Every Single Album - 'Reputation' | Every Single Album: Taylor Swift

Episode Date: March 26, 2021

Taylor Swift is back and is entering a darker phase. But is 'Reputation' totally dark? Or is there some light peeking out at the end? Nora and Nathan answer these questions and more as they talk about Taylor's choice for singles off this album, how her drama with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West impacted this album, some of their favorite songs like "Call It What You Want" and "Delicate," and Jack Antonoff's influence on this album. Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Head into the Ringerverse to stay up to date with all things superheroes and nerd culture entertainment. Hosted by a rotating lineup of superfans at the Ringer, including Mallory Rubin and Van Lathen, shows will provide instant reactions to blockbuster releases, insightful backstories on canon, and mind-bending theories, as well as fresh takes on the latest news and rumors. Check out the Ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Nora, and I'm so psyched to get to our reputation episode. But if this episode just popped up in your feed, that means it's probably Thursday, March 25th. And just yesterday we learned that Taylor's going to be releasing a new song tonight at midnight. What we know so far is

that it's called You All Over Me. It's going to be part of the Fearless Release on April 9th. And it's a song from the vault, meaning that we've never heard it before. It also features Marin Morris on background vocals, and I'm so excited to hear it. Once we have, Nathan and I are going to hop back on this feed on Friday for an emergency pod, breaking it all down. So if you're excited to talk about that song, that's where we're going to do that. So hop back on Ringer Dish wherever you get your podcasts on Friday, and we'll take you through it. When she fell, she fell apart. Cracked her bones on the pavement she once decorated as a child with sidewalk chalk. When she crashed, her clothes disintegrated and blew away with the winds that took all of her fairweather friends. Hello and welcome to every single album, Taylor Swift. I'm Nora

Pinsiodi. I'm a staff writer at The Ringer, and I am joined by Nathan Hubbard to talk about Taylor's sixth album reputation. And we just came from the triumph and the glamour and the glitter of 1989. And now we are onto something that is much darker and angrier, although we will see that we don't totally stay in that place. But everything that we heard first off of this album comes from that darkness, comes from that embattled place for Taylor that she'd been in. And that sets the tone. And she looks us all on the face, or maybe she's looking at someone in particular. and she says, look what you made me do. So, Nathan,

what exactly is it that she did? She made a drunk office holiday party for an album. I went to see her perform at the I-Heart music show right after this came out, and she did like a six-song set list. And all I kept looking at was Paul Sadati, who is her guitar player.

and he was a backup dancer in that show. Like he literally, he just was going, but he was just trying to sell it, but you could tell he was like, is a robot going to take my job? And Paul Siddati is the guy at the drunk holiday office party who everybody knows the robot's going to take his job,

but nobody has the heart to tell him. Taylor is the drunk boss who gives some, like, cringy speeches in the beginning to fire everyone up. And by the end of the night, she has her arm around everybody telling them that she loves them. There's guests here that nobody knows who brought him. It's like, who the fuck brought future?

Ed Shearan was here last year. He didn't really bring that much to the table. Who brought him back? Jack Antonoff is the new guy that nobody has enough trust yet, but who comes in way too hard in the beginning with, look what you made me do. The whole thing, but like if you stick around long enough, by midway through it, it's just the people that just the people that just, you actually like, and you go home at the end of the night and you're like, that was weird as hell, but it was really fun. So before this metaphor becomes increasingly unruly, let's stick at the beginning of the party, right? Because in theory, she could have just chopped off the beginning of the

party, but she didn't. The first song that we hear from this album is, look what you made me do. Why? Why? She did with Jack Antonoff. Why did we do this? Well, I asked you. You tell me. I have no idea. I'm never going to understand it. Somebody in the Swift universe is going to have to explain it to us. I, you know, the glass half full story or explanation of her single choices is that they, you know, we talked about this before, they're palate refreshing. And they sort of cleanse the palate.

And maybe this was just, she had gone dark. This is the first time in her career that she took more than two years. to release an album. We know she'd completely disappeared for a year after the Kanye drama in Kanye and Kim drama in July of 2016. So she's been totally gone. She wipes her social accounts. She shows us some like glitchy crazy video of a snake and then bang, this is what we get. And it does set a mood. It does set a tone. And I think that when they sat back and said, how do we, she had decided she was not going to do any press leading up to this, that she was going to let reputation speak. for itself. And this must have been the decision for how they were going to get the most attention. It is, just as read that fourth track, I knew you were trouble. We get that dubstep drop at the start of the chorus. This is like an all-time, what the fuck is happening moment. How did you react when you heard this? So Taylor thinks of this album as telling a story from start to finish, right? And the ultimate question of reputation is,

does the start diminish the ultimate impact of what happens at the end? Like, did it hurt us in being able to appreciate what comes later because of that hard, hard reset that she gives us on that song? It hurt me deeply. Very wounded. We're in a very wounded,

difficult place just as she was. And I'm torn because I do like those later songs on this album better. but Taylor has talked about how this was the first time in her career where she felt like an album wasn't understood until she performed it live, until she toured it. And there is something very theatrical and interesting

about the journey that she takes us on, even if the starting place of it is super, super uncomfortable. Yeah, it took me a while to understand that she's playing a character in this album. she's parodying the media's perspective of who and what she is. This music is dark, it's industrial, it's quasi-goth. Like you said, it's angry. She's embattled and she's fighting at the beginning.

I mean, this is like an all-time old guy reference, but it is reminiscent of when you two almost broke up. They went away. Then they come back and they do Octung Baby. And Bono is playing this character with the slickback hair and the leather jacket and the sunglasses. And you didn't really get it. I mean, the album ultimately grew on people and became an all-timer,

but you didn't really understand it until you saw it live. And I think you're exactly right. I mean, we know Taylor is a person of checklists. And when she made this album, if you're going to throw darts at it, it feels like she published her checklist a little bit. I need a couple of stadium openers. I need to put a ballad on track five, even if it doesn't totally fit. I need to throw one out to the core fans, you know, with a piano thing.

And so you can sort of feel the checklist. But the back half of this album is gorgeous and has some of my most like top five Taylor Swift songs on the back of this. But the front part of it, it took me months to get into this album because I was so turned off by the front part of this record. I think a lot of people have that experience. I like having an album grow on you. that's because in some ways it should be an easy, easy question, right? This is a screw up. It's a screw up to put, look what you made me do first.

If they'd chosen getaway car or something that's just a lot more accessible, sounds a lot better to your ear on first listen, then maybe this album has a greater lifespan, performs better commercially than it would have. However, I don't think that's as, like, that's not that easy. Right. Because it wouldn't have grown on us in the same. way if that's what we'd heard first. So I don't think it's a slam dunk. I respect this thing as a piece of art and something that she had to do. It had to happen. And again, in hindsight, we're always

smarter about these albums once we understand what she was going through and how it fits into the narrative arc. And if you think about it from start to finish, it starts as angry and aggressive and agro as it possibly could. And, you know, it finishes like March, which is the month that we're in. It goes out like a lamb on that sort of beautiful New Year's Day piano ballad, which is sort of foretelling of what's to come. So there is a journey through this.

But it really, to me, even today, feels like two albums. If they shuffled a few tracks here and there, this is two albums. And I might have understood it better at the time if it had been sort of more explicitly those two chapters. All right, to do it for me, split the baby here.

How do you do an A side B side on reputation? I think the obvious switch. I like this is why we can't have nice things. It was fun, live, but it fits where Delicate is. This is where the checklist. Like, Delicate is gorgeous. I love it.

It's our introduction to Joe. But it's out of place. And if you swap it with this, is why we can't have nice things, then suddenly the ellipses in ready for it start this dark chapter and the ellipses at the end of so it goes finish that dark chapter. And I actually think she probably did that purposefully. I like that idea, but we can't be letting this is why we can't have nice things be track five. Well, so then move, don't blame me into track five. Or I did something. bad into track five. Or maybe we shouldn't force Taylor to force herself to put a song

fifth when, you know, this album might have called for splitting into two. But I think if you, if you start with Ready for it, you go through, so it goes. With this is why we can't have nice things instead of delicate. Then you've got sort of this sort of agro, gothy, dark, borrowing a bunch of hip-hop R&B pop sounds that are happening in the moment. Don't forget, best-selling albums of 2017, the top 10, Taylor's the only woman. You got a lot of Ed Sheeran, weekend, Drake, Post-Malone, Bruno Mars stuff happening. And we can hear a lot of those influences in this album. But then the back half of this album just becomes this home run after home run of these beautiful songs. I know Gorgeous is a little controversial. How do you feel about Gorgeous?

I don't really like it. Very much. I was actually very excited for you to explain to me what you what you love about this song. I think some of the lyrics are funny. I like the cats thing, but I'm just not really willing to give the woman who wrote, you call me up again, just to break me like a promise, a pass for rhyming face with face. Yeah, okay. But there's a lot of that on this album from a macro level. Like she's using a lot of easy outs lyrically. There's a lot of traditional pop. talking about bodies and touching and some of that I think is intentional.

This is the sexiest album that she's made in good ways and sometimes bad ways because sometimes she takes the easy out lyrically. But gorgeous to me feels like a fever breaking. And it's just sort of this like oasis of fun through the slog of the first part of the album, which is so hard to get through, not because, listen, there's some awesome moments

in a few of those songs. I like I did something bad. I just, like, it comes after end game. I need four songs to forget what happened on end game. But Gorge just feels like this sort of breaking of the fever. And then, bam, you're in getaway car, which is one of my favorite all-time Taylor songs. The next, you know, three or four songs

are these sort of beautiful using the vocoder, like, voice stuff. there's a whole lot of intimacy through those songs. This is why we can't have nice things as there today. But if that's gone, then boom, you're done and you land on call it what you want to,

which to me is like just an all-time, intimate, attitude dropped, vulnerable, this is who she is in the moment song. That just is almost shocking for the intimacy of it. The character that we've

heard for all of these songs is gone and it's just Taylor as she is today to New Year's Day and then we're out the door. So that's how I would have split it. I would have just swapped those two things. Maybe change the album title to some two-word like dark light equivalent and I think I would have understood it better. But guess what? She didn't make this album for me. What would you have done? Well, I love the idea of using getaway car

kind of as the transition like it's so perfect for it right you're hopping into the getaway car after the dark period let's get the fuck out of here into this happiness just to tie up a few loose ends and then we'll start breaking this down

into categories because I think we're going to touch on a lot of stuff that way with this one but gorgeous yeah you're breaking the fever but it still has a lot of the bravado on it

that's actually what I like about it is that it still has that, like, you should take it as a compliment. I love that line, though. Totally. But that is the bravado of the early part of this record. And I think there's actually more interplay between side A and side B, let's call it, than it feels like at first glance. And that's something that as I've sat with this for longer and longer,

I've grown to appreciate. The other thing about that and where mixing some of these tracks that are tonally different up in the sequencing of it, It's not my favorite way she's ever structured an album, but where I start to see it a little bit more is that to your point about using a lot of those hip hop influences, using the sort of tropical house chorus on Ready for it or the trapbeat on Delicate. She is in the thick of it and in the fray with both other musicians in terms of her personal life and the Kanye stuff and battling it out in public. She's also doing that in the music. She is engaging with contemporary sounds in a way that she has not in prior albums. I mean, 1989, we had that whole discussion about whether it's an 80s album.

And we both came down on the side of it that it's a little bit less than it was made out to be. But guess what? Nobody was calling that a 2010s album in any sort of definitional way. So she's in the thick of the fray and lashing out in a way that she never has been. before. And some of the messiness of that is effective. I think some of it, she doesn't pick the right battles all the time. And this was a complicated time and a time when she made some mistakes, definitely. But the whole thing when you can have a little space from it is a very, very, very, very interesting journey. And we've talked a little bit about, look, what you made me do being the

starting point for that already. I have no choice but to make. get my biggest song from this album. It is. Because it's a number one. It is. It's a number one song. And what we can't square, Nora, is this becomes basically her worst selling album to date, but it is her best-selling tour.

In fact, this tour becomes the highest-grossing tour in North American history. She started at Fearless. She was playing to 10,000 people a show. Speak now. she goes to almost 15,000, red 20,000, 1989, 27,000 a show. Reputation, she plays only 53 shows.

She grosses almost $350 million and plays to 55,000 people per show. She is a huge touring act. And yet the album just didn't sell. One explanation is, of course, we're in the doldrums, or coming out of the doldrums, of the music disruption period,

where the transition from physical to digital is happening. And people just aren't buying as many album copies anymore. And so, you know, she is a victim of that to a certain extent, but let's not forget. She withheld this album

from streaming services for a short period of time after it gets released in November in service of ensuring that this thing is going to not only debut at number one, but that it's going to sell over a million copies.

That is a figure that she and her camp have been fixated on since Fearless came out and since Speak Now came out and since she started doing these huge first week numbers. And that's an example of a battle. You talked about battles that she maybe doesn't need to pick. That's one where that felt more like a decision

to post a score or a number than to necessarily do what was best for the album. At the end of the day, this doesn't stay at number one for particularly long. other albums all had more staying power. This one fizzled out a bit, and you just have to look and say, was this the single's fault?

Did it turn off? Not the core fan base, which gets into everything that she puts out, but did it turn off those people on the fringe from buying the album, but not from coming to see the tour? Is this a good song? Is look what you made me do a good song?

We have to establish this up front. No, I'm too sexy by Wright Said Fred. which is what they interpolated for this song is a good song. It hurts. This song is not good. Look what you made me do. Look what you just made me do.

I think it is her worst chosen lead single. I think it is the lead single that does the greatest disservice to the album as a whole. You like the song? I've got to be honest with you. I like this song. I mean, it's so funny.

It's so campy. I know. It is a, it is musical theater level of camp. Yeah. But just starring in your bad dreams is the most fun thing to just yell. Like, I like it.

I'm sorry. I like it. Wow. Okay. Listen, live your life, Nora. I support you. I,

this started as a poem. And I personally feel like it could have stayed a poem. Only because, I think it like, you know, a little peeing in the pool of what otherwise for me, there's so much brilliance on this album. It just, it was like a crazy distraction, a red herring from the genius that lies within. And of course, I'm sure there was purpose to that. And I'm sure, again, the words that she used in this booklet, you know, she said, my mistakes have been used against me, my heartbreaks have been used as entertainment, my songwriting,

has been trivialized as oversharing. When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song and listen to this, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test. So her point on this is we think we know someone,

but the truth is that we only know the version of them that they have chosen to show us. Well, that's what she did with this song. And maybe the jokes on me, in that, you know, I'm running down and over-analizing it. She just made a choice here to try this. and it's my problem, not hers. Well, the most interesting reading of this song

is that the you and look what you made me do is actually not Kanye. But it was very much taken to mean Kim Kardashian and Kanye West when it was initially released. No, they're going to get theirs. Well, and that is because of she goes dark on social media and then two days later after she clears her accounts,

she does that little glitchy 10-second video with the snake. And the snake image was what she had been branded with and was getting all over the place on social media after the summer before. Taylor Swift is over party happened after Kim posted the video. Edited video. The edited video. Okay. Now, what if later in the song I was also to have said, I made her famous?

Is that, uh, is, is, is, is, is it, it might have happened. Oh, my God. the edited video of the conversation that she and Kanye had about the song famous, where she didn't hear the that bitch line and was, you know, notionally supportive of it. But as soon as the song came out, was very upset, made the speech when she won album of the year for 1989 at the Grammys, saying that people would try to take credit for women's fame, which the line is, I made that bitch. famous. Why did people

why did people believe a fake reality star? Like history doesn't look very kindly on that at all. It doesn't, it doesn't, right? Because it doesn't now because we know that it was fake. But I think one of the tough things about this for her is that she was playing against people more comfortable in a game

that gets messy and ugly, which is public celebrity fights. Right? Yes. One of the most instructive moments to this whole controversy, I think goes all the way back to the 2010 VMAs,

which is the VMA's ceremony after Kanye upstages her. Right, where she plays innocent. She plays innocent in the middle of that show, and it is like magnanimous, I forgive you gesture. And right at that point,

Taylor's looking pretty good. She's looking like the bigger person. And then at the end of the show, Kanye gets up and burns the house down with Runaway. And there is an undeniable advantage in being the person who is able to say, let's have a toast for the douchebags. because then what do you say about him

when he's already said it about himself when it's part of the package? The package of Taylor Swift can be damaged by not being kind or generous or whatever and that's totally unfair but Kim and Kanye were kind of bulletproof in that like oh what they're involved in drama?

Yeah, that's the whole point. But you know what's unfair? What's unfair is to put somebody in a corner who has been forgiving and to your point magnanimous in how she's responsible responded to your douchebaggery and to put her in a corner and ask her in the moment, put her on the spot to approve a song where he says he's having sex with you. Like it's not fair. Like,

what is she going to do? She's tried to be the bigger person here. Like asking, you know, in this case, she was a victim. She was. And to go back to that person and say, will you let me do something that might cross the line or not? Like, it's just a completely unfair place to be. and edited or not, in both situations, it was shitty to put her in that position because it forces her, it's like, is it okay if I hit you?

Well, she said it's okay, so therefore it's okay. It's just classic abusive behavior. I think you're absolutely right about that. And also, all we need to point at is the fact that the tapes were edited, right? If you're in the right and you're good with everything that went down, you don't need to edit the tapes.

But you used the word victim. which is really important to this conversation. And it's tinged in a whole bunch of ways. But it's warranted in that situation. And you know who else used it, though, was Kim. Because she then goes and does a GQ story. And she goes in on Taylor. Like a lot of this is not coming from Kanye.

Yeah. Or if it's coming from Kanye, it's being filtered through Kim. Right. But she says that Taylor knew all about the lyric and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which we know is not true. But she said it in the profile. And she says that even knowing that in your Grammy speech, you completely dissed my husband just to play the victim again.

And again, that word is representative of how that incident had become this vector for a conversation about racial dynamics. Because there was something that felt like here is an angry black man ruining a pretty white girls' moment and everybody's piling on him because of it. And maybe this person that this happened to, sure, it wasn't fun, but are we recognizing her full power in this? Is she as helpless as maybe we're painting her out to be? And I have trouble with that in terms of the actual moment that happened. But there was a tone that the conversation that resulted from it took on that I think had

some of those elements. I think that's fair. It did, and it is, and it accelerated when she won Grammy in 2009 over Beyonce Grammy in 2016 ceremony over Kendrick. And there is, you know, the underlying threads that we saw even this week at the Grammys of a bunch of white artists being recognized when the world. feels pretty strongly, not the world, but a lot of people feel pretty strongly that black artists are being ignored and not given the voice and the recognition that they deserve. And rightly or wrongly, she gets in the crosshairs of some of this. Well, and so as she's in the crosshairs of it and she's fighting through a lot of this and working through a lot of this, it is as important, I think,

to recognize that while this battle with Kanye and Kim is taking up a lot of oxygen, there are some battles that she was also not fighting. Namely, she was not politically engaged at this point. Right. And we know now that that's something that she regrets, but this album comes out a year and two days after the 2016 election. People were dying for her to speak up, and she didn't. And not only did she not.

It was the post. She was using her energy, and we've had years at this point, to understand how sharp and effective her blade, can be when it is pointed in the right direction. She's using her energy at least at first to fight celebrity battles. And even though I like, look what you made me do as a song in some ways, I think it's just fun. It serves a purpose, at least for me as a listener.

It felt a little bit like, did anyone really make you do this one? Do we really care that you did? There's a lot going on right now. Don't know if you've noticed. And what if this is just kind of a waste of time? Like it was a tough moment to present to the world. Here is my new album. It is about how pissed I am at Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

Right. And that is why the idea that the you in that song, it might not just be them. It might be this sort of structural lens through which she's been analyzed and criticized often unfairly is more interesting to me in hindsight. But I think that as much as the

just jarring way that song sounds did a disservice to the rest of the album. In hindsight, this reminds me a little bit of red in that Taylor in some moments is kind of like Elsa in Frozen. She's got these huge powers, but they can be super destructive. Like, she almost can road rage every now and then and just, like, lash out. And she's so powerful that everything freezes.

And everybody's like, what the hell was that? You know, her emotions, like, she can create this fire. It's a creative mess, but there's genius in there. Like, she's like that inflatable snake that she took out on tour in reputation. Karen, right? She's like Karen. She's just flapping about. The original Karen.

Yeah, if it gets windy, it's just a menace. it's going to start taking out spectators. It doesn't quite suit her, you know, but it's a coping mechanism for her. Like, she is a human being. And a way that she processes feelings and trauma and whatever's going on inside that brain is she puts these things into songs.

And, you know, for better or worse, on this album, she puts them out for us. I think to your point, as a broad set of listeners, not everybody, everybody, I think, could sign up to defend Taylor who loved her, but not everybody wanted to sign up for this battle. And that's important because that ended up obscuring some of the more real and substantive battles that she actually was fighting. Like, this is a time when Taylor doesn't always pick the right adversaries.

But in some cases, she did some really substantial and meaningful things with the power that she had as a person. And one of them was that in August of 2017, that's when she goes to trial for the sexual assault case. Because she, as we talked about, had been groped by a DJ in Denver during the Red Tour in 2013. And a couple years later, he sued her because he lost his job and he sued her for millions of dollars. she countersued him for $1, just as a symbolic gesture. And she had to spend a week in the trial. Her mom was there. Her security was there.

They're all going through it. And that was a really, I think, powerful and meaningful moment for her. Yeah. She released a statement after she won, saying, I acknowledge the privilege that I benefit. fit from in life in society and in my ability to shoulder the enormous cost of defending myself in a trial like this, my hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard. She goes on to say she's going to make a donation to multiple organizations that help sexual assault victims defend themselves.

So this is a very big moment and a very big statement with a purpose that felt like a battle worthy of the platform that she had. I mean, really, really worthy of the platform that she had because She was, and there's no, there is no right way to be on the stand in one of those situations when somebody's been assaulted and is just basically trying to get through the day. Like, that should be the bar. But she was absolutely nails in that situation. She was so direct and she was so confident. The transcript is incredible.

It's unbelievable. There is one moment where the guy's lawyer, the DJ's lawyer, who's just badgering her and badgering her mom and just by, all accounts that were reported was just kind of a jerk. And he asked her why in the photo of the incident, because there was a photo taken from the front, he asks her why the front of her skirt appears undisturbed. And she just shoots back because my ass is located in the back of my body. Don't bring that weak shit to Taylor Swift on the stand. Which is just sometimes you're reminded that this person's ability to communicate exactly what she needs

to say is sometimes just there's no one better. And that, look, again, like, that's not the standard. It wouldn't have mattered. It wouldn't have made it any less meaningful or, you know, significant or wouldn't have been like good for her, bad for her, whatever. If she'd gotten up there and she'd been mush. Like, that would have been totally justified. That's an incredibly stressful situation. And that's, that's not so much the point. But look, you wonder in situations like that, like, what will I say?

What will I do? Will I stand up for myself in the moment? Will I be able to articulate why something is wrong? Or will I sort of be doubly victimized, not just by what happened, but by the gaslighting that people do to minimize the experiences that women have in this area. And she just had no time for any of it. And to have someone in Taylor Swift's position who so many young women idolize and young men too, by the way, like this cuts both ways.

But it was really, if you were paying attention and you knew this story and you read those quotes and you could see through the lines of all of the drama and all the other stuff that was going on that didn't matter this much. I felt that it was really, really, really powerful. It meant a lot to me in August of 2017 for Taylor Swift to go and do that and do that so sharply. And with just such a clear sense of self, I think, is exactly what everybody would sort of aspire to be and hope to be in that moment. And she really did it. Well, so then she ends up on the cover of time in the Me Too issue. And not everybody has a positive reaction. What was that about? Yeah. Well, so this is where it gets complicated. And some of it, I think, is because some of the other

more trivial celebrity battles kind of obscured what's she fighting for. What does she care about? But some of it was also, it is fair to sort of have a critical lens on her here. She was one of the people of the year in the what was called the silence breakers issue. She was on the cover with Ashley Judd, who was one of Harvey Weinstein's original accusers, an agriculture worker named Isabel Pascal, and a woman named Susan Fowler, who'd been an engineer at Uber, all of whom had had really significant sexual assault or harassment issues that they had spoken up about. Taylor is interviewed for the magazine, and she gets through either because of a pre-negotiation with the reporter or by happenstance, which seems a little bit unlikely, she gets through the

entire interview without mentioning the president of the United States. And this is the same time when, you know, she'd tweeted about the women's march and kind of tried to do it vaguely without exactly saying what had prompted it. And she tweeted a picture of herself going to vote, but without endorsing a candidate, right? Right. She just said, go vote. And her lawyers had sent letters trying to stop bloggers from sort of acknowledging and blogging about the fact that there were literal white supremacist groups holding her up as one of their symbols. And that's in some ways, like, horrible that that happened to her. She must have hated that.

But it turned into this thing where the ACLU is getting involved and saying, like, no Taylor Swift's people can't shut down this small independent blogger, by the way, whose blog nobody ever would have seen if they hadn't drawn all that attention to it. We punched down there. Yeah. Right. And it was complicated to figure out how she was figuring out which of these battles to fight because there was, look, there was a Vox headline. is Taylor Swift a silence breaker, the case for and against her place on the cover. There was a Daily Beast headline,

Taylor Swift is no silence breaker. And it was getting pretty obvious that she was staying out of the political arena while simultaneously having her own very real, very significant experience with something that was a lightning rod politically at the time. and trying to figure out where she stood with all of that and what she was willing to comment on,

I think got messy and complicated and legitimately, even, you know, as a huge fan of hers, hard to figure out where she stood and concerning in moments. And some of that, right, is unfair because when she is taking the stand, like she doesn't deserve to be processed in that moment as a celebrity who owes us anything. Yeah, Michael Jordan, she's just trying to sell shoes, but she had a much richer experience with this, didn't she? Right. And she just needed, like, the only person she owed anything to in that moment was herself.

Right. And if we lived in a nicer world, it would be easier to separate those things. But they got really muddled. And they got muddled because of her lack of a voice. politically, which we know that she regrets now because we've seen the Miss America on a doc where she talked about it and talked about regretting not speaking up in 2016, but not being able to do anything about it. That's a weird moment, isn't it?

It's very strange. Surrounded by a bunch of people trying to talk her out of it. The other thing, just from a security scene point, Geller Swift comes out against Trump. I don't care if they write that. I'm sad that I didn't two years ago, but I can't change that. I'm saying right now that this is something that I know is right. And you guys, I need to be on the right side of history.

And if he doesn't win, that at least I, at least I tried. A bunch of old white men trying to talk her out of it by referencing Bob Hope, which just baffles me to this day. But Taylor has a lot of power and is very smart and controls her own career in a lot of ways. So I don't think that we can take her out of those decisions. No, but it does, you see there was some pressure being put on her the other way. and see what she was grappling with. Absolutely. But then the second part of it, and I think that's the more important part of it, but there

was also just this, it was so muddy who she was fighting against and what she was fighting against. And it kind of just all the celebrity stuff, all the Kim and Kanye stuff, like it all got just poured into this bucket of Taylor Swift is mad and. angry, but it might just be about herself. And so we're in this pool of battles, some of which are imagined, some of which are petty, and some of which are really, really important. Right.

And I think the sexual assault trial and some of her engagement in artist rights were really important. But some of the other stuff was less important. And the darkness in general of that period and what it was like for her, it did. it did for better and for worse, make this a really complicated thorny album. And I like

some of the top half of reputation songs a lot as we're talking about. But it's hard to deny that I can sit here and think about how meaningful it was to read her testimony from that trial

and then not juxtapose that with just feeling like, okay, do you really care about Kim and Kanye this much? Like, they're always involved in drama. Does this, like, seriously, are we really going to keep doing this? Because some of those songs, it wasn't just the fact that she was doing it in public as a celebrity and that that was part of the narrative. Some of those songs, just to borrow a phrase,

they are exhausting. Exhausting. exactly it. And the first half of this album is exhausting and it muddles the brilliance of the back half for me, at least it did in the first six months that I was listening. Today I look back on it with love and affection. So let's talk about track five then, because track five is delicate. And this Taylor has said, this is the first moment of vulnerability on the album. And it doesn't fully because this album isn't sequenced in that side A, side B way perfectly as you described. It doesn't fully stick with that from there on out completely.

But this is where we meet Joe. Dive Bar on the East Side. Right. I love this song very much. And my favorite thing about it is that is it cool that I said all that is such a meta-tailer line? Like she is when I hear her sing that, I see Denzel walking away from the fiery explosion. Is it cool that I said all that.

Is it chill that you're in my head? All the things that Taylor Swift has said over the course of X years. Like, I don't know. I guess it's cool, Tay. We're still listening. Yeah. This song deserves to be mashed up with Lost in Japan by Sean Mendez. Whoa.

I'm a couple hundred miles from Japan and I was thinking I can fly to your hotel tonight. I'd listen to that. Well, you check my sound cloud girl. No, but this is a beautiful song. It has only one blemish for me. And it's the like super high pitch delicate, like that comes in at the beginning of that first chorus that I can't, I just can't get through. but I put on the blinders and power through. This is a beautiful, beautiful song.

It is one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs. Sorry, the little like reception desk bell that they ring before the first chorus in Gorgeous doesn't bother you, but this does. Well, because I know that, look, what I like about the start of Gorgeous is it's an introduction to James Reynolds, Blake and Ryan Reynolds kid. That's her voice sampled on that song.

Gorgeous. That is so cute. can get through all of that. But on this one, just like, yes, this song is delicate. It is so vulnerable. And that little moment of delicate, it's like, what? It's like the little Dr. Pepper Prince characters jumped into the song for five seconds and then retreated back into the television. It's like a grown-up. What I like about it, too, is that it's like, it's kind of a grown-up enchanted. I'm just ignoring your thing about the delicate because it doesn't bother me at all. and because I think if you,

if the gorgeous thing doesn't bother you, like, what are we even doing, Nathan? But you have, like that thing that we both love from Enchanted, where you have the layers of anxiety

and excitement being represented in the music. And they just swirl around each other and pile on top of each other by the end of it. Like, this does that too. Yeah. But tonally,

it's just so much less like sparkly fairy tale. and it's dive bar on the east side and it's a great song. And the vocals... It's one of my favorite songs. And the vocals are delicate. Like the vocoder, like all of it is just...

And when we talk about this album and when we grade it, I want everyone to remember, I love this song, but I think it feels out of place. This feels like she checked the box to say, I got to put a song

that is lyrically deep and that has a bunch of meaning, fifth. It feels out of place in the sequence of the album to me. I guess so, but I would have been sad if track five had been something big and bombastic. Like, I really like did something bad. And I actually, I like, don't blame me too. Yeah, I do too.

I wouldn't have liked either one of those as track five. I don't want either one of those to be a track five. That vocal run that comes out of the bridge on Don't Blame Me is unlike just about anything we've ever heard from her. It sounds like an Ariana Grande, Beyonce, Carrie Underwood-type vocal run. It's very dangerous woman. Right? Yeah, totally. And I love it, and I love that she goes for it,

and I love that she has now very clearly turned her voice into an instrument, and she's playing a character. It also doesn't feel like her at the core. She's not Ariana Grande, Beyonce, or Carrie Underwood, in the best way. Right, no, but she's putting on a hat. Yeah. When we say turned her voice into an instrument, Let's spend a second more on that and then we'll move on.

That is very literal on this album, right? You just mentioned the vocoder, which basically splits what she's singing into a chord. And she can play her voice out. And it adds to that layering effect. There's also on... King of my heart. Well, what on King of My Heart? We hear all of the King of My Heart, like the whole chorus.

She's doing that. Right. And then on I did something bad, there's that sort of weird thing they do in the post-course. Yeah, exactly. You're doing it. I was scared to do that. I'm scared how it would come out on the mic. But that is her voice pitched down and just electronically manipulated into this cool thing. So her voice is an instrument in terms of like she's just learned how to use it super effectively in phrasing. and these little accents, but they are also literally turning it into an instrument on this record,

which I think is so cool. It's one of the things that I think she learned from Max Martin and Shelbeck that she's now going to take into the Jack Anton-era, and I'm sure Jack works with her in all kinds of ways, but she learned or grew the muscle

to turn her voice into an instrument that doesn't just sound great, but she uses her voice to accent tracks in places that you normally would hear traditional sort of handplayed instruments. It becomes a signature of her music from here. This is one reason why I love hearing the hip-hop inflections on this album, because Max's calling card always had a lot to do with, I think he calls it like musical math. And the idea is that to make a hooky, catchy song, one thing you really got to.

do is you have to match the lyrics to the cadence and the rhythm of the melody. And you do that part first and then you put the lyrics in after. But what Taylor's so good at is almost speaking lyrically, but then singing very conversationally. And it makes it a more natural fit for her to be doing some of this hip-hop-influenced stuff. Yeah. Because she's actually, she, she, even when she, even when she, she's singing, she's speaking. Yes.

Is it cool that I said all that? Yes. There's more flow to it than in some Macs songs, but it maintains that core structure that helps you remember. It helps you sing it. It makes it catchy and makes it really, really good. But I think her flare on it comes through and she's just like dropping these little phrases that sound like something that somebody would whisper to you in the back of a dive bar or

just say to you when you're talking on the street or whatever. is. And that combination, I think, really, really comes through here and is a cool thing. That's right. And when you fast forward to folklore and Evermore, you're going to hear her sing rhythmically over nine, eight time signatures, which is a sort of extreme example of this skill that she has. She is a great rhythmic singer. So we were just talking about Max, but I think this is where I need to give Jack Antonoff his due as her most important collaborator. Thank God for Jack.

Because Jack brings us out of the darkness with Taylor. Except for Look what you made me do. Which I like. But again, we can have that debate. We had that debate. I'm just going to say, I do think he pulls her out, just as she got to the edge of what was possible with some of her early collaboration with Nathan Chapman,

somewhere on this album, you said it, exhausting. It feels a little exhausting. And we're sort of ready to move past Max Martin. Thank you, Max, for the ride. You got us a long way. We appreciate that. But it's time for us to step out of the bus and get on the jack bus. We're on the jack bus now. So, and the jack bus makes it stops at, look what you made me do first. But then getaway car and the last four tracks on the album dress. This is why we can have nice things. Call it what you want a New Year's Day. So there's a little bit of the aggressive angry. You can't be whatever. But then all. also some of the most beautiful, pure, excellent vehicles for songwriting songs that we get here and some of my absolute favorite. So this is Jack's moment. Step into the spotlight, Jack. Let's go. Thank you for it, Jack. Thank you. You really helped this album become what it ends up being. And by the way, I think that was cathartic for her probably on a personal level. I've read interviews of hers where she's talked about kind of needing to remember the joy of creation and having that experience, pull her out of this really dark chapter in her life. And she did the songs with Jack

later in the process. And I think that is reflected in the sound of it. There's something really safe about working with him because he works out of a home studio in a lot of cases. And it's just the two of them. And they clearly built up, you know, just like she did with Liz Rose, the way that she did with Nathan Chapman. And obviously what she did with Max Martin and Shelbach, we've seen some of the video from her interactions with Max and Shelbach, she can get in a room, close the doors, you know, at the soundboard and just feel safe sharing what's in her head and turning that over to another to work with that clay and edit it and get to something that she's happy with. So it's so rare for somebody to feel this comfortable with multiple people in the way that she has, but it is

it is what keeps inspiring and pushing the limits of her creativity. And Jack is able to to draw out some of the best of just classic things that Taylor has always done while spinning her forward in that way. But she does contradict this at one point when she says that the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now because she's dead. I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now. Why? Because she's dead. Which brings me to my most purposeful Easter egg from this era, which is the tombstone next to the side of the grave that she digs herself. Yes.

And the look what you made me do. Music video, do you know whose name is inscribed on that tombstone? I do. It is a Swedish name that I have no idea how to pronounce. I know it's Niles Soberg. Yeah, that's, yeah, Nils Niles, Nils Soberg. I think that's right. There's a bunch of silent Jays.

I don't know, we need some Swedes or Norwegians to tell us, but. Yeah, we asked on the Speak Now Pod if anybody had a vial of her perfume wonderstruck. So on this one, the ask is just for a Swedish person to tell me how to say Nils Soberg or whatever it is. But that is the pseudonym that she used. when she co-wrote, This is What You Came for for Rihanna with Calvin Harris, who she'd been dating and who was part of the negativity that defined the year prior to reputation coming out for her.

And that was in part because after they'd broken up, there was some reporting. It came out in TMZ, one that Nils was a pseudonym. Yeah. And that Taylor had co-referral. written that song. And it was kind of implied that they'd maybe broken up because he'd said in an interview after the fact that they would probably not ever work together, hadn't talked about it. And either she was upset about that or he was sort of threatened by how good she was at writing

songs. Yeah. Somebody's man card was threatened by the fact that Taylor is way better at writing songs. Yeah. And so the fact that as she's burying burying her old self, and that music video is just so fun because she has all the old Taylor's, right? She has the You Belong With Me Taylor. She has the Wildest Dreams Taylor. She has like all of her famous old costumes from the past and they're all making jokes about why do you look so surprised all the time? And you're just playing the victim and it's all very aware of the greater narrative, which Taylor always is. Yeah. But that's my.

favorite. What's yours? You can't do better than that. So, I mean, I think dive bar on the east side is that sort of intro to Joe. We're going to hear about that bar again in albums to come. But it's, that's the one undeniably. But what I want to know from you, Nora, is what songs are you going to cut? And I just want to be clear with everybody. This is not, it's like going to the Saturday Live sketch, which was like, you go to a buffet. and it's not all you want to eat, it's all you can eat. In this case, you have to cut a song. Like, we are putting a gun to your head and saying,

you must cut at least one song, what are you going to do? This doesn't necessarily mean we would. Like, I don't think you would cut Speak Now from Speak Now, but I was forcing you to make that choice. What song would you cut from your reputation? So we already talked about it. I really don't super need gorgeous. It just doesn't do a whole lot for me.

Come on, man. I know. Nothing in the first half of the album goes for you. I would part with Endgame. You damn right, you would shoot that thing into the sun on a giant Elon Musk rocket. I know, but I just like, if we're going to make some choices, Gorgeous really puts you off that way.

Come on, throw the darts at it then. Really help me understand what's bad about it. So the only thing that I think is really bad about it is face with face. She does not convince me that she is in on the joke of rhyming face with face. And there's nothing about the melody that gets stuck in my head. And that little reception desk bell going ding just it drives me up the wall. The cat's line is funny. I mean, it is.

She's cat lady in it. I love that song. That is a big source of. disagreement between us in the Taylor Swift universe, and that's okay. I've been very overt about the songs that I would cut. It's look what you made me do, and it's endgame. But I keep them if we re-sequence the album and turn it into A, B, Dark Light, Fall, Rise, Growl, Grace, however you want to call it. And by the way, those are my suggestions for an album title. Are you happy with Reputation? She loved Reputation. Yeah, I never really wish they were.

actually something different, but my what-ifs for it are, okay, maybe you call it getaway car. Yeah. Maybe that flips the tone of it a little bit to the emphasis should be on the back half where we get away and we zoom off into happiness. By the way, one Easter egg, if you want to call it that. Think about the place where you first met me, which was allegedly in this story, which can be read to be about Tom Hiddleston or it can be read to be about Joe. Yeah. It's probably a little bit more Hiddle Swifty, but whatever. The Met gala. Right. Which I love. I love that. But Getaway Cars

one and then another one, call it what you want. Could have been a funny album title. Very meta. Yeah, fair enough. You don't like it. I do. I, I, she got hung up on the phrase, there will be no explanation. There will just be reputation. And so we never were going to be able to convince her otherwise. That became the whole motif for the record, right? Right. And she, you know, it's funny, she's used the word reputation in songs before, so it's kind of, it's always fun when stuff comes back around. I mean, we're still hearing about the dress, and I think that's really wonderful. So I'm cool with the album title, and I'm, I'm also cool with the, you know, special promo album bundle, fake magazine cover that says,

Who's Meredith's real father, her cat? Yeah. Like, I liked playing into the sort of the meet the press narrative of it all. She's playing a character. What'd you find on the internet? Ha ha ha ha. So, the day that Taylor released that the 10-second snake video after clearing all her socials. Yes.

It was also the day of a solar eclipse. Oh, shit. You remember this? Well, I just remembered. I wrote a piece with Bill called The Taylor Eclipse that talked about her being... Oh my gosh! Yes, that talked about her being like the greatest CMO in the world.

And you're... I completely forgot. Keep going. Did you write that piece before or after reputation? As a part of it. Like, right before the album came out, but when she turned her social channels dark. Okay. Well, she ended up out trending the eclipse

because at first, people started speculating that, like, what's going on? What's Taylor doing? Does this have something to do with the eclipse? Is she going to put music out in conjunction with the eclipse? Like, is that what's going on? And then it got so blown out of proportion that more people were talking about Taylor on the internet than this astrological event, which is very fitting. It was in keeping with an absolute genius marketing, you know, series of marketing, you know, series of marketing, decisions that she's made through the course of her career. It got everybody talking. She did not want to do any press and she didn't need to, you know? Here's what I wrote. I just pulled it up on the internet. Okay, go. The light shifted and reframed our perspective reminding us that something greater lies above. That's right. Taylor Swift began her comeback. Man, wow. That sucks. What a sentence. Anyway. One more. So, and this is actually very fitting because there's kind of two sides to the

this and one is very funny and silly and the other one is kind of the dark underbelly of being a celebrity. But the summer before reputation comes out is this very trying summer for her. It was also the summer where the internet became convinced that she was being transported to and from her apartment inside of a suitcase. Oh, God. Thank you for remembering this. Yes. Like, are there Vegas odds? Was she in the suitcase? So, I guess I think yes. I think yes.

Because why would you, I mean, there are so many people trying to figure out where she is at any given time. You got to try something. The only thing is it looks cramped. Like this woman is 5 foot 11. Oh, it's horrible. It's like a Vegas magic trick, but she's trying to get out of the house without being seen.

Yeah, being a celebrity is a little nuts. Well, and, you know, we know from the doc, she's not really happy to, she doesn't want to be seen right. now. She's not, she's taken a whole lot of heat. From the beginning, this woman has taken the pulse of her fans by scouring the depths and corners of the internet to learn them and learn everything about them. And what we always used to say at Twitter is the great thing about the internet is that it gives every single person a voice. And the horrible thing about the internet is that it gives every single person a voice. And she hears all those voices and the cacophony.

of negativity that had come her way in 2016 was overwhelming. I would have wanted to be transported in and out. And by the way, she's 5-11. It's hard to fit in a suitcase. Yeah. They were big suitcases, though. They were big suitcases. But, like, we've never seen her travel with that before.

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's like it reminds me of when Theo slipped out of the office of the Red Sox in a gorilla costume, right? It's the same thing. That's a good reference. I didn't expect that one from you. You're welcome.

But what she did figure out how to do with the internet is use it to, like you said, in place of doing press, the benefit of it is that she could communicate with her fans directly. She didn't need an intermediary. And she did take advantage of that in the rollout of this album, for better, for worse, in some points. And by the time she gets to love her, she's back in a place where she's interested in doing profiles and sit downs and interviews and whatever. But she did at least have some means of talking to people, but controlling the message, which felt important at the time. I'm so excited to get to our next category.

I just have to move us along. Let's go. We have had the Tom Hiddleston Award for showing the work this entire podcast. and now we get to give it to the man himself. It's Hidl Swift. It is Hiddle Swift in a white I-heart T-S t-shirt. I don't know why this guy still gets hired in Hollywood, but Taylor Lautner doesn't.

It's just one of the most unbelievable things. So set the table. She's now got the house in Rhode Island. She's out on the Kennedy compound. She's got the house in Rhode Island. Go. Nathan, I got this. I know you do.

So she'd been dating Calvin Harris, until June of 2016-ish. And they break up and there's all the stuff about this is what you came for. Rihanna, by the way, completely not a part of this, emerges completely unscathed,

probably mildly buzzed on a yacht the entire time, as she should be. But there's all that drama. By the end of that same month, Taylor and Tom Hiddleston are in a very public like whirlwind romance where British tabloids

have somehow shown up on the beach in Rhode Island to take photos of them making out, which inspired a headline in the sun that was Tinker Taylor Snogs a spy. Tom Hiddleston goes to her Fourth of July bash and is photographed wearing the I-Heart-T-S tank top. All of this leads to a lot of speculation

that this is a fake relationship for the cameras. I don't even care. What I know is fake is Tom's explanation of why he was wearing that shirt. Which is what? He got asked about it in an interview. And he said that he had slipped and hurt his back. And he wanted to protect whatever mark he had from the son. So he asked to borrow a shirt from one of Taylor's friends.

And that's what they had. To which I call bullshit to you good sir. Yeah, that's loki weak-ass explanation for what you were actually doing. It's an all-time paparazzi moment. Totally. I don't understand how it didn't destroy the career. But it definitely, I think, shook them out of whatever gleeful state they were in. And it killed the relationship.

It must have. It had to. Well, and it makes Calvin Harris, like, and follow her on Instagram, which is very funny. What for you across this album and this era is Peek Taylor? Well, this is the album. Peek Taylor often comes from a place of when she decides she likes something and is into something, she is all the way in.

And this is kind of the album where Taylor becomes an aggressive booze hound. There's a lot of drinking on this album. She's doing a lot of drinking. in the bathtub. You kiss my face and we're both drunk. Up on the roof with a schoolgirl crash. Drinking beer at a place. Old-fashioned we were coming in a champagne. I mean, she's talking about drugs as well,

but I don't think she's doing, she's sort of using love as a metaphor. But there's a lot of drinking on this album. Yeah, so nine songs reference drinking or bars. Wow. Have the actual drinks. We have whiskey on ice from Gorgeous. We have an old-fashioned in get-old.

away car. We have beer out of plastic cups and king of my heart. There's wine spilling in the bathtub on dress. By the way, this is like a sex and drinking album. It really is. Something that we need to acknowledge by reputation. There's baby making music if you edit out a few songs. This is a yes. I'm clutching my pearls. And then there's the champagne sea on this is why we can't have nice things. So what about all the bottles on the floor of New Year's Day? Yeah. Well, so I count that in the Yeah, that's not a drink. Yeah, right. Because you assume they're bottles of champagne.

It was New Year's, but we don't really know. Okay. That's some pretty good analysis. I don't have a better Peak Taylor. I just, I think that the coolest, for as much as I have talked about my displeasure upon my initial hearing of the first half of the album, the little cough she does on the intro as it comes into ready for it where she clears her throat before laying down that track is cool as hell. That's the here I come It's like she's it's almost like a boxer like

Warming up you know Pulling back for a knockout punch It's just this I love it What about the I can't even say it with a straight face I can't even say it with a straight face Yeah

That's a Listen she tried We talked about this And what you're speaking to is On this is why we can't have nice. can't have nice things. As she says, because forgiveness is a nice thing to do. And then we get that, like, hard, aggressive laugh. And I can't even say it with straight face. And who can blame her? I mean, at this point, she's tried it. She tried to go the high road. We talked about this on Innocent

from Speak Now. And, you know, it didn't work. And so Michelle Obama is usually right. When they go low, we go high. In this case, like, she just couldn't handle it anymore. And so why not? Throw it down. What's interesting about that song for me is right then, after that song, the curtain falls, the costume comes off, and we get moved into what is my belatedly best song from the album, which is call it what you want. All my flowers grew back as thorns. Windows boarded up after the storm. He built the fire just to keep me warm. It's mine too. Yeah. And to me, it's just this beautiful. sister of delicate. But you hear that song and I go, oh my God, she's in love. Taylor, it's like Happy Learned How to Put in Happy Gilmore. It's like, oh God, Taylor Swift understands what it means to be in a deep, meaningful, maintain your independence, but have interdependencies

that are healthy, kind of loving relationship. Holy shit, this was the last piece of the puzzle. where are we going from here? Like, she is deeply in love, and you can hear it on that song. Like, who is this person? She found Joe. And it comes at a time when all these other men

who she had dated, you just can't help but wonder if one piece of why they were attracted to Taylor Swift is because they were going to be photographed on a fucking slip and slide in a shirt that said, I heart Taylor Swift,

in some capacity, you know, metaphorically speaking, or literally. And this man who she has met and has started being with is the opposite. He wasn't even at the Grammys. He's shying away from that spotlight.

You know, as she said, you must like me for me. And that is a powerful, powerful image and a missing piece for a person who has spent, at this point, most people's career, writing about that hole in her heart,

that it sounds like is filled, and that's what we're going to get over the next couple albums. The intro to call it what you want sounds like a sunrise to me. It just something's blooming and glowing and wonderful and beautiful. And it has such a current sound to it in the rhythmic cadence of it. But the classic Taylor and just how conversational the delivery is, the details about pillow forts in the 8th of November. And it's so, it's like something old, something new, right?

We are completely in sync on this one. It reminded me of when my shitty band would play the bitter end in New York City and we'd go out till all hours of the morning. And sometimes in the summer, we'd get those. We'd get the rain at night. And we'd stay out until sunrise and sort of walking those belatedly wet streets of New York as the sun is coming up, just sort of. sort of quietly going back. That's the exact vibe that this song gives off. It's just absolutely

beautiful. It's one of my all-time favorite Taylor Swift songs. But it is not the source of the single best lyric on this album. What is the single best lyric on this album, Nora? Well, I disagree with the premise of your setup, but I like, all the liars are calling me one. Nobody's heard from me for months. I'm doing better than I ever was. Yeah. Okay. So it is from Call It What You Want. Yeah. I had an inkling to go with that, but I just can't get over what you said earlier, which is nothing good starts in a getaway car.

It's just so great. It's everything about her turn of a phrase, her humor, the fact that she sometimes gets herself into time. trouble and she's self-aware enough to know it. I just love it. It's my favorite lyric on the album. Getaway Car, by the way, is my next album appetizer because she, by the end of this thing, like, yes, she's in love and she's very fulfilled. Also, she wants to make some pop songs with Jack Antonoff. Yes. And they're going to fucking do it. And it's going to be terrific. Nora, it's time. It's time for your favorite part of every single album, Taylor. Swift, the part that you look forward to when we always do this.

I literally hate this part. I know you hate this part. And I'm going to make you give this thing a grade. Actually, before we do that, just because I know we're going to hear about it, I just have to ask you, is New Year's Day a good song? Yes. Don't read the last page, but I stay. When you're lost and I'm scared and you're turning away. By the way, if I had to choose another lyric, it's almost cliche, but Taylor's actually really good at playing with cliches and tropes like this. Don't read the last page, but I stay, is another lyric that, like, really gets me in the field. It does. Okay. It is not your next album appetizer, though. It doesn't tell you anything about lover.

This feels like that sort of quiet show closing. Like, she needs this for the arena rock slowdown moment, or? No, I think call it what you want is more of, does more of that. because she uses the word lover. Okay. Fair enough. It becomes an integral part of her show. She plays it along with Don't Blame Me. She played on Saturday Night Live, right?

Yep. So it really became something that a lot of the core fan base fell in love with. I wonder if it was like that life raft on the album that they grabbed onto because some of the stuff at the beginning of the record was harder to attach to. Yeah, because they had this in New Year's Day. And didn't they give New Year's Day to Country Radio, too? Like, they're still doing that. Yeah. Yeah, they're still trying to be like, hey, we got something for you here. Play it up. How far you, Bone? Yeah. This is a country song for sure. She's talking about drinking and it doesn't have Dubstep. So it's a country song. What do you grade it?

I have no life raft. Yeah, I have no life raft for you. You must grade this. A minus. What? Like an A minus slash B plus. I'm not willing to give her anything purely that starts with a B. It's just not going to happen. I love this album. It's weird. But I love it. Yeah. I have to say my 14 year old daughter. adores this album. Yes. She thinks this is... That's how you know you're raising him right. Yeah. And she plays it front to back.

The skips for her are, Look What You Made Me Do. And the skips for her are end game, but she's not even offended by that. There is a significant part of the Taylor verse that thinks this is their favorite album. I think that this album should have done better.

I'm going to give it a B-plus. but I think that there are some of the songs from this record are A-plus, and I'm just mad that this album didn't get more that it deserved because of the collection of some of the songs that are on here. To your point, like, the whole, like, the, like, sexiness of it got subsumed by the conversation about, this is why we can't have nice things, and look what you made me do. And the single choice, I think, still, even in this era of people,

being able to discover things on their own and stream and all that, the single choice submarined the back half of reputation, which is some of my favorite music she's ever made. And so I'm mad about it because I wish that it was more widely accepted as great. And I'm giving it a B plus as an album, even though there are two songs on here in particular getaway car and call it what you want that I think are A plus. And I think on my list of top,

I know on my list of top 10 Taylor songs, maybe in my top five. All right, well, we have emerged from the darkness and the wreckage on this podcast, I think. Maybe more than a few. But are you ready to go to Lover on the next one? I am ready for Lover. I'm ready for multicolors. I'm ready to have a very interesting debate over how we're going to grade Lover. I can't wait. This has been every single album, Taylor Swift. For Nathan Hubbard, I'm Nora Princiotti. Join us on Monday when we talk about Taylor Swift's seventh album, Lover. Thank you.