Swift participated in a wave of defiant, sassy feminist "punk" female artists who conveyed their headstrong attitudes through songs, though Swift's delivery was still "too callow and insular to really be substantial".
Listicles Several publications ranked "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" in their lists of the best songs of 2012, including Rolling Stone (second), Time (fourth), The Guardian (fifth), The Village Voices Pazz & Jop critics' poll (sixth), PopMatters (11th), NME (24th), and Consequence of Sound (40th). The single was named the 169th best song of 2010–2014 on Pitchfork's "The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010–2014)" list. In 2019, Stereogum ranked the song as the 71st best song of the 2010s. Rolling Stone ranked the song as the thirteenth-best female country song of the 2000s and 2010s. The Tampa Bay Times ranked it 4th on their list of the best 2010s pop songs.
Critics have placed "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" highly on rankings of Swift's entire catalog; Hannah Mylrea from NME (2020) ranked it 15th out of 161 songs in Swift's discography, Nate Jones from Vulture (2021), 16th out of 245, and Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone (2024), 27th out of 274. Alexis Petridis from The Guardian ranked the track 11th on a 2019 ranking of Swift's 44 singles, deeming it "revitalised – smarter, snarkier and tougher" compared to the "artistically underwhelming" Speak Now.
Commercial performance
In the US, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" debuted at number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart week ending August 25, 2012, based on two days of airplay. It rose to number one the following week, registering one of the biggest single-week jumps in chart history. Giving Swift her first Hot 100 number one, it made Swift the country artist with the most top-ten chart entries (11, tying with Kenny Rogers). It spent three non-consecutive weeks at number one, becoming the first country song to spend three or more weeks at number one after Kenny Rogers's "Lady" (1980). The single stayed in the top ten for thirteen non-consecutive weeks. On the Radio Songs chart, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" entered at number 25, the highest debut for a song by a female country artist. It peaked at number three for three non-consecutive weeks, giving Swift her fourth top-ten entry. On the Hot Digital Songs chart, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" debuted at number one with first-week sales of 623,000 digital copies in the week ending September 1, 2012, setting a record for the fastest-selling digital single by a female artist in Billboard chart history.