an album review and a retrospective analysis on my relationship with taylor swift’s work
Even though this is an album review, I’ll be writing this like a personal blog post recipe. So buckle up, folks: let me tell you a little bit about my life.
I remember when rep came out — hell, I remember when “Look What You Made Me Do” was announced. My life had been undergoing some major changes at the time: I was switching schools, moving across the country for the second time of my life, learning to slot into the daily lives of my new roommates, and starting to go offline due to various anxiety and mental health issues.
As for my feelings on Taylor Swift, well. They were mixed, because I was never a dedicated Swiftie. I enjoyed her music here and there — in fact, I’d deemed 2014 my “year of Taylor Swift” because of how much I loved 1989. But since it was 2017, and since my enjoyment of her had always been casual because I’d cringed at her brand of feminism at the time, I was…skeptical, to say the least. Like the public masses, I was curious to see what she was going to sound like after a solid year of silence.
But unlike the public masses, I wanted that sound to blow me away. I wanted her to tell me to be on her side, somehow, and prove to me that she could outdo 1989, and outdo herself.
The record we got was not what I expected. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. What we got first was not the record: it was “Look What You Made Me Do.” I’d seen, hours before it dropped (or perhaps days), that there was a comment of it being more of a rap/hip-hop sound. And due to Taylor usually having a very — to put it simply — white musical aesthetic, I was subsequently very, very wary after this. And then when LWYMD dropped I was there mere hours later, simultaneously filled with excitement and dread at what I was about to witness.
And, I’ll be honest. The musical impression LWYMMD left on me? Not great.
But I don’t think that’s what the music video was supposed to be about.
Even though I could say that my feelings on the song were lukewarm at best, I couldn’t say that I hated the experience — because it was the presentation, the meta commentary on Taylor’s self-awareness of her perception in the media, easter eggs and ironic self-jabs, the mountain of tumbling Taylors — that was what really made an impression on me. Afterward, I’d thought to myself, that sure was a song. But then that was followed by, that was such a music video, I think my roommates who only have passing knowledge of Taylor Swift’s public image should watch it.
So I recommended it to them anyway.
I didn’t initially plan this article to be an album review. I’d originally wanted it to be about how Taylor Swift, a cis straight white American woman who’s incredibly rich and famous, could write songs that I could relate to, as a nonbinary Chinese-American lesbian with no desire to be famous and not nearly enough wealth for me to do much more than order take-out every once in a while. When I was planning this article in my head, I thought about all the Taylor Swift songs and moments I could relate to, or twist to relate to, and make a side-by-side-ish timeline with my own life. The heartache of Fearless, the undiscovered gems of Speak Now, the complexity of Red.
But reputation as an album stuck out to me. Not because I can’t relate to it. In fact, as of the past year, I can relate to it extremely well.
I was never a dedicated Swiftie, but I’ve been aware of Taylor Swift through the majority of career, since her debut album. I suppose this makes me a “Swiftie” on some level, in that I know the general timeline of her career and I enjoy her music.
(What makes a Swiftie, anyway? If someone asked me if I liked Taylor Swift, I’d say yes. If someone asked me if I was a Swiftie, I’d say no. But I digress.)
I knew about her career, but ended up unwittingly following it through my friends for the first three albums. I liked “Teardrops on my Guitar” the first time I heard it on the radio in 2007; then later at some point later in my young age I decided that I didn’t like her voice. My friends at church were enthusiastic about her, so maybe I had personally endured some overexposure to her because of that. I knew about the Kanye West interruption at the VMAs; I remember in school the next day, my English teacher briefly talked about how she felt so bad for the young girl, Taylor Swift. And I loved my English teacher, so needless to say I felt the same.
I was too young and not attuned to her career at the time to really understand that she had taken the country music scene by storm, that she wrote in such a beautifully prosaic way that I wouldn’t appreciate until years later, that she wrote the entirety of Speak Now by herself because some idiot music critic thought it was a good idea to insinuate that she had no talent. So, hilariously, by the time “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” came out — one of the most annoying and catchy songs that has ever been played on the radio and anywhere — I loved it.
I had a passing interest in Red as an album, as a whole. “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “22” were classic pop bangers that I had put on my on-repeat playlist, and friends had recommended me “Stay Stay Stay,” “State of Grace,” and “Holy Ground,” all of which are also excellent. But I think beyond that, at the time, if you had asked me for other songs off of Red, I’d probably say — well, “Red,” and maybe “All Too Well,” since I had heard of the mild but not insignificant frenzy it had drummed up among fans. I didn’t realize how much of a pivot from Taylor’s typical sound the album was, and how mixed between country and pop it was. Almost all of my friends who like her music adored it, so I’d always regarded it as a solid album, one of Taylor’s best. Even if it didn’t win that Grammy.
Then there was 1989.
This is not an album review for 1989, but I do want to contextualize that upon its release, I was going through an extremely rough heartbreak, one of friendship that I didn’t realize could hurt so much. It changed me as a person; and even though Taylor likes to say that 1989 isn’t about a boy, it is, at the end of the day, very much a breakup album. It’s a pop classic, a phenomenon, a fucking moment that will never be replicated, because Taylor had pivoted completely into pop, picked up on the successes of the singles from Red, and reached new heights of stardom with an album that deserved it.
1989 came out at the perfect time for me. I’d embraced my love of pop, but was going through something that made me want to belt out “All You Had To Do Was Stay” and “I Wish You Would” and “Clean” at the top of my lungs. The upbeat optimism made sure I didn’t wallow for too long, but the painful songs about longing made me feel seen and heard as well. The 80s synths mixed with Taylor’s modern writing and a desire for sonic cohesion on a solely pop album made me put 1989 on repeat that winter — and then some.
But I think that’s what made the switch into reputation — and all the events leading up to it — so confusing and conflicting for me. Both in terms of sound, and, well, Taylor’s reputation.
I’m not going to bother rehashing the whole phone call situation in detail, and though I don’t think it needs to be said anymore, for the sake of this article I will say that I am fully on Taylor’s “side.” But at the time, since I was not (and am still not) a dedicated Swiftie, I did not take that information as a fan of Taylor Swift. I took that information as the general public, which, unfortunately, was exactly what Kim Kardashian wanted. I was a fan of 1989 as an album, but due to Taylor’s publicity and overexposure, not to mention the online trend of calling everyone and everything “problematic” at the time, I could not, in good faith, call myself a fan of Taylor Swift, for who she is, and as an artist.
So: it worked, and it worked on me. It’s crazy to admit it now, because I don’t give a fuck about Kim Kardashian. I barely know who she is, and considering all the mess she and Kanye West had been through since then, it’s insane that I, among the vast majority of people, considered her a reputable source of information on America’s sweetheart. But the thing about Taylor was that, because she was so overexposed, it had become cool to hate her, and to force her into accountability for things people said she did, even if it turned out that, in the end, she never did them at all. On top of that, she was a white woman — and trendy American liberalism was starting to openly talk about critical race theory at the time, so it was incredibly easy to write thinkpieces about how Taylor Swift was using her white womanhood to portray herself as the victim to a black man, because white women did that all the time. Never mind that Kanye West was still the one who made a music video where he was sleeping with a naked doll made in Taylor Swift’s likeness, that he — however jokingly — wrote a lyric about having sex with Taylor Swift (while he was married!), that he elected to have a line in his song about how he made Taylor Swift — successful by her own caliber — famous, whether she approved of the line or not. Never mind that after the shitshow of the VMA interruption, Taylor wrote a song called “Innocent” about him, choosing to forgive him for it and saying “it’s okay, life is a tough crowd / 32 and still growing up now / who you are is not what you did / you’re still an innocent.” If we look at the way Taylor and Kanye have respectively chosen to treat each other, I think that says a lot more about their dynamic than racial politics.
Unfortunately, at the time, while I knew nearly all of these things (except for “Innocent” — I didn’t realize that was about Kanye until much later, and honestly I think it could have made a difference on my opinion) I was also caught up in trendy American liberalism, so Taylor’s reputation had become tarnished in my mind.
I will say that despite it all, and despite my retroactive sympathy for Taylor now in these incredibly trying times, she is still, ultimately, a cis straight white woman, and that is something I don’t think she or I would ever deny. But those aspects of her identity shouldn’t make her less than a person, at least not any less than Kanye West or Kim Kardashian. And while racial dynamics are always at play, so are gender dynamics, which Taylor has always been aware of, and has always been publicly on the receiving end of since she was barely 19 years old. Even if she may lack awareness towards the way her whiteness operates in her dynamics with people (and I’m not saying if she does or doesn’t), she is very, very aware with the way her being a woman has impacted her relationship with the media and the public and, now, with celebrities. And this may be a hard pill for some to swallow, but we don’t live in a post-misogyny world. White womanhood is more often a source of criticism when women neglect the aspect of them that makes them oppressed — being a woman — in favor of reaping the benefits of their whiteness. And for what it’s worth, Taylor Swift has not done that.
It is not to say that I think Taylor’s publicity about her politics shouldn’t be criticized. She had a significant country music fanbase, many of which consisted of conservative Americans. The earliest we get about her opinion on LGBT people is “Welcome to New York” (off 1989), except it’s breadcrumbs — “boys and boys and girls and girls,” while iconic, says nothing. And I recall what Taylor said when she became friends with Todrick Hall— that he didn’t know if she knew he was gay, and he didn’t know how to broach the topic, so he had just said something like “if you had a kid who was gay, what would you do?” She had realized then that he didn’t know she was cool with gay people even though she thought he should have; and if he didn’t, then what about her LGBT fans? (Hence, of course, “You Need To Calm Down.”) So I think though Taylor’s aware of her public image as a woman and as a celebrity to her fans, and to the generalized, seemingly apolitical public, she definitely lacks certain self-awareness in more socially nuanced and political dynamics wherein she has privilege.
But I will say that I don’t think this makes her a bad person, nor do I expect her to improve to ultimately become the ideal white woman celebrity. She has other things to think about, and while this makes her unaware of things like the feelings of her LGBT fans until it smacks her in the face, it doesn’t make her a criminal. And there are so many things people want to make her a criminal for, and they do.
And so we go to reputation.
In my recent Taylor Swift and Swiftie-content binge, I’ve seen — and now adapted to — the fact that reputation, if not someone’s favorite Taylor album, is at the very least a grower. It is in retrospect a banger, but that was not its initial intention. Its initial intention was to drum up publicity, in a way that Taylor could control again.
My first impression of reputation was mixed, like many critics at the time, and casual not-fans. It was a different sound, something more intense than Taylor had ever done before, and I was skeptical of her ability to pull it off. It was this skepticism that convinced me that she couldn’t pull it off, though the slower and more toned back songs on the album, like “Delicate,” “Dress,” and “Call It What You Want” were definite highlights at the time. “End Game” was grating until I got to the hook, “…Ready For It?” felt so corny at the time that it took a week after having it on repeat for me to admit that I liked it, and LWYMMD was…well, LWYMMD. I listened to the full album, but it was so different from 1989 — an album that I loved with my whole heart, listened to on repeat, and knew the words to every song — that I kind of shelved it as a, well, Taylor’s having her moment kind of album.
When Lover came out, I adored it, even though I can recognize the aspects that make it a weaker album to many — but it was back in a mostly consistent pop sound, so I considered it an improvement off rep. Then, of course, it was lockdown, the full 20 minute phone call video was released, folklore and evermore happened, and just like that, Taylor’s reputation was repaired and forgiven in my mind. And it’s not like she needs my forgiveness — but if there’s a good female pop artist whose works I can appreciate, I want to. Taylor Swift has enough fans that she doesn’t need to know I exist. But I want to enjoy her artistry for myself, especially since I did already, with 1989.
reputation is an aftermath and a response; and underneath that, it’s a message to her fans saying that she’s okay, in fact she’s in love, and it makes her so happy that it’s all she cares about. It’s an immensely different narrative from her previous albums, on top of being such a different sound. It shows a different side of her: not the one that’s calculating and manipulative as people like to villainize her, but one that’s adaptable, petty, sarcastic, and, I’ll admit, a girlboss. There are definitely still sprinkles of her old self in there, but it gets overshadowed by the deliberate impact of the new sound, and of LWYMMD. And the reason it was not initially received well — and I don’t think she expected anything less — was because in response to her being spammed with snake emojis and becoming American’s most wanted, she then presented herself as a different Taylor Swift, much different and darker than the world had ever seen. We were used to America’s whitest sweetheart parading around with her gang of girls or hot famous boyfriend that she would inevitably write banger songs about one day. I don’t think we ever expected or hoped for this.
Even though 1989 was a pivot sonically, her persona in the public image did not change color— it was enhanced to a brighter, louder shade. But reputation not only gave us a new sound, it gave us a new Taylor — one that didn’t have to be happy and free and confused and lonely at the same time. But one who said that, okay, if you call me a snake, then I’ll bite back. And we, as the world, were not ready for it at the time.
I discussed earlier that I had my own 1989 era. In the past year, I’ve had my own reputation era.
I won’t go into details, but it really does color the entire experience of rep very differently for me now. It’s not something that I ever thought I could relate to, and while it doesn’t drastically change my opinions of some songs, it does change the way I look at the album. The negative feelings I had towards rep before were largely because of the context with which it was released. Now when I listen to it, I think of the things that Taylor must have been feeling at the time — and how I now know exactly what that’s like.
Because when people are insistent on telling the world about things you never did, or talking about things you did in a way that makes you look bad, what can you do? When you’re painted as someone with privilege, even if you try to tell the truth, you know people will say that you’re lying anyway. When someone puts themselves in a position that they can manipulate the situation to look like they’re a victim to you, a guileless bully, you’re stuck in a corner. You know the things you’ve said, the things you’ve done, your own intentions that you always thought were good, or at the very least not deliberately harmful. But now you’re being told that you’re a liar and a snake, and people who don’t know the first thing about you are believing those iterations of you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
That’s reputation for you.
Am I going to have my own real reputation era? God, I hope not. This persona (the one I’m writing this article under) is mostly about writing fanfiction and posting it on the internet, with a few of my other hobbies sprinkled in here and there. In the vast scope of things, my internet reputation has very little impact, even though it still affected me on an individual basis; it is not nearly on the same level of Instagram needing to implement the option of turning comments off because Taylor Swift was getting spammed by Kim Kardashian fans (which, again: why do these people exist and why were you even listening to Kim Kardashian of all people in the first place??) This article, which is mostly about Taylor Swift, is probably the most I’m ever going to publicly acknowledge that this happened to me, even though I’m very aware of it. I know that it will and has mostly blown over, because people don’t care, and people don’t know me, and I’m grateful for that. Despite the personal impact it has had on my mental health and wellbeing, on a wider scale, people trying to tear down me, a fanfiction writer, is a waste of their time, because I’m nobody. And I’m certainly not Taylor Swift.
But still, it sucks to feel like everyone suddenly hates you and it’s out of your control. You don’t know what people have heard, and if they have, what they think of it, of you. You don’t know who you can trust, if you can trust anyone at all. And yet you don’t want to carry this cynicism and self-doubt with you for the rest of your life. This distorted self-image, this crisis of identity because someone who despises you decides that they can tell people that they know you better than you know yourself. You still want to find people you love, who love you. You want to find happiness again on this earth.
And that’s what reputation is about. From beginning to end, Taylor Swift crafts the story of how the world’s fighting her — so she’s going to fight back. But she wants more than self-defense, more than retaliation. She’s Taylor Swift; she still wants love. And I can’t say I’m any different.
The music of 2017 has a unique marker in my brain; there’s a blend of pop and rap and R&B and trap that made a significant dent on the radio, all with a heavy emphasis on production. It was diverse, but with a strong focus on blending, layering, and production, even cross-genre — from “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran to “Bodak Yellow” by Cardi B to “Stay” by Zedd and Alessia Cara. The simplicity of hearing Sara Bereilles and Colbie Callait on your pop radio station in 2007? There’s none of that anymore; instead, have “24K Magic” by Bruno Mars.
reputation is not exempt from this, though of course it has its own unique Taylor Swift flavor. Before the album came out, I remember seeing a quote that it was going to be experimental with elements of hip-hop and rap, at which I winced. As it turns out, while there are certainly elements of both genres, Taylor has not pivoted that much — it is truly just experimental.
The album as a whole paints a narrative from beginning to end, starting with the bold and brash “…Ready For It?” and ending on the sweet, painfully sentimental “New Year’s Day.” It is a mix of sound, but it is not inconsistent. The sound itself tells a story — from the hard beginning production sounds of “Don’t Blame Me” and “End Game” and “I Did Something Bad,” to the eventual more stripped down styles of “Dress” and “Call It What You Want,” with, of course, still the emphasis on the production elements.
Taylor’s strength has always been her song and melody writing — even if you don’t like her music, you can’t deny that she composes a tune that gets stuck in your head. This is what happened to me with “…Ready For It?” and “End Game” — I didn’t want to like either of these songs, but the chorus on “…Ready For It?” hit me like a truck that it quickly became one of my album favorites, and while “End Game” will never be one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs, I could a) hum it to you and b) tell you that the third verse, her verse, ultimately slaps. I can definitely see the high production value being a turn-off to many. But for me, someone who’s generally pretty easy to please when it comes to music, it just makes it more fun for me.
In the same vein of edgy, high-production songs, “I Did Something Bad”, “Don’t Blame Me,” and “Look What You Made Me Do” have a similar effect; and recontextualizing her feelings during the era make the impact of these songs even stronger. They all have extremely memorable hooks, from “I Did Something Bad’s” tagline of “but it felt so good,” the sizzling chorus of “Don’t Blame Me” like we can feel the weight and intoxication of Taylor’s experience of love; and, of course, the iconic “Look What You Made Me Do.” I didn’t think initially that Taylor’s voice was necessarily suited for these types of songs that she could pull them off; but it doesn’t matter because she wanted to, and they’re her songs for her to sing. The only opinion I will still stand by today is that sonically, LWYMMD would‘ve been better as a rock-screamo song instead, and she sees ghosts’ cover of it satisfies that need for me already.
“Don’t Blame Me” can seem a little out of place between “I Did Something Bad” and LWYMMD, especially if “Delicate” wasn’t there to even things out. But while “Don’t Blame Me” is definitely on the more romantic side of things, it has the same heavy and electronic sound as the songs about her reputation; and I feel that it’s more of a commentary on her reputation and herself than necessarily being a love song, anyway. It’s the Taylor Swift thesis, especially about her public image — she’s seen as a crazy, love-obsessed heartbreaker, and she’s saying, don’t blame her for it, that’s what love does to her. It says a lot more about her relationship with love and how it affects her, more than it does about any relationship with a man, even the men she was seeing at the time. It’s a little bit “Blank Space,” but also very honest. I didn’t look into her dating life much before recently and paring things together, but it’s evident to me now that she really does put so much of her heart into all of her relationships — she’s addicted to it, it’s like a drug. And she’s going to use it for the rest of her life, but not just because she’s so in love with some guy, or the idea of being in love; but also because that love fuels her to write, to be creative, whether it’s out of happiness at being together, or all the complicated feelings when you break up. She feels so strongly in her relationships and they fuel her to write and that’s what makes her money, her fame — of course she’s going to use it for the rest of her life.
I’d like to believe that “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” and “Delicate” on the tracklist were originally swapped (currently, the former is track 13, and the latter is track 5) but were presented as they are because Taylor’s track 5 has always famously been her very personal, very honest song. And even though reputation presents itself as an album about her responding to her reputation, it’s ultimately a love story about her and her boyfriend at the time, who loved her in spite of her reputation, which is what “Delicate” is all about. It’s out of place in terms of the tracklist narrative, but it’s a perfect Taylor Swift track 5.
And, well, 13 is her favorite number. I don’t think that makes “Nice Things” necessarily remarkable (it’s always a skip for me), but I do think that if she’s going to make a song directly shading Kim and Kanye, she might as well put it as her favorite number, for her own satisfaction, you know? She’s saying her feelings on the situation loud and clear — and on her album, on the track number of her favorite number, that’s her place to do so.
Then there’s the lead single: “Look What You Made Me Do” is a song about impact and self-reflection; it is not a song we’re supposed to turn our heads at and go, oh, she became a genius overnight so we can forget about Snakegate. She knew that would never happen, though I think a lot of critics and the general public who wanted to hear what she would say, and who wanted to be on her side (including myself), wished she would do. But despite her political silence, ignoring the awful things the media and the public has said about her as a person is not something found in Taylor’s track record. LWYMMD is not a song that is supposed to dazzle us. It is a song that’s supposed to make us talk, whether we loved it or hated it. And it worked.
While the first half of the album is about revenge and reputation and being a girlboss, the second half of the album turns more lovelorn and emotional and honest, and where I think the album shines, as much as I love a girlboss. “So It Goes…” is a great transition from the first half to the second— an electronic song about a hidden, budding sexual relationship that quickly turns romantic. It embraces the sounds of the first half of the album while introducing the themes of the second half, and eases us straight into “Gorgeous,” which, while definitely not light on the production, takes a more upbeat and light-hearted tone, both in music and lyrics.
I believe “Gorgeous” — and “Getaway Car,” which follows — are about Tom Hiddleston and their brief summer romance. So iconic of them to date when it spawned two excellent songs, which are both fun to listen to and to sing to. They’re about shallow and fast attractions that don’t last long but evoke strong feelings anyway, and the sound and musical patterns in both songs emulate that extraordinarily. Compared to “Delicate,” a very tender and stripped back song, you can tell that there’s something that Taylor wants to last longer, something that’s more serious and stronger there, while “Gorgeous” feels like an emotional rush-in and “Getaway Car” is a traitorous rush-out. “Getaway Car” has very vivid verb-usage that definitely makes it feel like this love isn’t going to last very long, but it’s fun and loud and that’s the whole point.
The back half of the album is so obviously romantic that it really is remarkable how much it got overshadowed by the edgy first half. “King of My Heart” — my favorite off this album after the first time I heard it — boasts a confidence in the self, but also a shaky excitement at falling in love all over again. The production is fun in that it fills out the song, and the bridge goes hard — which I suppose is redundant to say since it’s a Taylor Swift song. “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” is similar in centering this life-changing romance, though in the thrill and dread of their secrecy; it also has classic Taylor lyrical storytelling songwriting, which makes the verses captivating to listen to. I think if people had heard “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” before LWYMMD, it would’ve made people realize that she’s still an excellent artist even when she goes experimentally mainstream and changes her persona. But I know LWYMMD had its own specific purpose, so “Dancing” will only be a standout in her discography for those who bother to look.
We then come to “Dress”, “Call It What You Want”, and “New Year’s Day” (I’m skipping “Nice Things” since I talked about it earlier, and I don’t have much else to say about it or the situation it’s about) — three of the most stripped down and romantic songs on the album, and at the end here with good reason. “Dress” starts off as a sultry song about a loving sexual relationship, which is new for Taylor as she’s barely touched on the sexual aspect of her previous relationships—but this song is sex, literally telling us that Taylor fucks, both through the lyrics and the musical journey of the song, particularly the climactic end of the bridge. “Call It What You Want” phases us into the genuine sentiment of the romance, and about how it doesn’t matter what their relationship is or what people think of them; what matters is her feelings on the relationship, and that she has it. She’s bragging and happy here and she doesn’t care what people think, which makes for a narratively gorgeous near-end of the album, which started off so responsive to what people thought of her. And then “New Year’s Day” looks towards the future of this secret relationship, of everything — it’s a song about time, which every relationship is subject to. NYD and “Call It What You Want” are, production-wise, bare bones compared to the rest of the album, but that’s what makes them the most honest tracks — with all of the production and presentation stripped aside, these are the core feelings we leave the album with.
I know that Taylor said that reputation has a lot of lyrical influence from Game of Thrones despite the obvious parallels to her own life. But I don’t think she’s lying; I think it can be both. There’s a lot drawing from her personal experiences that she may have projected onto the storylines from characters of Game of Thrones, which can make her lyrics feel less personal and may be what she needed at the time when going through such a rough and raw time. That’s what I’m getting off the songs on reputation: a way to filter out her own emotions and experiences, through fictional characters and writing; and upon release, through her listeners and her fans. It’s obvious that she finds sharing and performing the songs she’s written cathartic, so while some people may not have liked that she was upfront and confrontational about such a controversial moment in her life, it’s more than likely she needed it for herself.
And I think we needed it too. It’s sonically relevant to the time it was in, the same way the subject matter of the lyrics is as well. It’s not the Taylor Swift we knew before, but how could anyone expect it to be? She had gone through a very public and traumatizing dragging by another celebrity; of course she was going to come back with something dark and edgy, something that she didn’t expect people to understand or like, if they only pay attention to who she is — who the media says she is — surface-level. My main concern about it at the time was the vocal performance, but honestly, all things considered? She kind of killed it.
And while it’s not the same Taylor Swift we knew before, it’s still diaristic writing — it’s just that before all of this, the most significant emotional struggles that she chose to write about were about heartache and heartbreak. It’s so easy to write off reputation as an album about Taylor facing public backlash and being melodramatic about reinventing her public image; it’s more interesting to interpret reputation as a commentary on her public image, but despite it all she can still love and be loved and make objectively excellent tracks about it, even with a new sound.
Experiencing Taylor Swift’s music isn’t just about the music, I think. Maybe in the Fearless days when the only boyfriend the public cared about was Joe Jonas (who she seems to be on decent terms with now), but now it does feel like there is an element of lore to be able to experience Taylor Swift’s music the way she wants listeners — particularly her fans — to experience it. I think that’s part of why she’s never really tried to hide her relationships even with celebrities, not because she wants to shame them, but because she wants everyone to understand what she was feeling, what she was going through at the time. Red was an inconsistent (but fun) mish-mash of narratives and sounds, while 1989, albeit the best breakup album of all time, had that pop pivot that the lyrics were generally more vague (excluding the vault tracks, of course) and any specific easter eggs were known by people keeping up with the Haylor relationship, but not the general public. rep is unique in that the whole world saw her get torn down and she was helpless to stop it — “This summer is the apocalypse,” was the only thing she had written in her singular summer 2016 diary entry. Yet she still wrote songs about it, still sang about it, this thing we all knew happened to her. That was never going to be out of the question.
No matter how different it is compared to her other albums, Taylor Swift still does what she does best on reputation: storytelling. Every song is sonically powerful in its own way, but was never meant to be consistent — it was always meant to tell that story. It wasn’t just heartbreak and heartache anymore, not just falling in love and breaking up. reputation is about who she is in public and in private — and that’s what a reputation is all about, isn’t it?
In 2022 I was a year older than Taylor was in 2016, and while the scale of my reputation era was not nearly as significant as hers, now I think of the amount of stress I had been under, and how unimaginable it is to me on a global scale, to be hated by the world for something you never did. I hadn’t thought twice of reputation since then, as a non-dedicated non-Swiftie, but the look back now makes it obvious that even I, someone who not only enjoyed a few of Taylor’s songs but an entire album of hers, could still be swayed by the misogynistic media opinion of her.
And the legacy of reputation speaks directly to that. It’s an experimental album for sure, but still sonically interesting, vocally compelling, and even if the honesty of some lyrics can make us uncomfortable, we should not have expected anything less from Taylor Swift, who has always been honest with her music. Sure, the enjoyment of this electronic, vocoded, production-focused sound becomes subjective at some point. But the real experiment of rep was music critics’ and the general public’s willingness to sympathize with her, after something we all knew happened to her. And I can say that at the time, it was a failure.
Despite that, the album stood the test of time. LWYMMD has its own cultural impact, but with genuinely great tracks like “Dress,” “Delicate” (which admittedly was regarded as an excellent single), “Dancing With Our Hands Tied,” “Getaway Car,” and my favorite, “King of My Heart,” it’s hard to say that reputation is musically a flop by any means, even if it took me going through my own reputation era to fully appreciate it.
That’s what the album does — it tests our inclination to judge people based on our preconceived notions of them, when they want to be seen and treated as who they are, not who we think they are. Because underneath that reputation could be something not that bad — and in the case of this album, could be something truly enjoyable. It’s only a matter of discovering that yourself without any of the outside noise.