Amazon Prime’s latest series The Summer I Turned Pretty leans into the teen drama trope of a love triangle. Based on a novel by Jenny Han (the writer of the To All The Boys I Loved Before trilogy), the young adult series centers on Isabella “Belly” (Lola Tung) as she begins blossoming into womanhood and starts to catch the eye of adolescent boys. Each summer Belly and her family vacation in an idyllic beach town with her mom’s best friend Susannah’s (Rachel Blanchard) family who feels like an extension of her own. The only problem is she’s harboring an unrequited crush on Susannah’s son Conrad (Christopher Briney) who always saw her as a kid, while Conrad’s brother Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) also makes his interest known.
When the trailer dropped in late May 2022, it featured an as-yet unreleased “Taylor’s Version” of the Taylor Swift song “This Love” from her 1989 album, and the use of the song made waves amongst Swifties. Now that the entire first season is officially streaming, there are many more Taylor Swift moments throughout the seven-episode season. Han, who also penned the first episode of the series, told TV Line that this was a conscious decision: “The Venn diagram of Swifties and Summer fans, it’s like a circle,” she said. “It’s like all overlap. And as we were telling the story, there’s just so many moments where I [was] like, ‘This could use a little bit of Taylor Swift.’ It was as simple as that. We have a lot of great music on the show, but I’ve always felt that her storytelling as a songwriter really matches up to the vibes of Summer.”
While there are a plethora of Swift songs to choose from, fans are clamoring behind the use of “Cruel Summer” from the Lover album. The song appears within the first two minutes of the first episode right after Belly waxes philosophic about her summers at the beach house. Though it only plays in the background on the radio as Belly packs for the trip and her best friend Taylor (Rain Spencer) urges her to make a move on Conrad this summer, it’s the first Swift “sighting” in the show and sets the tone for rest of the series. Fans were seriously excited and couldn’t get enough after that opening.
Other Swift songs featured throughout the show’s seven-episode first season are “Lover,” “False God,” and “The Way I Loved You (Taylor’s Version).” Still, fans felt like “August” would’ve been a good addition to the soundtrack (maybe it’ll happen in the already announced Season 2?)
“Cruel Summer” has sky-rocketed on the music charts after last week’s The Summer I Turned Pretty release, three years after its original release. Some fans joked that seeing the song in a new light made them “feel something” again.
But mostly, fans just want Taylor Swift to make a video for the song, and hope Taylor will take notice of the increased streaming .
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