Day 22: Reputation's Reputation

I don't think that in 2006 anyone would've expected Taylor Swift to create anything like Reputation. It's not just that it isn't country music, it's the tone and theme of the album that distinguishes it from it's predecessors. Or at least, that's the narrative. After may listens, my understanding of this album is that a few of songs have garnered a reputation for being cynical and divisive, but the truth is that most of the album just isn't like that. The majority of the songs have a similar topic as most of Taylor's previous music, just with a different musical style.

That's to say that the more inflammatory songs are by any means bad, that's a question for a different day. Spoilers though, they aren't. Look What You Made Me Do and ...Ready For It? are the two leading examples for "how much Taylor has changed", mostly due to their musical style. This was no accident; these songs were the first two singles to be released for Reputation and on release garnered a huge amount of attention for how freaking weird they were.

Thing is, they really aren't that weird for Taylor. Look What You Made Me Do is, at it's core, an angry song about how Taylor has been given no choice but to take revenge on some bitch. Sound familiar? 

Okay, maybe that's not the most fair comparison. Despite their exterior similarities, Better Than Revenge and Look What You Made Me Do are very different songs. My point is that even as Taylor's new style continues to shock, it's not too hard to see continuity between her approach to songwriting across albums. Reputation really shines when a more modern musical style is properly applied to a concept that Taylor has explored previously, allowing the listener to see nearly the same situation from a new perspective. To get a slightly better idea of how this can work, let's look one song specifically.

Indeed we are Doctor Strange. Endgame is the second song on the album and features both Future and Ed Sheeran. It's a more lighthearted, poppy song compared to many others on the album. It's not an entirely serious song; the main message seems to be "Hey hot stuff, let's get a little more serious". It's a little all over the place, especially with the featured artists but it never is boring. You can also tell that Taylor really wants to rap but she manages to hold back enough to keep it respectable. She still takes a lot of hip-hop and electronic elements and makes ample use of them, which takes a pretty standard Taylor Swift idea and shows what the whole album is going to be like.

At first this might seem a little misleading, after all many of the songs on Reputation have an angry tone. But on further examination, just as many songs can be sorted into the way-too-broad category of "happy". To me, this song is a great example of what the album has to offer, both in terms of what is new and what isn't. Plus Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift's voices go together very well.

I'm not trying to say Reputation wasn't a huge shift because it was, especially compared to her shift from country to pop which was very slow. I'm just trying to show that this is very clearly still Taylor Swift music, you don't even have to change the way you think about her music all that much to enjoy it a lot. That'll be all for now, let me know why I'm wrong in the comments.

See you tomorrow,

-C