Taylor Swift’s 'Reputation' Is A Necessary Evil

'Poptimism Gone Wrong' is a column that looks at the stories we tell about pop music, the artists we love to hate, and asks… what if we're wrong? Taylor Swift is speaking directly to you. Reputation's CD booklet opens with an essay, a state of the world address for 2017: "We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us… Humans are intrinsically impossible to simplify. We are never just good or just bad. We are mosaics of our worst selves and our best selves, our deepest secrets and our favorite stories to tell at a dinner party, existing somewhere between our well-lit profile photo and our driver's license shot." Go read the whole thing, especially if you find Taylor Swift unsympathetic. This isn’t just about her – it’s about how we treat each other. What goes around comes back around to all of us. The internet's become increasingly polarised, an environment that ultimately benefits no one. Social media and the 24/7 media cycle promise constant instant gratification, but push us to exhaustion. It's easy to make assumptions about others based on surface-level impressions – but exercising empathy and patience, regardless of your politics, is hard. "I've been so lucky to make music for a living and look out into crowds of loving, vibrant people. On the other side of the coin, my mistakes have been used against me, my heartbreaks have been used as entertainment, and my songwriting has been trivialized as 'oversharing'. When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test… There will be no further explanation. There will just be reputation." Our assumptions about Taylor Swift say more about us than her. We idolise the artists and celebrities we admire, and dismiss the ones we dislike as spineless hacks. But like them or not, behind each one is a real, three-dimensional person. Taylor Swift, like many artists, tells fictionalised stories through the lens of her own experiences. With 2014's "Blank Space", she embodied how we all live for drama – not mundane reality. It’s come back to bite her more than once. Last year, after Kim Kardashian "exposed" Taylor on Snapchat, I wrote, not entirely seriously: "What are the lives of rich celebrities for, if not our entertainment?" But gossip has consequences, and what the public sees isn't the whole truth. The only way for Taylor Swift to reckon with fame – not just hers, but the entire concept – is to dive headfirst into it.

Reputation is a morality play for the 21st century, where Taylor Swift acts out our deepest and most public desires and fears. It depicts the world in shades of grey, where there are no absolute truths, but endless contradictions. The album cover casts her as Two-Face, her pure self masked by headlines – other people's perceptions – on the right.

So if you thought "Look What You Made Me Do" was a delusionally un-self-aware monument to Taylor's ego, or a literal press release aimed at Kanye – congratulations, you played yourself. Sorry! It was never a diss track. "I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me" – those are not the words of someone trying to "win" a feud.

Diss tracks, from Tupac's "Hit 'Em Up" to Swift's own "Dear John", are about asserting moral or artistic superiority over a rival. But "Look What You Made Me Do" does the opposite – Swift brands herself the villain of her own Reputation essay. She tears down, once and for all, the innocent underdog persona she once played – and was later typecast as, by people and publications more interested in gossip than songwriting. She no longer cares about being right. Why? Because if Taylor Swift has no pretensions to moral superiority, she can express exactly how she feels. "Maybe I got mine, but you'll all get yours…"

"…Ready for It?" opens Reputation with a declaration: "Baby, let the games begin!" All is fair in love and war – and pop is the battlefield. Taylor Swift's spent her career, including much of 1989, out of step with the trends that drive pop music. But on Reputation, she's competing on everyone else's level. She doesn't just want to be the biggest popstar, she wants to be bigger than pop itself. And she is: just four days after its release, Reputation was already 2017’s highest-selling album. It feels like an entire album of dizzying event singles; blockbusters to rival the "Bad Blood" video, with wittier, more venomous songwriting than her rivals. Madonna would be proud – or jealous?

That means finally acknowledging the sounds of black popular music. We hear R&B vocal inflections, hip-hop beats, rap cadences – and Swift's songs swing for the first time. It might seem sudden, but this is a development years in the making. At the CMT Awards in June 2009, three months before Kanye interrupted her at the VMAs, "T-Swizzle" and T-Pain poked fun at themselves in the "Thug Story" skit. It was completely tongue-in-cheek – "I'm so gangster you can find me baking cookies at night!" Over the years, Swift's engagements with hip-hop slowly escalated. She was one of the first to publicly champion Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass" in February 2011, before it became the single that made Minaj a household name. In a September 2014 Rolling Stone cover story, Swift praised Kendrick Lamar's "Backseat Freestyle", then enlisted Kendrick himself for the "Bad Blood" single remix the next year. While Taylor didn't rap on the song, the fact that she and Kendrick could coexist without seeming ridiculous was an achievement. With each new album, Swift gently pushes the limits of her credibility – because it can take years to internalise a style of music authentically enough to perform it. So Reputation incorporates hip-hop's influence without overreaching, or overtly appropriating from black culture. We've come a long way from "Thug Story".

Swift will never be considered a rapper, but "End Game" should surprise even the biggest cynics. It's a posse cut with an knowingly absurd lineup – Taylor Swift featuring Ed Sheeran and Future(!). Future rap-sings, Sheeran and Swift sing-rap, seducing us with their flaws. The three play foils to each other, but Swift adopts two personas – the sassy hook and verse, and the dreamy chorus. "Ooh, you and me, we got big reputations… / Ooh, I got some big enemies", she raps, sounding more than a little like Drake, before cooing like the old Taylor. "I wanna be your endgame" – your number one popstar and lover. Fame is romance – it’s not a metaphor. "I swear I don't love the drama – it loves me"…

Reputation's songs have two themes: confrontation and escape. The confrontation songs – where Swift addresses her critics head-on – are mostly Max Martin and Shellback co-productions, that dominate the album's first half. Swift's never been a maximalist – even her biggest songs were delicate, not explosive. But Reputation's confrontation songs are overwhelming, each one a miniature symphony.

Country music creates empathy through emotional detail. But pop creates catharsis through spectacle; it's about conjuring larger-than-life emotions, often to resolve them. For example – listening to "Dancing on Your Own" won't make you sadder, despite its lyrics. Swift's always blended pop and country's philosophies with ease, but Reputation leans heavily on the power of spectacle.

On "I Did Something Bad", she revels in being hated. Over side-chained Flume synths cranked to 11, she belts, "They say I did something bad / Then why's it feel so good?" She's become the antagonist of "I Knew You Were Trouble", and she couldn't care less. "They're burning all the witches even if you aren't one / So light me up… go ahead and light me up". She relinquishes control of her image, once and for all.

But "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" does the opposite – it's a playground chant even pettier than "Bad Blood", directed at fake friends and the fickle media for exploiting her goodwill. Taylor Swift's back on her bullshit, folks! But even when she's playing the villain, the emotions behind her songs are sincere. Nothing she does is ironic. Still, Reputation's confrontation songs are so self-aware, self-obsessed they'll drive certain people mad. But what's pop without provocation? What’s music if it’s just sound?

A pop song is more than an emotion – it's a snapshot in time. Taylor, like Adele, often wrote about the past. She'd reflect on her experiences in song, to find emotional resolution in the present. "Fifteen" might not describe Taylor Swift's life at 27, but if it was true for her once, it'll resonate forever. One listen, and the memories come flooding back. Reputation flips that on its head – it's not about regret, but desire. Who is Taylor Swift now? How do we see her? And in the future tense: who does she want to be? Who does she want to be with?

So this is Reputation's other theme: searching for an escape from the chaos of modern life. "Delicate", an instant highlight, begins the album's second arc. Alone in New York, set to smooth R&B, Taylor longs for her new flame. "Is it cool that I said all that? / Is it too soon to do this yet?" She confesses, "My reputation's never been worse, so / He must like me for me". He looks at her with no preconceptions, and sees her truth. Is it enough to light a spark?

Reputation's love stories have no fairytale endings. Swift's songs, once emotional absolutes, have become states of transition. In "Getaway Car", she elopes from one relationship with a new lover, only to betray him in turn. There's no sense of finality – her protagonist is doomed to run forever, from one desperate emotional connection to the next.

But Reputation's second half follows the arc of one relationship; each song depicts a different aspect of love. "So It Goes…": the feeling of inevitability. "Gorgeous": infatuation as slapstick romantic comedy. "King of My Heart": healing. "Dancing with Our Hands Tied": desperation. "Dress": sensuality, seduction. Through each piece of the puzzle, a message emerges: fame holds no answers. The only thing worth living for is true, unconditional honesty.

After pride comes a fall: the last two songs shift from the thrill of fame to exhaustion. "Call It What You Want" is the most traditionally Swiftian song on the record, with familiar chords, melodies, deliveries. But she's unusually candid: "And I know I make the same mistakes every time / Bridges burn, I never learn". This is the confession many wanted from her, that "Look What You Made Me Do" denied. But it's not an apology – the songs are two sides of the same coin. Look what you made me do, call it what you want – she no longer cares about other people’s perceptions. Only the possibility of love remains. "You don't have to save me / But would you run away with me?"

Swift's closing tracks are traditionally about new beginnings, but "New Year's Day" is less optimistic. It takes place in the aftermath of a New Year’s Eve party, when jubilation’s replaced by cold reality. She sings over a dampened piano, her voice unprocessed for the first time: "Hold onto the memories / And I will hold onto you". When the dust settles, will you be there? The song's nostalgic tone is more anxious than comforting. Swift hangs on desperately to the recent past, like a dream that's nearly faded. Her voice stops mid-phrase, the piano fades out unresolved. The future is uncertain, terrifying, inevitable. Taylor Swift has realised she can't be all things to all people. So she gives us not one unified sequel to 1989, but 15 versions of her at once. Reputation embodies her inner conflicts, her most likeable and villainous traits. Like Kanye's The Life of Pablo, or Madonna's Erotica before her, it's up to the listener to make sense of her contradictions. 1989 was the culmination of Taylor Swift's career – but what happens after you've been crowned? We expect blockbuster sequels to be bigger than the original, but you can't outdo yourself forever. Reputation is excessive by design; by the time track 14 rolls around, you're as emotionally exhausted as Taylor herself. Reputation's not just a snake – it's a snake eating its own tail. The last two songs set the stage for Taylor to come full circle. Not necessarily back to country music, but to something where the stakes aren't so impossibly high. After 1989, anything less would've been seen as a disappointment – a creative retreat. After Reputation, it'll be welcomed by fans and haters alike. Sometimes, the only way to create new growth is to burn it all down.

Richard S. He is a pop producer and critic. You can tweet your grievances to @Richaod.