REVIEW: Taylor Swift’s ‘reputation’ suffers from her own ego

As Taylor Swift faces an inevitable public scrutiny of her character, her latest album  “reputation” is a call to everyone who ever doubted her. The fate of that concession, as referenced by the album title, is a half-baked combination of acceptance and denial.

The manufactured nature shows Swift’s full polarization into the arena of mainstream pop, adapting an antagonistic aesthetic that through the music of the album comes off as a horrendous travesty.  

While many can claim this is Swift’s swan song — a wish, so to speak, as she pushes off her own self-created edge — it doesn’t constitute the credence of progression. It’s a mystifying regression, one crippling her ability to actually progress in the pop genre onto which she surfaced with “1989” in 2014.

For music, the banal nature of many pop songs begs audiences for a change. But rather, Swift hides behind the shell of her personal politics.

Being silent as she was condemned allowed her to fester up an inflated ego (probably brought on by the victimization she’s played into for her whole career), which ended up infecting her music, one of the areas that Swift was considered a pioneer for not mixing personal faults into her artistry.

With “reputation,” she wants to own these faults and wave a big middle finger to all of the nay-sayers. But the point is left undone with trite musical creation and an arrogant self-indulgence into a disturbing universe Swift creates herself in as evidenced by the astoundingly boring lyric choices.

The album begins with a seemingly fitting starting track, “…Ready For It?,” but the song gives listeners a sneak peek into Swift’s new obsession in “reputation” — speaking to a tune instead of amplifying any slither of vocal ability.

The song’s stance as a washed-up fight song aside, the lyrics she sings — “I know I’m gonna be with you / So I take my time” —  might fit into the “1989”-esque framework of songs like “Welcome to New York” and “Wildest Dreams.”

But the song falls flat as soon as she begins amplifying her “edginess” through the spoken lines and a melodramatic beat drop, “Are you ready for it?”

“…Ready For It?” serves as the precedent for what each song going forward will accomplish.

Each song tackles the topical idea of her reputation, how Swift manages to go on and live through trials of love with a broken reputation.

The balance between insecurity and confidence Swift aims to promote with songs like “Delicate” showcase some type of sentimental feelings toward the controversy, but it only inflates the half-hearted nature of the narrative she attempts to construct.

The narrative gets to the worst point with the song, “So It Goes…,” another song playing into the theme of a lover accepting her faults and living in some type of delicious sin.

But her bland voice exposes the obvious flaw she attempts to hide under the semi-creative anthems like “Look What You Made Me Do” and “Getaway Car.” She has no narrative to portray. Swift has let a petty problem infect her music to the point it inspires a lackluster tragedy.

Swift’s major attempt at creativity is through the use of vocalization in some of her hooks, like in “King of My Heart,” spinning her voice to sound like a machine fading in and out of the track.

This track is actually one of the highlights in terms of lyricism and introspection. “And all at once, you are the one I have been waiting for / King of my heart, body and soul,” Swift harps in a melodic, nostalgic throwback to “1989.”

The latter half of the album marks an interesting transition into the progression audiences expected, including, “Dancing With Our Hands Tied,” which combines interesting alternative beat juxtapositions with a decently written track.

It seems that as Swift departs from the politicization of her own character with the latter part of the album, she begins actually dabbling in interesting artistry.

With “Dress,” what the song lacks in musical perfection, it shines in an ‘80s retro pop collaboration, with the inventiveness that one would expect to find on Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Emotion.” The breathiness of her notes creates an atmosphere of benevolence, not resentment, allowing her talent to take flight.

Even as the sentimentality fades out of songs like “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” she still maintains a posh yet combative anthem that can be appreciated. The song lacks in its lyrical quality, yet still shows a glitter of the Swift presented on albums like “1989” and “Red.”

No matter the littering of highlights on the ending of the album, “reputation” at its core remains a concession to the forces of an egotistical introspective experience. It would be much appreciated, to her fans and fans of music in general, if Swift could learn to adapt and move forward with music instead of relying on a hopeless devolvement.