This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s summer editorial intern Connor Hanrahan. Find him on Instagram at @hannerhansmh. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
With her most recent studio album, The Tortured Poets Department topping charts everywhere, it only feels right to cover a bit of Taylor Swift this week. Each of her albums feels like it was released at the perfect opportunity to discuss or revel in whatever she was feeling at that time. However, TTPD contains 31 songs and over two hours of both her most recent trials and her oldest tribulations. While some of her albums do contain songs that highlight her general struggles throughout her music career, none do it to this capacity except for one… And with the highly anticipated Reputation (Taylor’s Version) release on the way, now feels like a better time than ever to contextualize her brilliant sixth studio album for newer fans.
Taylor Swift has done everything right. It may not seem like it, and it certainly didn’t feel like it to her at the time, but it’s the truth. She began as a country artist, then fell broken hearted and released Red, her 2012 studio album, which highlighted her break up with Jake Gyllenhaal in a slightly poppier aura, then released 1989 in 2014, her first true commitment to being a pop musician. After that, everything changed… The general media and social media alike rinsed her for her dating habits, evolution to pop music, lifestyle, and seemingly her general existence.
It would be entirely remiss of me to gloss over context for Reputation and omit Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. Everybody cringed when Kanye West so famously hopped on stage at the 2009 VMA’s to interrupt Swift’s acceptance speech for Video of the Year. But what flies lower under the radar to everyone except Swifties, is his slight of her in his 2016 track, Famous, where he included the lyrics, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? Cause I made that bitch famous”. This Swift-West saga went back and forth for years and Swift even wrote a song about it on Reputation called “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”.
But fear not, Taylor would eventually respond in turn, after years of effort and trying to squash their beef.
People Magazine made a nice little timeline of their entire chronology that can be found here.
This all hit a nerve with Swift, who was simply trying to live life and was seemingly unready for the manner in which the media would try and tear her down. Her series of short lived, high profile dating ventures provided her with the most stigma, specifically her relationship with One Direction’s Harry Styles. In 2016, after the wake of 1989, Swift announced an indefinite hiatus that would last until 2017. Then, she came back swinging.
Reputation
Reputation was completely different from anything she had released before, both in message and in structure. The songs had heavier, more synthetic instrumentals and the lyrics had completely different undertones: some were reminiscent of her previous works, but most had a general theme of “fu*k you” that was aimed at both her critics and the media.
The album was built in two halves: the first with tones of vengeance and drama, and the second with a tiny little bit of hope through the darkness, or as Swift said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, “something sacred throughout all the battle cries”. Appropriately enough, the production styles of the two halves were matched by illustrative production styles. The first half was primarily produced with heavier, more EDM and trap-esque tracks, while the back half was quintessentially Jack Antonoff, using little more than a piano and his studio magic.
One theme of this album that flies below the radar in discussion, but is blatant with listening, is her inclusion of adult themes for the first time in her music career. Her music until this album was almost totally family friendly and was built to consider the children who may be discovering her at an early age. Reputation threw this directly to the wayside when she used the word “shit” in the album’s third track, “I Did Something Bad”. She only used that one swear in the entire album, but it sent the desired message: that she was back and she had changed. After the release of Reputation, she hasn’t released an album without the use of derogatory words. Throughout the album, she also references drinking, affairs, and illicit desires.
A Unique Era
Taylor Swift really only had one opportunity to release an album like Reputation. During her earlier career, she showed no interest in straying from her country rock sound and even when she did with 1989, it was still an upbeat album that used lighter production. Only when shit hit the fan did she have a real opportunity to take a leap into an angsty album… And she capitalized. Incorporating a slightly more rock and roll sound with accents of pop from country is one thing. But, committing to trap beats and EDM synths from pop beats is a massive leap in her production and it perfectly illustrated her growth as a person over the three year gap between 1989 and Reputation.
After Reputation, she returned in 2019 with Lover which used a similar genre of production to 1989. It was a more generally upbeat album influenced by her sprouting love with her boyfriend at the time, Joe Alwyn. Of course, some songs feel outside these parameters like Cornelia Street and, of course, Soon You’ll Get Better, a track about her mother’s recent, and her father’s former, cancer diagnoses.
Reputation was far and away the most unique era Swift has ever created, primarily because it was the most reactionary. Without the specific set of events that led up to its conception, she wouldn’t have made it… Or at least it would’ve turned out vastly different. What separates it from the other eras is that it really seems like a blip in her discography. The album has a completely different tone than any of her other albums, except for The Tortured Poets Department.
This is why it was the PERFECT album to precede Reputation (Taylor’s Version). Unfortunately, she has given us just about nothing on when it will be released, but all of her diehard fans who care about her, and not just her music, are teeming with anticipation for the Reputation (Taylor’s Version) release. And, of course, some of the more dedicated fans are clinging to anything they can possibly get their hands on to predict its release…
What do you think? Did I miss anything? I’m a fairly new Swifty (Lover Era), so retroactively researching all of her work has been very fun and VERY time consuming, but it’s so worth it to be a part of such a beautiful community. As someone who used to scoff at Taylor and her work, and particularly her fans (oops), it has been mind-blowing to go back and listen to all this beautiful music I never gave a chance to when I was younger.
So to you, the reader, I pose a question: Which Era is your favorite and which aspect of Taylor’s art do you identify most with?
For me, it’s Red and I identify most with the way that each song she makes perfectly illustrates a feeling she has had and that we have all had at some point or another. Whether it be I Think He Knows, The Moment I Knew, or Enchanted, at some point, we’ve all been there.
When do you think the Reputation Taylors Version release will be? Let us know in the comments below!
Leave a Reply