Content
Background
reputation is the sixth studio album by American singer and songwriter, Taylor Swift. Released on November 10, 2017 by Big Machine Record it was the last contractual album Swift released under the label before signing on with Republic Records.
Released over three years after her last album, 1989, Swift had went into seclusion during 2016 after falling scrutiny to rampant tabloids over her personal life and public disputes with celebrities and created the album as an effort to revamp her state of mind.
Swift recruited Jack Antonoff, Max Martin and Shellback to help produce the album with a stark shift from the synth-pop style of its predecessor, reputation is built around dark electropop and R&B, inspired by urban genres such as EDM, hip hop, trap, and Miami bass, resulting in a heavy electronic production consisting of surging synthesizers, pulsing drum machines, and manipulated vocals. In retrospect, Swift has described reputation as a “defense mechanism” and an alter ego.
The album’s motif, “There will be no explanation, just reputation.”, became the album’s centerfold and unlike previously Swift did not promote the album through press interviews.
Prior to the album’s release Swift released two promotional singles, “Getaway Car” on October 20, 2017. The second promotional single, “Call It What You Want” was released on November 3, 2017.
Upon the album’s release, two magazines were released exclusively to US Target stores. The magazines contain photos, handwritten lyrics, poetry and paintings by Swift. The reputation Vol. 1 magazine cover was shot by Mert and Marcus. Vol. 2 was shot by Benny Horne and features Swift in a camouflage jacket.
Commercially the album did well, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 and becoming her fourth consecutive album to do so with first-week sales of over 1.2 million copies.
A karaoke edition was released digitally on March 9, 2018 and later in CD+G and DVD format on May 18, 2018.
Singles
Six singles were released to promote the album. The lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do”, was released August 24, 2017 and peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 becoming Swift’s fifth number one single. “…Ready for It?” was originally released as a promotional single on September 3, 2017 and later impacted radio stations on September 17, 2017 and peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100. “End Game” featuring Ed Sheeran and Future was released November 14, 2017 as the third single and only got as high as number eighteen on the Billboard Hot 100. “New Years Day” was released to US country radio on November 27, 2017 as the fourth single from the album. On March 12, 2018, “Delicate” was released as the fifth single from the album and was a sleeper hit. The song peaked at number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at number one on the Mainstream Top 40 chart, and was reputation‘s first number-one single on the Billboard Adult Top 40 and Adult Contemporary charts. It became the biggest radio hit from reputation. “Getaway Car” was released as the album’s final single on September 7, 2018 exclusively to Australia and New Zealand.
Track listing
| Track Title | Writers | Producers | Length |
| 1. “…Ready for It?” | Ali Payani, Max Martin, Shellback, Taylor Swift | Ali Payani, Max Martin, Shellback | 3:27 |
| 2. “End Game” (featuring Ed Sheeran and Future) | Ed Sheeran, Future, Max Martin, Shellback, Taylor Swift | Ilya, Max Martin, Shellback | 4:04 |
| 3. “I Did Something Bad” | Max Martin, Shellback, Taylor Swift | Max Martin, Shellback | 3:57 |
| 4. “Don’t Blame Me” | Max Martin, Shellback, Taylor Swift | Max Martin, Shellback | 3:55 |
| 5. “Delicate” | Max Martin, Shellback, Taylor Swift | Max Martin, Shellback | 3:51 |
| 6. “Look What You Made Me Do” | Fred Fairbrass, Jack Antonoff, Richard Fairbrass, Rob Manzoli, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:31 |
| 7. “So It Goes…” | Max Martin, Oscar Görres, Shellback, Taylor Swift | Max Martin, Oscar Görres, Shellback | 3:47 |
| 8. “Gorgeous” | Max Martin, Shellback, Taylor Swift | Max Martin, Shellback | 3:29 |
| 9. “Getaway Car” | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:53 |
| 10. “King of My Heart” | Max Martin, Shellback, Taylor Swift | Max Martin, Shellback | 3:33 |
| 11. “Dancing with Our Hands Tied” | Max Martin, Oscar Holter, Shellback, Taylor Swift | Max Martin, Oscar Holter, Shellback | 3:30 |
| 12. “Dress” | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:49 |
| 13. “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:26 |
| 14. “Call It What You Want” | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:22 |
| 15. “New Year’s Day” | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:54 |
Notes
- “Look What You Made Me Do” contains an interpolation of the 1991 song “I’m Too Sexy” by the band Right Said Fred.
Prologue
Here’s something I’ve learned about people.
We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us. We know our friend in a certain light, but we don’t know them the way their lover does. Just the way their lover will never know them the same way that you do as their friend. Their mother knows them differently than their roommate, who knows them differently than their colleague. Their secret admirer looks at them and sees an elaborate sunset of brilliant color and dimension and spirit and pricelessness. And yet, a stranger will pass that person and see a faceless member of the crowd, nothing more. We may hear rumors about a person and believe those things to be true. We may one day meet that person and feel foolish for believing baseless gossip.
This is the first generation that will be able to look back on their entire life story documented in pictures on the internet, and together we will all discover the after-effects of that. Ultimately, we post photos online to curate what strangers think of us. But then we wake up, look in the mirror at our faces and see the cracks and scars and blemishes, and cringe. We hope someday we’ll meet someone who will see that same morning face and instead see their future, their partner, their forever. Someone who will still choose us even when they see all of the sides of the story, all the angles of the kaleidoscope that is you.
The point being, despite our need to simplify and generalize absolutely everyone and everything in this life, humans are intrinsically impossible to simplify. We are never just good or just bad. We are mosaics of our worst selves and our best selves, our deepest secrets and our favorite stories to tell at a dinner party, existing somewhere between our well-lit profile photo and our drivers license shot. We are all a mixture of our selfishness and generosity, loyalty and self-preservation, pragmatism and impulsiveness. I’ve been in the public eye since I was 15 years old. On the beautiful, lovely side of that, I’ve been so lucky to make music for living and look out into crowds of loving, vibrant people. On the other side of the coin, my mistakes have been used against me, my heartbreaks have been used as entertainment, and my songwriting has been trivialized as ‘oversharing’.
When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test. There will be slideshows of photos backing up each incorrect theory, because it’s 2017 and if you didn’t see a picture of it, it couldn’t have happened right?
Let me say it again, louder for those in the back…
We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them that they have chosen to show us.
There will be no further explanation.
There will be just reputation.
Poems
If You’re Anything Like Me
If you’re anything like me,
You bite your nails,
And laugh when you’re nervous.
You promise people the world,
because that’s what they want from you.
You like giving them what they want…
But darling, you need to stop,
If you’re anything like me,
You knock on wood every time you make plans.
You cross your fingers, hold your breath,
Wish on lucky numbers and eyelashes
Your superstitions were the lone survivors of the shipwreck.
Rest In Peace, to your naïve bravado…
If life gets too good now,
Darling, it scares you.
If you’re anything like me,
You never wanted to lock your door,
Your secret garden gate or your diary drawer
Didn’t want to face the you you don’t know anymore
For fear she was much better before…
But Darling, now you have to.
If you’re anything like me,
There’s a justice system in your head
For names you’ll never speak again,
And you make your ruthless rulings.
Each new enemy turns to steel
They become the bars that confine you,
In your own little golden prison cell…
But Darling, there is where you meet yourself.
If you’re anything like me
You’ve grown to hate your pride
To love your thighs
And no amount of friends at 25
Will fill the empty seats
At the lunch tables of your past
The teams that picked you last…
But Darling, you keep trying.
If you’re anything like me,
You couldn’t recognize the face of your love
Until they stripped you of your shiny paint
Threw your victory flag away
And you saw the ones who wanted you anyway…
Darling, later on you will thank your stars
for that frightful day.
If you’re anything like me,
I’m sorry.
But Darling, it’s going to be okay.
Why She Disappeared
When she fell, she fell apart.
Cracked her bones on the pavement she once decorated
as a child with sidewalk chalk
When she crashed, her clothes disintegrated and blew away
with the winds that took all of her fair-weather friends
When she looked around, her skin was spattered with ink
forming the words of a thousand voices
Echoes she heard even in her sleep:
“Whatever you say, it is not right.”
“Whatever you do, it is not enough.”
“Your kindness is fake.”
“Your pain is manipulative.”
When she lay there on the ground,
She dreamed of time machines and revenge
and a love that was really something,
Not just the idea of something.
When she finally rose, she rose slowly
Avoiding old haunts and sidestepping shiny pennies
Wary of phone calls and promises,
Charmers, dandies and get-love-quick-schemes
When she stood, she stood with a desolate knowingness
Waded out into the dark, wild ocean up to her neck
Bathed in her brokenness
Said a prayer of gratitude for each chink in the armor
she never knew she needed
Standing broad-shouldered next to her
was a love that was really something,
not just the idea of something.
When she turned to go home,
She heard the echoes of new words
“May your heart remain breakable
But never by the same hand twice”
And even louder:
“without your past,
you could never have arrived-so wondrously and brutally,
By design or some violent, exquisite happenstance
…here.”
And in the death of her reputation,
She felt truly alive.