One even serves her what we can only assume is piping hot tea, the kind Kim Kardashian dished out when she released audio of Swift, who publicly disputed Kanye West’s lyric about her in Famous, appearing to sign off on those same lyrics in a phone conversation with West. This next one is a dead giveaway: Swift sits atop a throne as dozens of snakes slither at her feet. But the Old Swift be damned this new one is all about retribution and, as the title of her forthcoming album suggests, reputation.
So much so that hearing her new single made me nostalgic for the days of Fearless and Red. In the battle between Swifts, my allegiance is with the deceased version, a shrewd chronicler of young-adult courtship and seasoned, starry-eyed songwriter. “She can’t come to the phone right now,” Swift 2.0 says. Near the end of the song, she answers a phone call someone’s asking to speak with Taylor Swift.
Continuing in the tradition of her last album, 1989, which marked Swift’s official evolution into pop music behemoth, it largely abandons that which made her a household name – singable melodies sharp, specific lyricism grand tales of romantic enchantment – in favor of radio-engineered pop and glib proclamations of vengeance. Look What You Made Me Do – or LWYMMD, as its Twitter hashtag dictates – is well on its way to smashing streaming records, but the song hasn’t been as well received by critics. Yes, it’s painfully on-the-nose, but Swift’s brand hasn’t exactly been built on subtlety. Release a music video – for her new single, Look What You Made Me Do – that’s practically boiling over with meta-commentary and self-referential detail, from an ongoing visual snake motif to a tombstone that literally reads “Taylor Swift’s reputation”.
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