I’d like to start off this article by stating that once upon a time, I was a huge Taylor Swift fan. I watched her music videos and interviews on Youtube, put her posters up on my wall and looked for the hidden messages in her CD booklets. For Christmas, my parents would get me the new Taylor Swift album, and I’d spend hours memorizing the lyrics to every single song. I never felt like I related to her songs as much as other girls would say they did, but as an amateur writer, I admired her ability to write so poetically at such a young age.
From her debut, self-titled album all the way to her transition to pop, 1989 (though admittedly, I’d started to lose interest by the time that last album came out), Swift maintained the persona of a modest, sweet country-girl-turned-superstar. Then it all started to go downhill.
As she became more and more famous, the public started to accuse Swift of continuously playing the victim in her songs. For years, her songs have been ridiculed for only discussing her romantic relationships and downfalls, many of them centred around a man who had wronged her. In songs like “White Horse,” “Dear John,” “Forever & Always,” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Swift perpetuates the idea that her significant others are the cause of the breakup. Rarely would she ever take responsibility for the relationship turning sour, some exceptions being “Back to December” and “I Wish You Would.” Some songs such as “Teardrops on my Guitar” and “You Belong with Me” place the blame on Swift’s male friends for liking other people, essentially asserting herself as a victim of “friendzoning.” One song, “Better Than Revenge,” stands out, in which Swift claims to be the victim of a “boyfriend-stealer.”
This trend of claiming to be a victim in her song lyrics was brought to new heights when Swift’s behaviour started to manifest in public scandals. Circa 2015, she famously dissed Katy Perry with the song “Bad Blood” from her album 1989, which, once again, is about someone betraying Taylor. Their feud revolved around Perry allegedly trying to “steal” Swift’s backup dancers*. Her most infamous feud, however, was with Kanye West. West’s and Swift’s beef started way back in 2009, when he interrupted her Video Music Award acceptance speech.** West released a song in February of 2016 with the lyrics “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.” Swift claimed to have never known about the song’s lyrics, which was proven to be false when West’s wife Kim Kardashian posted video proof of a phone call between West and Swift in which Swift agrees to let West write about her in his song***. After that, the public turned on Swift.
Once it became clear that she was no longer America’s Sweetheart, Swift went into hiding. She was MIA for a year or so after the “famous” scandal, allowing the public to forget about her. The drama surrounding her had basically subsided when she deleted all of the content on her social media accounts and posted a mysterious video of a snake on Instagram in August of 2017. The Internet blew up—rumours of Swift’s return began circulating, and shortly after she dropped her first single in three years.
When I heard the news about her new song, my initial thought was: “Good. She’s finally going to acknowledge her role in creating much of the drama that’s surrounded her. She’s finally going to take some responsibility.” I was, unfortunately, proven wrong.
Her single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” was essentially a revenge anthem. This is evident in lines like “I’ve got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined” and “Maybe I got mine, but you’ll all get yours,” which maintain her claims that nothing was ever her fault and justice must be served to those who sabotaged her career. The line “The world moves on, another day, another drama, drama / But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma” implies that, rather than reflecting on the possibility that she could be responsible for at least some of her famous conflicts, Swift spent her whole hiatus plotting her revenge and waiting for her chance to pounce. Possibly the most famous line “I’m sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now/ Why? / Oh, cause she’s dead!” implies that her “former” self—the one who was involved with all of the celebrity feuds and was accused of constantly playing the victim—is gone, and that she is different. In the music video for LWYMMD, Swift makes a mockery of “the Old Taylor,” dressing up as versions of herself from past music videos and public appearances and making fun of some of her past actions, like the notorious line from her public letter**** regarding the West fiasco: “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative.” By ridiculing her past self, Swift is not admitting to her faults. Rather, she is attempting to divert the attention from her faults, as though it was the “Old Taylor” that the media created who was fake and shady, rather than this new Taylor who supposedly doesn’t take sh*t from anyone. The problem with this is that Swift is still the same person—she is just as petty and immature as ever, putting the blame on everyone but herself. She even tried to reclaim the snake symbol that was associated with her after Kardashian called her out, by putting snakes all over her music video, as though this was a label that was unfairly thrust upon her. It’s clear that she is still playing the victim, despite the fact that this attitude is the reason people started to distrust her in the first place.
As for the new album itself, Reputation, which was released on Nov. 10,
it’s nothing to write home about. Despite the fact that it was marketed as a reinvention of herself—which is supported by the notion that a year long hiatus will likely yield some fresh content—her sound and lyrical style are fairly similar to 1989. It’s only in songs like “Dress”—where she indicates that she “Only bought this dress so you could take it off”— and “I Did Something Bad”—which features curse words in the lyrics—where there is any sense of a more mature presence, due to the sexual implications and profanity that weren’t included in her past albums. She is still writing about relationships and still, arguably, doing it well, but there seems to be no evidence that Taylor will ever give up her cherished status as the victim in all circumstances. Why wait so long to release an album that shows no sign of growth?