Taylor Swift - Reputation

For the last decade, Taylor Swift has managed to constantly stay in the limelight.  Her first self titled album put her on the map. Then her second album "Fearless" propelled her into stardom. Then "Speak now", "Red" and then "1989" just saw her getting bigger and bigger as she became a house hold name and ultimately one of the biggest stars on the planet.  Even when she was supposedly taking a break she delivered a hit single with One Direction's Zayn. However good her 6th album would be, as long as she didn't bring out a CD of just silence or even a hoover on for 60 minutes. It was going to sell and it was almost guaranteed to sell big. But is it actually any good?

As the singles started to trickle out in the build up to the release I wasn't so sure. "Look what you made me do" is possibly the most irritating song of the year especially the chorus. But when I first heard "Never getting back together" off "Red" I thought the same about that song. But "Red" itself I thought was excellent, even though I still hate that song. So I thought it could just be another situation where I hate the lead single but like the rest. So with an open mind I listened to the next single "Ready for it". This is a slightly better song with the positive being that this time she nails the chorus singing, "In the middle of the night, in my dreams....".  But the rest of the song she is basically rapping which I don't like at all.

So when the album came out I wasn't exactly as excited about it compared to I how I have been for her other albums. And to be honest after 4-5 listens I am still not excited about it. I have tried to get into it but it just is not happening. Normally when a Swift album comes out, and I am not exaggerating, I could listen to it for 100 plus times and that's going by play count on my mp3 software. She is easily one of my most played artists of the last 10 years. 

The singles may suggest that the album is full of her attempting to rap kind of R & B feel. Which it is to an extent with the likes of "End Game" (Featureing Ed Sheeran and Future) and "I did something bad".  But there are many lighter moments on the album such as "Delicate" and "Gorgeous" but for me they are just not very good songs. Even the songs which you could say are more from what she used to do such as "Getaway car" are just not up to the same standard as past records. One positive from the album is album closer "New year's day" which has a country feel to it and would fit perfectly onto one of her earlier albums.

Overall as you can guess, I would rank this as Taylor's worse release to date. You could argue that one of the reasons is that I'm not really into R & B/hiphop genre generally so maybe it's obvious I wouldn't like it. But there are songs which do fit the mould of what she used to do which I didn't particularly like either. As I say I have been a big Swift fan in the past but this album is disappointing. I do give her kudos though for trying something new even though for me it didn't really work.  But she has that big a fanbase now she is in the position where she can just do what she wants. Which is exactly what she is doing.