Taylor Swift released the first two episodes of her new docuseries The End of an Era on Dec. 12 — all about her monumental Eras Tour — and fans are more than here for it. With this new concert film, her appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Wednesday, The Life of a Showgirl buzz, and her engagement, fans of Swift have had an extreme amount of content to take in. With this much going on, it could be easy to miss that she just changed two lyrics on Reputation.
To give a little background on the recent Reputation lore, fans had been waiting for Reputation (Taylor’s Version) since she announced that she’d be re-recording her albums in 2020. When she bought back her masters in May of this year, fans were elated that she finally owned her music. In her letter to fans after buying her masters, she explained that she’d hit a block while trying to re-record the 2017 album because of how “specific to that time in” her life Reputation was. She stated that while she hadn’t “re-recorded even a quarter of” Reputation, it would still have its “moment to re-emerge.” It looks like that moment could finally be here with the lyric changes on two Reputation songs.
Apple Music updated all of Swift’s discography to Dolby Atmos sound — with no changes to the rest of Swift’s songs except two off of Reputation — “I Did Something Bad” and “Delicate.” On “I Did Something Bad,” the original lyrics were, “But if he drops my name, then I owe him nothin’ / And if he spends my change then he had it comin’.” Those have now been changed to, “If a man talks sh*t, then I owe him nothin’ /And if he calls me a b*tch, then he had it coming.” For “Delicate,” the original lyrics were, “Oh, damn, never seen that color blue,” and have now been changed to, “Goddamn, never seen that color blue.”
Swift has yet to give an explanation as to why she changed the lyrics, but fans are definitely speculating online.
One X user claimed that this was classic Reputation (Taylor’s Version) behavior, referring to all of the speculation the potential album has caused among fans.
Another is guessing that these might have been the real original lyrics all along.
Many fans are ready to be clowned again with the teasing of Reputation (Taylor’s Version).
Of course, others are jumping for joy.
And many are expressing just plain confusion.
So what do these subtle lyric changes mean? We don’t know yet, but I’ll be tuned in to find out what Swift is brewing up.