1 before being dethroned by her next single, “Blank Space” this year, “Look What You Made Me Do” spent only three weeks at No. As USA Today points out, in 2014, Swift’s “Shake It Off” spent 12 weeks at No. While Swift is still a major force on Billboard, Reputation’s singles haven’t had anywhere near the staying power that 1989’s did. The split between her two selves had never been more apparent. She was drawing her listeners close with one hand and then showing how she did the magic trick with the other. NPR is not alone in suggesting that it’s the perfect time for her to take advantage of this moment and embrace her calculating side, making a heel turn and developing a new identity as a pop music villain: Think piece after think piece emerged all but begging Swift to stop playing the victim and have some fun being bad.īut Swift, who has maintained a strict wall between her two personas, tried to play it both ways: be the put-upon victim in her songs, but continue to coldly calculate her public persona. With “Look What You Made Me Do,” Swift appears to be addressing the moment in her career in which the calculating and controlled part of her nature was most fully on display. ![]() When the two sides of her persona clash, they cancel each other out, resulting in a Swift backlash like the one that’s formed heading into Reputation. Both sides are fundamental to Swift’s appeal - but they are also antithetical to each other. Since the beginning of her career, Swift’s celebrity image has been caught in a tug-of-war between intimacy and control, one characterized by two distinct identities: Taylor Swift, nerdy teen and girl next door, who just happens to naturally be able to give voice to your deepest feelings in her songs and Taylor Swift, micromanaging CEO of a billion-dollar business whose marquee product is her own public image. “She'd rather be the victim, which is a stale posture for her by now.”īut Swift’s refusal to “go dark” with her persona is consistent with the basic paradox that has defined her celebrity image for as long as she has been famous. “She squandered that chance to play the villain,” opined NPR. It wasn’t just that the song wasn’t great, critical consensus went: It was that the persona Swift was debuting with “Look What You Made Me Do” was neither interesting nor timely - especially after last summer’s #KimExposedTaylorParty seemed to leave her perfectly positioned to abandon her good-girl persona and make a heel turn. After a very rocky 2016, Swift successfully used the trial to reposition herself as someone worth rooting for.Īnd then she dropped “Look What You Made Me Do,” and while her fan base was ecstatic, cultural critics were less than impressed. Swift handled the case with aplomb, gave an endlessly quotable testimony, and - in a particularly classy move - sued for only $1 in damages, just to show that she was only bothering with the trial out of sheer principle. Just before she announced R eputation, Swift was at the center of a high-profile lawsuit involving a radio DJ who groped her during a meet-and-greet. The chilliness of the reception that greeted New Taylor was on one level surprising, given how much goodwill she had going into this latest album cycle. Vulture declared it “the worst music of her career.” USA Today said Swift had “never been more exhausting.” ![]() “Look What You Made Me Do” ushered in the age of the New New Taylor (as opposed to the Old New Taylor circa 1989), and the response was not welcoming. It’s all stuff that someone else made her do. And she wants to be very clear that she doesn’t like them either, and that for the record, none of the bad things she’s done are actually her fault. Taylor Swift knows that some people don’t like her, and she knows why. The video for her first single off Reputation, “Look What You Made Me Do,” concluded with a lineup of Swifts spouting the most common critiques of Taylor Swift at each other: Her surprised face is annoying and fake she’s constantly playing the victim. Swift announced Reputation by deleting all of her old social media posts, replacing them with a video of a snake hissing, in what appeared to be a reference to her reputation as a lying snake. To show just how much she doesn’t care, she devoted the release cycle for her latest album, Reputation, to expressing how much it doesn’t bother her when people don’t like her. And she wants you know that she doesn’t care. ![]() Taylor Swift knows exactly what you think of her.
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