Draven Jackson
Arts & Entertainment Editor
As a person who has been a fan of Taylor Swift since the beginning, I feel like it is safe to say that Swift is the queen of the image change.
She has traveled far since her days as the girl-next-door, apple pie and sweet tea country princess of 2006, even crossing genre boundaries by eventually becoming a pop icon.
So it is no surprise that with the recent releases of singles from her new album “Reputation,” which will be available on Nov. 10, 2017, Swift is introducing the world to a whole new Taylor. The real question here is will the new Taylor be a good Taylor?
From what we have seen so far, probably not.
“Reputation” Taylor is edgy, bold and not afraid to show how little she cares about her haters — but so was “1989” Taylor. “Look What You Made Me Do” has so far only shown that Swift is perfectly able to replicate her diss track of old, but now featuring a heavier bass.
In “Shake It Off,” which has over 2 billion views on YouTube, Swift sings about how she is aware of “what people say” about her, but that those statements will not change who she is because she is just going to “shake it off.”
Similarly, in “Look What You Made Me Do,” Swift says that she has played the role people expected of her long enough, but now she is “smarter” and “harder” and rising “up from the dead” again to show the person she has become from all the hate thrown her way. She has basically repeated the sentiment of her song from three years ago — that she is only going to be herself and there is nothing anyone can say that will change that.
While I can deeply respect the idea of not letting the world define who you are as a person, repeating that you don’t care what “haters” say about you because you did it well once is a bit lame. It just makes the great ideas you are portraying seem like a money grab because you know singing about how you will not let the world get you down worked for you before.
And she is not even doing it well.
“…Ready For It?,” which is all about her edgy relationship with her “killer” new man, is basically just heavy bass and bad sing-speaking. Then the chorus just sounds like she lightly edited “Wildest Dreams” from “1989,” further proving that she is just reusing what she’s already done.
A musician shouldn’t concentrate so much on her image that she forgets her actual music.
I am sorry, Taylor, but I just don’t think we are “ready for” this new you.
