Reputation: How Taylor Reclaimed her "Villainy"
OR... How "Taylor's Flop Era" was not a flop at all
Big reputation… Taylor Swift had one back in 2016. Having 3 number-one singles in 2015, Swift was inescapable. 1989 had become the fastest-selling album in America, with 5 million copies sold by July 2015 (9 months), had some of the most talked-about songs and videos (everyone remembers the “Bad Blood” video, even more so than the song), and the tabloids and news were OBSESSED with Taylor’s “Squad”. Some people may have forgotten about this period of time, or were too young, but Taylor Swift was the media’s favourite darling… and target. If 2015 was the year of Taylor Swift, then 2016 was the year everyone who hated her had been waiting for…
Winning AOTY for 1989 was a huge feat for Taylor. It was the second time she had won AOTY at the Grammys, which made her the first woman ever to win it twice, and the first to win it for albums of completely different genres. During her speech, Swift made a point about people taking credit for her fame, an obvious reference to the recently released “Famous” by Kanye.
“there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame, but, if you just focus on the work and you don't let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you're going you'll look around and you will know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there.”
~ Taylor Swift’s 2016 GRAMMYs speech
For all my Southside n* that know me best
I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex
Why? I made that b* famous (Goddamn)
I made that b* famous~ Kanye West, Famous
To cut a long story short, this “little drama” eventually exploded in the summer of 2016, with Kim and Kanye reporting that Taylor not only agreed to the lyrics, but that they had evidence. Taylor’s team however stated that she had not agreed to the lyrics at all. On the 16th of July 2016, National Snake Day, Kim Kardashian decide to tweet about the holiday:
This tweet, and those snake emojis became infamous, as Kim had (illegally) posted cut up recordings of the call between Kanye and Taylor, on her Snapchat story. This recording was edited to frame Taylor as a liar (the full unabridged call was leaked in 2020 and showed that Taylor had not lied about anything), and it worked. The whole world on National Snake Day had decided that Taylor Swift was over. Whether you had hated since she debuted, had been fed up with seeing her and her “fake sweetness” everywhere, or just wanted to hop on the train, everyone was commenting “#TaylorSwiftIsOverParty” or “🐍🐍🐍” on her posts. In fact, Instagram implemented the option to limit or turn off comments because of this moment.
The Kimye drama wasn’t the only public situation Taylor had found herself caught up in around this time. You could spend a whole article (and maybe I will) talking about the drama between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, which was basically at its peak during this time, but it’s the messy fallout between Taylor and her ex Calvin Harris that was another big influence on both her public downfall, and Reputation. To set the scene, it is the night of the 2016 Met Gala, Taylor and Calvin have been together for about over a year at this point, though the cracks were beginning to show. Calvin’s new single, “This Is What You Came For” featuring Rihanna has recently been released, and rumours fly of Taylor being involved with the song. This night has become an infamous night in Taylor’s career, one of the most important nights in her career in fact. Here, dressed in a metallic, scale-like dress with her recently bleached bob, Swift showed up without Harris, and instead was spotted dancing with Tom Hiddleston. Videos of them together went viral, as it was still believed by the public that Calvin and Taylor were still together.
It was unknown at the time, but this night was where Taylor first met Joe Alwyn, here boyfriend of 6 years at the time of this post. This messy love quadrangle (??) was the basis for one of the fan favourite tracks on Reputation, “Getaway Car”. What started from this night of flirty dancing with Tom led to one of the wildest public rebounds, and one of the strangest twitter meltdowns from Harris. Pictures of Tom and Taylor on the beach, with Tom sporting an “I ❤️ T S” shirt, were shared online. While this happened, Calvin went on a tweet tirade, admitting that Taylor co-wrote “This Is What You Came For” under a pseudonym, and was purposefully trying to make him look bad, and made sure to include a shady mention of her beef with Katy. And this all happened BEFORE the Kim K snake tweets… It was a messy summer; a “Cruel Summer” even.
So anyway, Taylor had basically the entire world praying on her downfall after the summer of 2016, so she decided to slip away from the public eye. She kept her social media posts mostly to promoting her friends (music and performances and birthdays) and “I Dont Wanna Live Forever”, the Fifty Shades song that she did with Zayn in December 2016. On the 18th of August, Taylor Swift unofficially started the Reputation era by blacking out her social media. All of her posts, all of her tweets from the past 7 years were gone. Something was about to happen. And over the course of 3 days; 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of August, Taylor returned…
As you can see, the snake was an important symbol to Taylor. The summer before, her socials were spammed with the animal’s emoji, so Taylor returning with that same animal was a power move. The next day, “Look What You Made Me Do”, her comeback single and the lead single off her 6th album debuted. A fierce change of sound for Swift, the song lacked any bit of the old Taylor. No country influence, no upbeat pop stylistics, no real innocence or storytelling. Instead, this is a new Taylor; she is angry, she is bitter, she is darker. In a way, she shed her skin like the snake she was framed to be. Over a Right Said Fred sample, Taylor exclaims in the chorus a repeated chant of “Oh, look what you made me do!”. The song is pretty simplistic in melody. The verses include a sample of the Peaches song “Operate”, which may be a cryptic reference to the Regina George persona she had been called by the likes of Katy Perry and Calvin Harris, as the song was used in the Halloween party scene in Mean Girls. The lyrical content is simple too, compared to her first 4 albums’ storytelling and detailed nature. The song feels jaded and cynical yet it toes the line between completely genuine and totally sarcastic; she seems to almost play a caricature of herself, like in “Blank Space”.
I don't like your little games
Don't like your tilted stage
The role you made me play of the fool
No, I don't like you
~ Taylor Swift, Look What You Made Me Do
The bridge, like many of Swift’s lead singles, is half sung, half spoken. This time, she laments about how she “doesn’t trust nobody and nobody trusts [her]”, before exclaiming that “the Old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now… why? Because she’s dead!” The song, especially the bridge, feels like a Disney villain track, most likely intended as a way to subtly mock the fact that she was framed as an evil person.
Overall the song was not perfect or the best song Taylor had ever released, but it was certainly the greatest shock of her career. The song broke many records on Spotify, the Billboard Hot 100, and the much more memorable music video broke a record for the most views in 24 hours. This music video still may be one of the greatest videos of Swift’s career, with intricate details for each setpiece, all alluding to her past drama and scandals. She looked both intimidating and cool, and could still make herself the butt of the joke, but on her terms. References to old videos and outfits, references to her sexual assault court case, references to Kim, her streaming service scandal, her old squad, and the infamous “I ❤️ T S” shirt, worn by a bunch of backup dancers. At the end of the video, Taylor clips the wing of a plane named “TS6”, and spraypaints REPUTATION onto the plane, while a group of different Taylor’s make quips and snide remarks to each other, all references to her reputation: a victim player, a manipulator, a liar. This video has definitely overshadowed the song, however it feels somewhat ok, as this video shoved Taylor back into the media, with everyone talking about what each scene could mean, and what she could possibly do next…
Now, I feel like I do not have enough time to talk about EVERY single released from Reputation, as there were a good few, so I’ll try to be brief. “…Ready For It?” was the next single. Swift raps on this track, over a dark and industrial beat, and lyrically is a great introduction to the main motifs of Reputation; crimes / being on the run, secrets, haunting love, drinking, being on the run, breaking hearts, Old Hollywood / mid-century Americana, and most importantly melodrama. The song also had a high production, dark music video like “Look What You Made Me Do”. It also charted high (no.4 on the Billboard Hot 100), and was fairly successful, going 2 times platinum in the US. She released 2 more promo singles before the release of the album, the first being “Gorgeous”, an upbeat synth pop track, almost reminiscent of her 1989 era. The other was “Call It What You Want”, an electro pop ballad, where Taylor is earnest and vulnerable about her feelings for her lover, and reminds me of some of the tracks from her subsequent album Lover + the ballads found on 1989. “End Game”, a collab with Future and Ed Sheeran, was the third single off the album. The music video was shot around the world; scenes with Future were filmed in Miami, with Sheeran in Tokyo, and with friends in London. This song also contained the three artists rapping about their experiences of relationships in the public eye. It charted in the top 20 in the US.
“New Year’s Day”, the final track on Reputation, was released as a single to country radio, and was a piano ballad about being vulnerable with a lover, and works as a good closure to the album. It is open and honest, and similar to the work of her past few albums, and a sign of the love-infused music to come after Reputation. In 2018, Taylor released the fifth track, “Delicate” as a single, and it became a sleeper hit. While it only peaked at number 12, the song was certified double platinum, and was number 24 on the year-end charts. It was a radio staple throughout 2018, and was similar to “Call It What You Want” and “New Year’s Day” as it forwent the fake persona of the villain character, and was instead an electronic ballad about her fear of what her tarnished reputation means for her future and her lover. It is similar to the work of Imogen Heap, whom Taylor collaborated with on the 1989 closer “Clean”, and was regarded as one of the highlights of Reputation.
Reputation was released on November 10th 2017 and debuted at number one with over 1 million copies sold in the first week. This is pretty remarkable, as album sales had been on the decline in the 2010s, and Reputation was not released on streaming services until December. Taylor had proved she was a sales juggernaut, in both singles and albums, and she was still a mainstay in pop culture. The Reputation Stadium Tour became the third most successful female tour of all time, making about $350million, and was seen as one of the greatest tours of the 2010’s and of Swift’s career. She had reclaimed her tarnished reputation, and even though she struggled immensely during this time (as shown in her Netflix documentary Miss Americana) and has become much more distant and closed off from the public since her return, she persevered, and has continued her career. She has even reached a new level of critical and commercial success, and is once again adored by the public since the release of folklore and evermore, and her era of re-recording her first 6 albums, which includes Reputation. At the end of this year, 2022, Taylor can re-record Reputation, and like the two albums she has already re-recorded, this will include a new album cover, and a few “vault tracks”, songs that were written during the recording sessions but never made the final tracklist. Perhaps more information about this overwhelming time in her life will be revealed in these tracks, perhaps not. However, I am personally excited to see how Taylor treats this re-recording, in a time where Taylor is once again beloved, a privilege that the Taylor in 2017 did not have when she originally recorded it.
If you have gotten this far, thank you for reading <3. I wanted to write even more about this, including the theory of “Karma” her unreleased, intended sixth album, and the transition and important connection to her next album Lover. If you want them, please let me know! Otherwise, have a good day!
Regards - Stephen