DC ExtraTime: Before They Were MTV Stars - "Taylor, Will You Go To Prom with Me?"

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

On the same weekend that saw Ariana Grande headline Coachella, Game of Thrones premiere its final season and Tiger Woods return to glory at The Masters, the music world and social media began to buzz around the grapevine over the biggest pop star of our time teasing everyone about the end of the month. On April 13th on her website, Taylor Swift posted a countdown to midnight on April 26th, fueling speculation among her stans known as the Swifties about the possibility of releasing new music.
   When the NFL Draft came to Nashville two weeks ago, as in previous years the event took place outdoors in commissioner Roger Goddell hearing it from the crowd in announcing the picks of round 1 on Thursday night and the NFL fandom coming together in the city's main entertainment district. Lower Broadway hosted the three days of the NFL Draft that saw Heisman winner Kyler Murphy be drafted 1st overall by Arizona and saw a record 40 trades go down, all in front of 600,000 people on site and 47.5 million TV viewers.

Brandon Urie w/ Taylor on "ME!"

As Broadway in Nashville is where the action is with live country music, honey tonks, shops, eateries and everything else of interest to locals and tourists alike, it was there that all was revealed for the next phase in Taylor's musical evolution from country star to full-fledged pop star. The day before round 1 of the Draft on April 25th, a mural of a butterfly painted by a local street artist was found by media both press and social wise, as Kelsey Montague added the words "ME!" to his composition in that trendy neighborhood. Taylor paid a visit to the mural on Draft Day, and revealed that it was part of the promotion of the lead single of her seventh album.
   Shortly after Round 1 of the draft concluded, "ME!" was released both in its audio form to all digital music outlets and in its visual iteration when the music video premiered simultaneously. The bubblegum track also stars Panic! at the Disco's Brandon Urie, and as she told ABC/ESPN at the draft, Taylor saw the song as "embracing your individuality and really owning it... with a pop song, we have an ability to get a melody stuck in people's heads, and I just want it to be one that makes them feel better about themselves, not worse."
   Despite critics being split on it, "ME!" shot to records on iTunes, Amazon Music and other music platforms both in America and overseas, while its Willie Wonka-themed video set new benchmarks on YouTube and Vevo. She and Brandon got to perform the track for the first time live at this past week's Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, though Beyonce fans claim she copied her iconic performance at Coachella from last year. But this does offer the ramp-up to the summertime release of her new album, whose title has not officially been released though it is hidden in the video.

Cam and Kayla.

It would seem somewhat strange to offer a link between Taylor and MTV Reality, but after Kayla from Season 1 of Are You The One? got to hang with the queen at her New Orleans tour stop last year while on break at her local news job, there is another link besides the world's biggest star right now and a show that marks its fifth anniversary this year and for which Season 8 is coming in the summer. This year's quest to find love in perfect matches and truth booths will be a gender-fluid season, meaning those from the LGBT community will appear on AYTO for the first time, just after Ex On The Beach welcomed its first gay castmates on Season 2, including Jozea from The Challenge.
   Last year, we saw someone very much different from everyone else make his way to the AYTO abode in Cam Viney, an aspiring lawyer from West Virginia, who took a break from interning in our nation's capital to find love. He is black, who is a Republican and who supports our President... and while visiting the White House on one of his assignments in Washington, D.C., he got to meet Ivanka Trump. Before that, he was a track athlete at the University of Illinois who competed in the relays at both the national level and in the Big Ten Conference.
   During AYTO's Season of Fate last year, Cam made his mark a couple times: he found love in the house and forged a lifelong friendship with cheerleader/dancer Kayla Umagat, and found himself in a big rivalry with Kwasi (the one who then went onto the YouTube reboot of Singled Out) that even turned into blows one night. But if everyone thought that he's conservative in everything he does, it was anything but when it came to the many times where the AYTO cast got to dance.

Well before he entered the Are You The One house and while she was recording the first inkling of her breaking out of that country shell in Red, Cam took to YouTube to do what a lot of people did back in the spring of 2012: ask Taylor if he can bring her to his high school prom. He got to perform a different version of "You Belong to Me" with his own customized lyrics, and got the junior and senior classes at his high school to ask that magic question.

And that's not all... when Cam was in Champagne, Illinois, he also asked Taylor the magic question again, this time at a formal on the Illinois campus. Eventually, these two tries in high school and college didn't work out, but it was worth a good try though, Cam... at least, you got to be on an MTV reality dating show.

Frat Formal? @taylorswift13 pic.twitter.com/qyLRuvMrjq

— Cam Viney (@cam_viney) February 24, 2014

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