Gayle has received a lot of online negativity since breaking through with “ABCDEFU.” The furor inspired “Everybody Hates Me,” her angsty yet empowering March single. She recently revealed to Teen Vogue the reaction she received from Taylor Swift after telling her about her ordeal. It also seems to have inspired her new single, “Don’t Call Me Pretty.”
Gayle is among Swift’s openers on her The Eras Tour, so she’s been exposed to real-life positive reinforcement — brought to tears during one of her opening sets because she couldn’t believe her “dream come true” was really happening. “Thank you for paying attention,” Gayle told the audience at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
In “Don’t Call Me Pretty,” Gayle doesn’t care about anyone’s outside opinion, especially someone she describes in the opening lines as “a good friend but a bad idea.” She dropped the single and an accompanying video on Friday, May 5.
The video captures Gayle enjoying a carefree afternoon at an amusement park and the zoo. As Gayle issues a warning to someone from her past who she regrets blurring boundaries with, she approaches a sign, warning, “DANGEROUS ANIMAL DO NOT CROSS.”
“I don’t wanna be pretty to you,” she belts in the guitar-fueled chorus. “I don’t wanna be nice / I don’t wanna be the girl that kept you warm for the night / Oh, no, not anymore, anymore.”
Gayle is disgusted that this person would “tell me I should smile more” and dismisses “all your little compliments” because she’d rather they “own up to your part in this.”
Ultimately, she appears to get the last laugh. Her uninhibited lyrical expression is illustrated in the video by screaming on a rollercoaster and smiling in a photo booth with her bandmates.
Watch the “Don’t Call Me Pretty” video above.
Gayle is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.