On November 10th, Taylor Swift released her highly anticipated Reputation album. From the way it was announced to the genius lyricism, everything about the album just makes sense. After a period of highly publicized disputes and intense internet scrutiny, Reputation is seen as Taylor’s comeback album where she finally reclaims her narrative after choosing to stay silent and out of sight for over a year.  I think we should take a minute to appreciate the way she chose to announce her album because the announcement of the album quite literally parallels the way she dealt with all of the slander and defamation that she faced leading to the very creation of the album. No one physically saw Taylor for over a year, which was very surprising as she was one of the most active celebrities on social media. Then suddenly out of nowhere, she announces the release of an album that looks like nothing she has done before. Five days before announcing the release date of the album, Taylor cleared out her website and social media, sending the internet into a chaotic frenzy. Then, two days after the social media blackout, Taylor posted a glitchy captionless snake video ushering in her new Reputation era.

     Some of my favorite songs from this album are: …Ready for it, I Did Something Bad, Don’t Blame Me, Delicate, Gorgeous, and This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. I genuinely could take entire blog posts talking about every song on the album, but, unfortunately, since I can’t do that, I will be talking in detail about the first two songs, and give a few remarks on the rest of the songs.

     …Ready For It is the first song on the Reputation album. The music video for this song is filled with easter eggs such as Chinese words featured throughout the video with the words being Taylor, Eddy, Joseph, Future, and “Year of the Snake”. As this song was the second single that she released before the release of the entire album, the “Eddy” and “Future” reference was a nod to the features that both Ed Sheeran and Future would be making on the album, in the song “Endgame”, Joseph refers to Joe Alwyn, her now boyfriend of over 4 years, and the year of the snake is actually the Chinese year that she was born in, but can also refer to the fact that everyone called her a snake and a liar in 2016/17. This song sets the mood for the entire record, as Taylor asks the listeners if they are prepared for this new unapologetic version of her that we will be seeing the entire album. The music video for this song is really interesting because people have interpreted it in many different ways. The music video is set in a futuristic world, where everybody is a robot. It shows two Taylors – a dark cloaked one that is not a robot (representing the media’s version of her), and a caged robot one (representing the real her during this time in her life). Throughout the video the robot in the cage is seen being trained by the cloaked Taylor, while the cloaked Taylor watches with an amused expression. The way that the caged robot Taylor finally escapes is by using her voice. I think this scene symbolizes exactly how Taylor felt during this period in her life. She tried escaping the cage using many different weapons, however, in the end the weapon that finally worked was her own voice. When the robot Taylor finally escapes the cage, the cloaked Taylor starts disintegrating, while robot guards attack the cloaked Taylor. I think this scene was the most interesting because I interpreted it as a representation of the media hypocritically attacking a version of Taylor that they made up themselves, which is exactly what happened in her life. Taylor manages to incorporate both themes of love and revenge into this song. In the second verse she says “He can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor,” which I think is such a clever lyric because she manages to name check one of Hollywood’s most famous couple’s while relating it to her own life and rapping. Finally, after the last chorus, she starts a chant of “baby let the games begin” clearly showing that she’s done staying silent, and that she is ready to play the game that she has been included in without asking for it. 

     Continuing with the theme of standing up for herself, in I Did Something Bad (this is a link to the tour version, because it is superior to any other version). Taylor acknowledges what her critics say about her in a way that shows she doesn’t care about any of it. She says, “They say I did something bad/ But why’s it feel so good?/ Most fun I ever had/ And I’d do it over and over and over again if I could/ It just felt so good, good”. I think this chorus is so effective because unlike how she addresses her haters in songs like Shake It Off, with a sweet disposition choosing to take the moral high road, she does the exact opposite in this song. Taylor basically admits that she had fun provoking people doing what she liked, and goes so far as to say that she would do it again if she could. This image that Taylor is creating is a major departure from the people pleasing, “the girl next door” image she had been cultivating since the beginning of her career. Taylor also directly talks about the media scrutiny she faced in the bridge of the song by saying “They’re burning all the witches, even if you aren’t one/ They got their pitchforks and proof/ Their receipts and reasons/ …So light me up”. By comparing the media attacking her to a literal witch hunt, Taylor shows how strong women often get reproved by society, and how they will go to unnatural lengths to tear them down. This song specifically had a huge impact on me as well throughout my high school career. In the pre chorus after the first verse, one of the lyrics is “If a man talks sh*t, then I owe him nothing/ I don’t regret it one bit, ’cause he had it coming”. Being one of three girls in my school’s computer science program and one of two girls in my AP Physics classes, I was used to having men talk over me as I was saying something, having men take credit for my ideas, and having to “prove” myself in order to be taken seriously. For some reason I got to a point where I just accepted it and was ok with it. However, after listening to this song, I realized that I did not have to tolerate this behavior, which helped me stand up for myself. 

     For this album, Taylor held secret sessions where she brought 500 lucky fans to her houses in London, Rhode Island, Nashville, and Los Angeles, to listen to the album before it was released. During these sessions, she explained the creative process behind the conception of each of the songs on the album. For Don’t Blame Me, Taylor said that the song was based on three things that can really change someone – love, drugs, and religion and that she wanted to incorporate all three aspects into the song. She really liked the passion of religious music, so she incorporated gospel influenced verses and lyrics into the song as well. Additionally, many of the songs on the album were influenced by works of literature such as the Great Gatsby and pop culture influences from comic books and Hollywood celebrities. In Don’t Blame Me She says, “I once was poison ivy, but now I’m your daisy” referring to the famous comic book villain Poison Ivy and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, showing the two sides of Taylor’s public image – the calculating and manipulating evil villainess, and the love struck victim. Taylor also references The Great Gatsby in This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things where she talks about how people take nice things for granted. Things like friendships, trust, and being kind and open to other people are all things that Taylor people took advantage of her for. In this song she also incorporates the chaotic background of people yelling, influenced by the production of “Hard Knock Life” from Annie. 

     Delicate and Gorgeous have always given me the same vibe, which makes sense because it is about the same person. Unlike the rest of the album, Gorgeous and Delicate are two of the most vulnerable songs on the record. Gorgeous begins with the voice of a baby saying the name of the song. This baby is none other than James Reynold, the daughter of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. Taylor said that she played them the song on the guitar and afterwards, James could not stop saying gorgeous, so she recorded a voice memo of the adorable voice to include in the song. I really like this song because it is so frustratingly relatable. In the chorus she says “ You’re so gorgeous/ I can’t say anything to your face/ ‘Cause look at your face (Gorgeous)/ And I’m so furious/ At you for making me feel this way/ But what can I say?/ You’re gorgeous” I think Taylor perfectly describes the initial stages of infatuation where you are intoxicatingly attracted to someone and scared they might not feel the same. Delicate also plays on the themes of unrequited love, but also ties in the overarching idea of one’s reputation. As a track five song, it is also the most vulnerable song on the record, and in my opinion her strongest song as well (other than I Did Something Bad). Whereas she starts the album off with a “devil may care” attitude, she hits a point of realization in this song. She realizes that she doesn’t care what other people say about her reputation, but thinks about what happens when she meets someone he really wants in her life. She starts worrying about what they’ve heard about her before they met her, and wonders if something fake like her reputation could affect something real like someone getting to know your true self. This is the first point in the record where she realizes maybe her reputation does matter, just a little bit. However, she is comforted by the fact that since her reputation has never been worse, they must like her for her and sees who she truly is as a person. 

     Reputation is a master class on how to make a successful comeback in mainstream music. Since the beginning of her career, Taylor’s reputation was something that she strived to keep untarnished by working her hardest to make sure she pleased everyone. So when people started attacking the one thing she was so carefully protecting, she decided to play into the character they made her out to be, to show everyone how ridiculous it would be if everything the media wrote about her was true. She followed the template provided to her by the media’s perception of her to create a larger than life caricature of a vindictive, petty woman. By the end of the album, Taylor is able to assess her broken reputation and discover redemption in the new found love she had gained through all of this chaos. With this album Taylor showed the world that even though she may have lost something she thought she wanted, she gained something she didn’t know she needed in the process.