Cruel Summer

“Cruel Summer” is the second track off of Taylor Swift’s seventh studio album, Lover. This song's release was confirmed on Taylor’s social media accounts on August 16, 2019 with the announcement of the album. Taylor hinted at this song’s title a few times before the track list was announced. In the music video for “You Need to Calm Down”, Ellen DeGeneres was seen getting a tattoo of the title of the song. During Taylor’s commercial for Amazon music, featuring the song “You Need to Calm Down”, a butterfly in the background had the words ”cruel summer” written on the wings, in the same font as Ellen’s tattoo.