Swift Series: Why she disappeared
Entering the summer of 2017, Taylor Swift had not been seen for almost an entire year. She had been the topic of much conversation over the course of that year, facing a controversy after Kanye West name dropped her in an incredibly misogynistic song. Her image was potentially at an all-time low, with countless people commenting snake emojis all over her Instagram page and shaming her for the number of men she’d dated. Meanwhile, countless headlines pondered the same question over and over for months: Why did she disappear?
Reputation, her sixth studio album, would serve as her answer to that question. Swifties were waiting with bated breath—after an album of pop perfection like 1989, they were not sure what to expect next. This was the longest gap between albums yet in her career. What fans didn’t know then was that she had been hiding away with her boyfriend Joe Alwyn and writing, maybe, her most controversial album to date.
One of my favorite Taylor Swift-related memories was the night that “Look What You Made Me Do,” the lead single off of reputation, was released. I was visiting Cape Cod with my sister and two of my best friends, and we were staying in a small rental cottage by the beach. We had all been fans of Swift’s for years now, and the night the song came out, we waited up until midnight, all crammed into a twin-sized bed. Sharing that experience with my friends is one of my favorite parts of being a fan of hers—this community and the feeling of connection.
Swift often refers to Reputation as a bait-and-switch; “Look What You Made Me Do,” released in August 2017, came as a shock after she had left on a pure pop note. It was dark and edgy, an entirely new sound for the young and innocent curly-haired songstress. She was departing from her youth and innocence in new ways, talking about more adult themes over an entirely new style of track.
The gag of it all, however, was that the album was not the dark, revenge-fantasy escapade many listeners of the lead single had expected. Sure, songs like “Look What You Made Me Do” and “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” pulled their weight in getting back at those who had been actively working to destroy Swift reputation, but at its core, Reputation is really an album about reaching your lowest point and relying on an authentic and real love to pull you out of it. This album carries with it an important and hard-earned message, one that urges listeners to let go of their image and focus on the people who know them for who they really are.
“Call It What You Want” is a perfect example of this. One of my favorite tracks on the album, the song talks about finding love in the middle of the chaos, and despite the image others may have of you, not caring how other people perceive the relationship. “Nobody’s heard from me for months / I’m doing better than I ever was,” she sings.
The closing track of reputation, “New Year’s Day,” is one of my favorite moments in all of Swift’s discography. After all of the upbeat, intense, energy-driven tracks, the album closes on a soft, sweet piano ballad that yearns for her lover to stay, even in the hard moments, and appreciates him being the kind of person who will clean up bottles with her on New Year’s Day—“Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere,” she sings. The song’s nostalgic instrumentation closes the album on a warm and grateful tone, one that reminds the listener that even the hardest of eras are survivable.