Day 50 (Same-Day Delivery) Taylor Swift– Reputation
Since she didn’t feel like putting her album on Spotify yet, I reserve the right to embed the most embarrassing song on the album instead.
All day, I’ve been torn about how harshly to criticize Taylor Swift. On the one hand, I find it hard to reconcile her attempts to be authentic and open when they consistently come off as focus-grouped. On the other hand, I don’t want her lawyers to send me a cease and desist letter, so I’m kind of between pop-rock and A Hopeless Place.
To give Taylor the benefit of the doubt, Reputation can be read as an attempt to reassert control of the narrative, presenting herself as powerful and authentic. She also wants to make something catchy and enjoyable that can fill stadiums. Those are both things that a mega (MAGA?) popstar like Taylor Swift can aim for, and there’s more and more evidence these days that those impulses can be reconciled. The problem with Reputation is that once you peel back its layers, there isn’t much to work with. We only see her through the love and hate she holds for others, and the music largely feels sterile and algorithmic.
Right off the bat, the record sets out to irk the listener. Album opener and second single “…Ready For It?” is an unholy amalgamation of everything in top 40 radio all at the same time. I know I shouldn’t expect one of the richest, most popular musicians in the world to work with HEALTH, but it feels in some ways like a cheap imitation of their attempts to push mainstream instrumentals to their breaking point. I’m not going to dwell on Becky’s verses here, but rhyming “jailer” with “Taylor” feels lazy and insubstantial. It’s the first sign on the album of how “what Taylor Swiftwants to do” and “what Taylor Swift can credibly do well” can diverge.
It doesn’t get much better from there. For someone who seems to want to be herself, it strikes me as odd that she affects vocal mannerisms that sound so unlike her on “End Game” before Future drops a halfhearted, check-cashing verse. “I Did Something Bad” is the rare case where an artist makes a direct commentary on a song via its title.
After three or four listens of the album, it’s largely difficult to distinguish one song from the next. Musically, it’s all pretty much a variation on the well-worn hitmaking template established and now perpetuated by that same two Swedish guys who’ve written every pop song for everyone ever. And yet, it doesn’t feel like there are any real earworms here. Any novelty generated by the instrumentals of Reputation’s a-side (a term as out of place as calling the iPhone X a “telephone” in this context) has to do with who’s co-opting them rather than anything related to their substance.
Then we get to “Look What You Made Me Do.” Whoo boy. Swift has every right to respond to the Kanye West “Famous” ordeal in a manner of her choosing. But at best, this clapback isn’t nearly as clever or cutting as The New Taylor wants us to believe it is, and at worst it can be read as an incredibly petty and self-absorbed move to make this her first artistic statement (or any kind of statement, really) in 2017. That’s to say nothing of the cringy chorus, which sucks all the air out of whatever momentum Swift sought to build. It’s viscerally awkward, and that’s before you realize that a star of her stature signed off on something that forced her to share writing credits with the members of Right Said Fred.
Speaking of cross-cultural appropriation, I hope FKA Twigs is seeing some residuals from Swift’s (I totally have) sex jam “Dress”. Jack Anatoff, who helps out with a few tracks here, kind of steals from himself on “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.” This is also a second song dedicated to Being Mad at Kanye, which — again — is her right. But one has to wonder if there wasn’t more fertile territory to mine. It’s all a bit ironic given that “Gorgeous” just made me want to listen to Kanye’s song of the same name.
It would be unfair and dishonest to say I disliked Reputation entirely. The verses of “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” have an enjoyable drum-and-bass feel, giving way to a chorus that offers a surprisingly sophisticated and restrained take on pop-leaning EDM that wouldn’t feel out of place on a BBC Radio 1 Essential (essential essential) Mix earlier this decade. “Getaway Car” has a perfectly-placed key change that neatly conveys a shift in the song’s narrative, and the strings that show up as the beat drops out might be the album’s most emotive moment.
It’s also hard not to see “New Year’s Day” as a sort of return to the Old Taylor, or perhaps even the creation of a new New Taylor? The vocal harmonization over (by Reputation standards) sparse instrumentation harkens back to the Swift songs that I would drunkenly buy on iTunes in college and now somehow-less-drunkenly sing at karaoke. Hopefully this hints at a more mature, restrained, and honest direction that can anchor her amid a sea of shifting, borrowed trends.
As I alluded to above, I’m not ashamed to admit that Taylor Swift has made music in the past that I unironically enjoy. I don’t go into any of her albums wanting to not like them, but the run up to Reputation was especially difficult. She’s the only non-Soundcloud artist to ever basically use subtweeting as a promotional tactic, and it’s hard to read the way in which she weaponized personal drama as anything other than cynical. Coupled with a deafening silence re: anything other than her petty personal drama, it was incredibly hard to root for Taylor Swift to succeed on this record. She has aright to live life as she pleases. But the incremental sponsorship revenue her silent All Lives Matter-esque neutrality preserves must be paid for through rightful criticism of the way in which she (perhaps willingly) takes her platform for granted.
And that’s not to say an album by a female pop star has to address our political context to be good or even great. SZA’s CTRL serves as the perfect case in point. I’d go so far as to hold it up as the anti-Reputation, because everything from the production to her lyrical perspective seems to represent something Swift wants but cant attain Compared to SZA’s ability to exert agency in the form of disarmingly confessional songwriting that exposes her flaws and insecurities, Reputation shows how sanitized Swift’s image is even when she wants us to think that she’s dropped the facade. Maybe it’s not an issue of new Taylor or old Taylor. Maybe there’s just no Taylor there at all.
This is Day 50 in my 100 albums in 100 days series, where I review a new album or EP I haven’t heard in full before every day through December 31st. Check out yesterday’s post or see the full archives for more.
