We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

Upon initial release, the song received positive reviews from music critics. Robert Myers of The Village Voice felt that the song, while “good”, was “not Swift at her best” and speculated that the decision to release it as a lead single was made for commercial reasons: “I doubt ‘Never Ever’ is even close to being the best song on Red; it’s a teaser, an indication to her fans of what’s coming up. That sounds like commercial calculation of the worst kind, but I don’t think it is. Swift’s connection with her audience is possibly more important than her connection with her boyfriends. And there is one brilliant touch: the spoken bit that comes after the middle eight.” Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone noted that the song’s “hooks, plural, have a zing that’s more Stockholm than Nashville. But it’s unmistakably Taylor: a witty relationship postmortem, delivered in inimitable girlie-girl patois. And this bit – “I’m just, I mean, this is exhausting. Like, we are never getting back together. Like, ever” – might be the most sublime spoken-word interlude in pop since Barry White died.”

Rolling Stone named it the second-best song of 2012 in their end-of-year critics’ poll: “It’s like a Clash of the Titans: Swift, the world’s hottest pop singer or songwriter, meets up with Max Martin, the Swedish maestro who’s been the Dr. Evil of global trash-disco for more than a decade. To nobody’s surprise, they cook up a perfect three-minute teen tantrum about country girls getting mad at high-strung indie boys, topping the charts faster than you can say, ‘This is exhausting.’ It’s a stadium-chant breakup song that may have less to do with the actual guy it’s about than with the massive raging-cowgirl audience Swift has led to the pinnacle of the music world.” The song was marked at No. 4 on Time magazine’s “Top 10 Songs of 2012 Playlist”. It was voted the sixth best single of 2012 by The Village Voice‘s 40th annual Pazz & Jop critics’ poll. It also received a Grammy nomination for “Record of the Year” for the 2013 Grammy Awards. 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.