reputation

the take

I admit, I was heavy on the Taylor Swift hate train around the time this album was first released. Partly because I was still on Team {name redacted} and his music was still good, but that's beside the point. 2017 me only gave this album a listen in its entirety and immediately trashed it. Since then, I've only heard "Look What You Made Me Do" a lot in the years since, as well as "Gorgeous" every now and then. I've grown to appreciate Taylor's experimentation a bit more. So much so that's one reason why I went ahead and relistened to "reputation". (The other reason is that my co-worker, who WAS a huge Swiftie as of this writing, told me this is her best album and that I should relisten to it.) As I stated before, I really appreciate the experimentation Taylor Swift did on here. Lowkey, it sounds like an evil version of her "1989" album, which is not a bad thing to me. It's just that... *sighs* Taylor's lyrics does come off as a bit juvenile and cringe, maybe a little worse nowadays. It might be me maturing and wanting more thought-provoking lyrics, even back in 2017. Even with that, I can finally see through Taylor Swift's point of view during this era, which made me not understanding and feeling a bit sympathetic now liking this. Some songs come off as really good ("Look What You Made Me Do", "So It Goes..."); some really disappointing ("This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things", "I Did Something Bad"); and the rest in between. It's a bit of a rollercoaster to get through because it's inconsistent, but trust me when I say that's better than it not being good at all. I would like to apologize for giving this album shit and not going back to it sooner. It's nowhere near "Speak Now" or "Fearless" (I was a former Swiftie from 2009-2015?), but "reputation" is a lot better in hindsight for me.