reputation Taylor Swift

• 1...Ready For It?03:28
• 2End Game04:04
• 3I Did Something Bad03:58
• 4Don’t Blame Me03:56
• 5Delicate03:52
• 6Look What You Made Me Do03:31
• 7So It Goes...03:47
• 8Gorgeous03:30
• 9Getaway Car03:53
• 10King Of My Heart03:34
• 11Dancing With Our Hands Tied03:31
• 12Dress03:50
• 13This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things03:27
• 14Call It What You Want03:23
• 15New Year’s Day03:55
• Total Runtime55:39

Info for reputation

For the last ten years, Taylor Swift has treated her albums as collections of confessional, expositional, genre-crossing songs in a way which bought her the allegiance of millions of fans and alternating critical and media acclaim. She was the young, talented woman following her dreams, and succeeding. She had cats. She wrote open letters to Apple and fans alike. She made it into blockbuster franchise movie soundtracks, collected a roomful of trophies and became the epitome of the now infamous #squadgoals. And then it all went wrong. For better or worse, victim or villain, Reputation is her response. More accurately, the response to end all responses.

From the first ‘mmhm’ as she clears her throat on opener ‘…Ready for It?’, Swift is commanding, unapologetic and assertive, introducing us to an album which offers a rejection; of lovers, of old habits, of naivety, and, crucially, the toxicity that comes with defining yourself through other people’s eyes. Reputation is not Swift’s attempt to appear perfect, from the confrontational ‘I Did Something Bad’ (“if a man talks shit then I owe him nothing/I don’t regret it one bit cause’ he had it coming”) and stand-out ‘Don’t Blame Me’, to the regretful explanation of ‘Getaway Car’ (“but I didn’t mean it/and you didn’t see it”). She is utterly unconcerned with writing a collection of slow ballads designed to evoke what critics have labelled her ‘victim playing card’, but instead focusses on depicting a complex, defiantly self aware narrative underpinned by a Max Martin/Shellback/Jack Antonoff production of synths, bass drops, staccato strings and overlapping vocals which all work to serve some of her best lyrics to date.

She’s hyper aware of the media, the “conversation” in ‘End Game’ (ft. Ed Sheeran and Future), anxiety-ridden about the impact of her reputation in ‘Delicate’, which marks the introduction of vulnerability midway through an album first concerned with coming out fighting. It is this vulnerability, and the question of what to do with it, which registers as the undercurrent of Reputation and propels Swift through the remainder of the album, past the introduction of new love (‘Gorgeous’, ‘King of My Heart’) and to the brilliant, answering last jab of ‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things’, which acts as an anthem to her “real friends” who don’t care about the “he said/she said”. The title of penultimate track, ‘Call It What You Want’ speaks for itself. By the time we reach the piano-led, softer closing track ‘New Year’s Day’, whether we believe her portrayal or not is no longer the issue; Swift opts to destroy the vulnerabilities associated with her reputation by the assertion that she has found not only herself, but the people to whom it doesn’t matter.

Reputation, then, is an album which is daring, mature, confrontational, and ultimately empowering, not because Swift declares she must be right, but because she found a way to move forward. It’s a sentiment, and strength, actually, which is very much the ‘old’ Taylor. (Sarah Whittington)

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift
is a seven-time GRAMMY winner, and the youngest recipient in history of the music industry’s highest honor, the GRAMMY Award for Album of the Year. She is the best-selling digital music artist of all time, and the only female artist in music history (and just the fourth artist ever) to twice have an album hit the 1 million first-week sales figure (2010’s Speak Now and 2012’s RED). She’s a household name whose insanely catchy yet deeply personal self-penned songs transcend music genres, and a savvy businesswoman who has built a childhood dream into an empire.

But the numbers don’t tell Taylor's story half as well as she could. After all, it’s the intangibles that elevate Swift into the stratosphere of our pop culture planet, allowing the 24-year old singer-songwriter to orbit in a more rarified air. Her large-scale charitable contributions are one thing, but it’s in the small gestures – the notes of compassion she posts on the Instagram photos of lovelorn fans, the genuine hugs she distributes without discretion – where Swift proves time and time again that platinum-selling, record-setting success has not changed her inherent nature. She is awkwardly honest and powerfully empathetic; a brazen superfan, loyal friend, fierce protector of hearts; and one of the world’s greatest ambassadors for the power of just being yourself.

Granted, for Taylor, “being herself” tends towards shimmering, gossamer perfection – but that’s an image regularly blown whenever she dons fake braces and a tri-pony to clown around on late night TV. She’s the first artist since the Beatles (and the only female artist in history) to log six or more weeks at #1 with three consecutive studio albums, and while she’s been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, she’s probably the only person on that list who uses social media to post notes to her best friends and videos of her cats.

As Billboard’s youngest-ever Woman of the Year prepares to release her fifth album, 1989, she finds herself, as always, in the glare of a blinding spotlight of expectation – but if you think that scares her, you haven’t been paying attention. She calls 1989 her most sonically cohesive collection, and armed with first single, “Shake It Off,” she’s ready to blaze into the next phase of her still-young career, where she’ll continue to dance like no one’s watching, write like she stole our collective diary, and inevitably soar to ever-greater heights. All that’s left to wonder is how many more lives she’ll lift in the process.

This album contains no booklet.