Reputation reveals redeption

Every year, hundreds of new songs, albums, and even new singers enter the world of music. While some of them are forgotten, others make a significant footprint in the music industry, one of them being Taylor Swift. From country to pop music, Swift has made quite the transition. From singing her first song beginning at age 16, Swift has come a long way to her new album, Reputation.

After all that happened in 2016 between Taylor and Kanye, with her accusations of him using her name in his song “Famous”. without consent, makes her album title seem a little ironic. After she tried to sue Kanye and was caught lying, things went a little down-hill for her. Her reputation as an innocent, cat-loving pop star went down the drain, and supporting team #Kimye,  I started to hate Swift.

Swift’s new album is very different from her others. According to Rolling Stone, Reputation is Taylor’s most intimate album yet. She shows off her new and revamped personality to her fans. Her album title is in fact not in reference to her public image, but to the far more relatable dilemma of how you surrender your identity in counting the likes and favorites you rack up every day. Unfortunately, her true intentions aren’t very obvious or evident.

In a way, that’s always been a theme of her songwriting, going back to the high-school days of her earliest songs. She has always sung about girls struggling not to internalize the misogyny around them, from her album “Fifteen” to “New Romantics.” As she grew up, she found out that struggle isn’t over when you become an adult, but it instead only grows increasingly more evident.

Hearing that Swift was coming out with a new album, I dreaded the next few months of her songs being overplayed on the radio. When “Look what you made me do” was released, I heard it on the radio and absolutely hated it. Three months later when she released the rest of her album I was surprised. I actually liked some songs. My top favorites include “Ready for it?” and “Gorgeous.” I really like these songs because they are very similar to her latest album, “1989,” which had some of my favorite songs from middle school. Therefore, hearing her new songs brings back sweet memories from the past, which a lot of her throwback songs provide.

Some of the comments on her album have been really positive of the message she is trying to convey. Some of her popular songs from the album are “Look what you made me do”, “Ready for it?”, and “Gorgeous”. Personally, I think that these are some of the only good songs in the album, and they have been climbing up the charts since they were released.

Others, not so much, many fans disapproved and opposed how much she “changed,” demanding to have “the old Taylor back.” While this is true, I think it’s admirable that Swift blatantly states in a line of “Look what you made me do” that the old Taylor is “dead” and isn’t coming back. The reason why I dislike most of her songs is that, they all sound the same and don’t have an upbeat rhythm which most of her songs possess.

Whether or not fans are pleased, Swift has introduced a new style of music to her fans, that appeals to a bigger group of people, instead of just young kids and their parents.  Going from a reserved teenage country singer to a bold and daring 20-year-old pop-star, Swift has had quite the journey in the realm of music.