“This summer is the apocalypse,” wrote Taylor Swift in August 2016. Kim Kardashian had recently released an edited video of a phone call between Swift and Kanye West, Kardashian’s then-husband, regarding his song “Famous” and its infamous line: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.” Swift seemingly assents to the line, but shortly after its release, she decried the track in a public statement. The former narrative — that West did not mention either using the word “bitch” or the music video featuring a naked mannequin of Swift — fell through the cracks, and the #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty overtook Twitter.
A year later, Swift cleared her Instagram account, repopulated the page with pictures of snakes — a recurring motif in her new project “Reputation” — and, prior to the album’s November release, dropped the lead single “Look What You Made Me Do.” The song hit number one for three weeks in the United States and became her first chart-topper in the United Kingdom, prompting a clue-ridden music video in which she coined the iconic line, “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now… ‘cause she’s dead!” While the record garnered praise from Swifties, selling upwards of one million copies in its first week, the album divided critics.
“Reputation” marked a departure from the positive reception of Swift’s earlier works, earning a 71/100 on Metacritic — not a terrible score, but still among her lowest to date. Geoff Nelson of Consequence criticized the album’s brash sound. He noted an overuse of synthesizers and denounced Swift’s experimentation with hip-hop on tracks like “End Game.” Sal Cinquemani of Slate and Jamieson Cox of Pitchfork agreed that the album’s outdated EDM sonic palette overshadowed Swift’s otherwise sturdy lyricism.
The sound of “Reputation” was a stark departure from the country pop of “Fearless” and “Red” or the nostalgic synth-pop of “1989.” Swift employed heavy electronics, trap beats and distorted vocals, leaning toward darker musical textures and emphasizing cadence over melody in her vocal delivery. It was the first time Swift seemed to hop onto trends, internalizing the growing popularity of rap and R&B in mainstream music. However, despite the harsh production and gothic persona, the writing on “Reputation” communicated to fans that the old Taylor wasn’t really dead.
While pre-release singles “Look What You Made Me Do” and “…Ready For It?” positioned the album as Swift’s response to the Kardashian and West situation, much of the record sees Swift attempting to balance the private and public aspects of her life. In late 2016, Swift began a relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn. She explores that burgeoning romance amid a career crisis during which the media scrutiny and public backlash felt unmanageable. These themes appear in “Delicate,” “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” and “Call It What You Want.” While she’s certainly taking shots at Kanye on “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” and “I Did Something Bad,” the core of “Reputation” centers around Alwyn — protecting her private life while navigating the rockiest stretch of her public life thus far.
In recent years, “Reputation” has won affection in the hearts of fans and critics alike. I can attest that, at the Eras Tour, the crowd screamed the loudest when Swift emerged in her snake bodysuit to the blaring bass of “Ready For It?” The album spawned sleeper hits such as “Delicate,” which charted on the Hot 100 for 35 weeks in 2018, and “Don’t Blame Me,” which became popular on TikTok for its gospel-style bridge and cracked one billion streams on Spotify.
Critics have reappraised “Reputation” in hindsight. In a 2024 ranking of Swift’s albums, Jon Caramanica of The New York Times ranked “Reputation” at number one, opining that Swift took accountability while also becoming increasingly vulnerable in her lyricism. Mary Siroky wrote for Consequence in 2022 that the publication’s negative review reflected Swift’s controversial public image and not the value of the music. Kara Voght agreed in a 2022 article, suggesting that the detail-dense and narrative-oriented songwriting pioneered on “Reputation” set the stage for Swift’s triumphant later releases “Folklore” and “Midnights.”
“Reputation” proved that Swift could weather the storm of controversy and return to commercial and cultural dominance. It reasserted her versatility as an artist, knack for reinvention and implicit understanding of industry trends. Although critics missed the message, fans took the record in stride, and “Reputation” stood the test of time. As Swift wrote in the prologue to the album: “There will be no further explanation. There will just be reputation.”
