Weird Trend Alert: Why Are So Many Songs Shouting-Out "Call Me by Your Name"?

Even Taylor Swift is getting involved.

The Academy Awards air in Australia on Monday, where Call Me by Your Name is expected to take home the Adapted Screenplay prize. (Good. The film’s great!)

Unfortunately for fans, it’s unlikely to win Best Picture (where the competition is between Three Billboards, The Shape of Water and Get Out), or Best Actor, despite the efforts of Timothée Chalamet’s ‘Chalamaniacs’ (a fanbase that includes Frank Ocean, which should count for something, Academy!).

However, the powerful gay romance has won another kind of competition, and, to be honest, it’s not one we realised was even happening: Most Referenced Movie in Pop-Alt Songs.

Late last year, we reflected on the fact that Taylor Swift (in her otherwise execrable album Reputation), seemed to shout-out Call Me by Your Name twice.

The first time comes in the tune "Don’t Blame Me", where she sings: "My name is whatever you decide/ And I’m just gonna call you mine."

The second—and this is more of an extrapolation—was in the title of the tune "Call It What You Want". Still, that seemed like enough info to assume Swifty was a CMBYN stan. (We’ve assumed weirder things about her with less firm information, that’s for damn sure.)

Then, imagine our surprise when Porches dropped their new album earlier this year, with the haunting tune "By My Side", and its own Call Me by Your Name-adjacent lyric: "I will call you by your name/ If you call me by mine." Close enough!

And now, today, Virginian indie-rocker Lucy Dacus releases her sophomore record Historian, which is led by the tune "Night Shift". Check out its second line: "I mistakenly called them by your name."

Come on!

If you throw Sufjan Stevens’ two original songs from the soundtrack into the pile (one of which, "Mystery of Love", is nominated for an Oscar) that makes for an entire EP’s worth of material referencing the heartbreaking love story between Elio and Oliver, and their habit of, you know, calling each other by their own names.

Knowing Frank Ocean adored the flick, would it be too much to claim his recent cover of "Moon River" was also intended as a tribute to Luca Guadagnino’s movie? After all, it is about "two drifters off to see the world"…

The question is: Why this picture? Well, did we mention it's great? But more specifically, this groundbreaking coming of age tale has clearly struck a nerve with younger viewers, and you can thank them for keeping it alive in the 'awards' conversation (well, that and Armie Hammer's dancing gifs), despite being a low-grosser. As one new Oscar voter told Vulture: "With Get Out, Lady Bird, and even Call Me by Your Name, you’re feeling the younger demographic." Turns out, the younger demographic of singer-songwriters is feeling it as well.

Anyway, Three Billboards can boast of having inspired actual trilogies of billboards across the world (to remind the U.K. of the Grenfell fire, and to recruit LeBron James in Philadelphia). Lady Bird will be the most cosplayed. And The Shape of Water will inspire the strangest erotic nightmares. But only Call Me by Your Name has the rare T-Swift tick of approval. We still don’t know how she voted in the U.S. election, but we know what she’d do with an Academy Award ballot.

Photo: Sony Pictures