Call it what you want: Here’s what students are saying about Swift’s latest album
Whenever Taylor Swift does anything, it’s always go big or go home––and her latest album “Reputation,” which dropped on Nov. 10, is no exception. After all, as she sings on the track “End Game,” she has a “big reputation” and some “big enemies,” and that always makes for a “big conversation.”
Swift collaborated with songwriters and producers like Max Martin and Jack Antonoff on her sixth studio record. Martin has worked with pop singers like Jessie J, Katy Perry and Britney Spears, while Antonoff is responsible for much of the synth-heavy 1980s-inspired songs that can be heard on Swift’s “1989” album.
This time, Swift’s trading in the synth and the soaring hooks for a pop sound that’s much higher, darker and more menacing than anything we’ve ever seen from her.
Junior global studies major Michaela Steiner said that while she misses the familiarity of the old Taylor, she loves being surprised by Taylor’s new style on “Reputation.”
“The old Taylor Swift was familiar and comfortable, and you knew what you were going to get with her. This new Taylor is much more unpredictable,” Steiner said. “It’s kind of like finding a new artist for the first time. You have to learn all of their music and the kind of musical style you should expect from them.”
While Swift plays with new sounds on the album, she still sticks to the similar themes she’s always written about (frenemies, revenge, ex-lovers, blue-eyed boys, etc.). Stiener said that she loves Swift’s response to the hate.
“I think this album was a masterfully crafted clap back to all the awful things that have been said about her for so long. As far as the music itself goes, she definitely let her circumstances and reputation, inspire her art, which I am fully behind,” Steiner said. “There are parts of the album that poke just as much fun back at herself as people have poked at her over the year, like in the songs ‘Gorgeous’ and ‘Getaway Car.'”
Steiner said the album was kind of a mic-drop moment for Swift.
“Overall, I think she was simply giving a final response to all the drama that has been happening recently in terms of her reputation, hence the title of the album, and almost daring people to keep messing with her,” Steiner said. “I think it worked too, considering I haven’t heard anything since.”
While many people appreciate the unpredictability of Swift’s new album, many still mourn the loss of old Taylor’s death. Sophomore mathematics major and former Taylor Swift superfan Olivia Jeffcoat said she wasn’t interested in listening to the rest of “Reputation” after hearing the first single, “Look What You Made Me Do.”
“I was a huge Taylor Swift fan in the past,” Jeffcoat said. “I bought all her albums the day they were released, I knew every word to every song, and I even went to see her “Red” tour on my birthday. I still love her as a person, but I just personally don’t find her new style enjoyable to listen to.”
Sophomore liberal studies major Victoria Slosted said that she thinks the album grows on you.
“I’m not big on that new style of music, and I thought ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ was really repetitive at first, but it’s grown on me since then,” Slosted said. “I think she’s using her songs as an outlet for the hate she’s been getting.”
If Swift meant for “Reputation” to be a final response to the hate, though, it isn’t all that clear what she actually means to say. Perhaps she feels the need to “clap back” at the haters; after all, “There’s nothing [she] does better than revenge.” Perhaps she feels the need to prove herself. Perhaps “Reputation” is a satire, like “Bad Blood” was; perhaps Taylor is stepping into the role of “snake” and “villain” and making a caricature of the caricature the media made of her.
Or perhaps she is simply using her songwriting as a diary, as she always has, and this album is another cathartic chapter in her chronicles. After all, as Ed Sheeran sings in “End Game:” “And you understand, the good and the bad end up in the song.”