October 28, 2024 by Alex Wersten (‘25)
When you hear the word “reputation”, what do you think of? Someone’s personality or nature? Someone’s essence? Someone’s past? Their legacy? This word can have many, many meanings. When I hear the word “reputation”, I think of snakes, emergence from isolation, being stabbed in the back not only once but twice, being madly in love, and “a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure”.
Released on November 10th of 2017, reputation is the unstoppable Taylor Swift’s sixth studio album, and arguably the most career-defining and revenge-filled record released by this global megastar. Sure, we still have some of her amazing anger tracks including “Picture To Burn”, “I Knew You Were Trouble”, an even the newer “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, but all titles fall to songs such as “…Ready For It?”, “I Did Something Bad”, “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” and so many other songs that appear on the album.
For beginners, rumor has it that this album wasn’t even supposed to be a thing, and instead an orange-coded album titled Karma would instead be released. However, severe backlashes and criticism from almost the entire world shoved Taylor into darkness during the prior 1989 era, an album that was designed to be a joyful and upbeat album about moving to New York amid *that* encounter with Kanye West, and hanging out with friends every single hour of every single day. Yet, after a phone call between Swift and West was leaked from previous years regarding a name drop in Kanye’s song “Famous”, Swift rightfully took this as a stab to the heart and isolated herself from the public eye for a period of several years. She wiped her social media accounts everywhere, she vanished from her usual star-studded awards shows, and stayed at home alone with her cats. During this time, it is believed that she scrapped Karma and instead wrote reputation as her revenge and comeback story to not only get even with Kanye West and his then-girlfriend Kim Kardashian, but to also re-establish herself as the dominant female artist she is acknowledged as today. To add insult to injury, her former record manager Scooter Braun bought all of Taylor’s initial six master albums without her permission: Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and the newly-released reputation, turning the whole Swiftie world upside down.
As of lately, Taylor has been busy re-recording and re-producing her stolen albums under the suffix (Taylor’s Version), meaning that she owns 100% of the content, tracks, logos, and brand elements of the albums. Plus, these newly re-recorded albums also feature what are known as (From The Vault) tracks, meaning that it’s a song that was supposed to be on the original album but was scrapped due to production or time.
So far, she has completed and released Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version), and 1989 (Taylor’s Version), and all that is left is Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version), and my all-time favorite, you guessed it: reputation (Taylor’s Version). Comically enough, all Taylor must reclaim are her name and her reputation, accordingly. Fans and Swifties like me, have been theorizing so much recently as to when these two re-releases would be both announced and released. Sadly, all our guesses have been wrong: The 66th and 67th Annual Grammy Awards failed (the 2024 Grammys instead being the stage for her announcement of a new album), July 15th failed, August 20th failed, and even the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards failed as well. Potentially, we have a chance for November 10th, the original release date for reputation, but this is highly unlikely. It seems like all hope has been lost for an announcement soon, but I still have hope that we will get an announcement in 2024, as 2025 will be another year full of other surprises… TS12? But before we go down the rabbit hole of reputation (Taylor’s Version), let’s quickly review the original 2017 reputation era.
Release Date :November 10th, 2017
Tracks:
· …Ready For It?
· End Game
· I Did Something Bad
· Don’t Blame Me
· Delicate
· Look What You Made Me Do
· So It Goes…
· Gorgeous
· Getaway Car
· King Of My Heart
· Dancing With Our Hands Tied
· Dress
· This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
· Call It What You Want
· New Year’s Day
Collaborators: Ed Sheeran, Future
Run Time: 00:55:45
Themes/Motifs:
Revenge, Snakes, Re-Emergence, Distrust, Karma, “Death”, Love, Identity, Obsession, Vengeance, Redemption, etc.
What can we expect from reputation (Taylor’s Version)?
While nothing has been announced yet, Taylor has been subtly teasing the re-record, as we have seen several outfits and fashion items that are closely aligned with snakes and the era’s overall theme: along with miniature “leaks” and “releases” of some tracks. However, there are several things we can expect from the upcoming release:
1. Beautiful Production: Recently, official snippets of “…Ready For It? (Taylor’s Version)”, “Delicate (Taylor’s Version)”, and “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” have been previewed in movie trailers and TV shows. Try Googling them, they sound incredible.
2. “Fire” Vault Tracks: During a December 2023 interview with TIME Magazine, Swift said that the vault tracks for her reputation album will be “fire”, as she discussed the album and described it as a “goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure”.
3. “This is What You Came For (Taylor’s Version)”: Sound familiar, right? Well, yes. The hit Rihanna and Calvin Harris song was secretly written by Taylor Swift under the pseudonym “Nils Sjöberg”, during her period of hiatus in 2016. To make matters even worse, Swift was dating Harris at the time, and a falling out led to Harris revealing to everyone that Taylor was a writer despite her desire not to be mentioned. As of recently, fans believe that Taylor will claim this song as her own and serve revenge by creating her own version of the song.
4. “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever (Taylor’s Version)”: Familiar as well? There is much speculation as to whether Taylor will re-record “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” with ZAYN, which the duo released for the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack. Taylor has already performed this song on the Eras Tour as a surprise song, and fans are hoping that she and ZAYN will team up once again to deliver a brand-new version. After all, Kendrick Lamar re-recorded his verses for “Bad Blood (feat. Kendrick Lamar) (Taylor’s Version)”. Why can’t ZAYN?
5. “Family”: Swifties and fans alike have long believed that a song titled “Family” was an outtake from the original album. The track was reportedly registered on GEMA and was apparently written by Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback with Oscar Holter. As of now, it’s unclear if this song is real or not, but fans can probably expect Max Martin and Shellback to have co-written a few of the other vault tracks, as they were such important parts in the original album’s creation.
6. Supposed Karma Songs: If in fact Karma was a scrapped album, it is possible that we could get some updated versions of these songs as a few vault tracks. Like “Family”, it’s unclear if this album was legit, but rumor had it that this album was apparently more of a rock album. Some sellers label reputation as rock for some reason… clues? Either way, a few songs from Karma (if it’s real), would truly tie together reputation (Taylor’s Version).
7. Collaborations WHO: After the surprise reveal of no collaborators on her album 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in 2023, Swifties are split over whether they think reputation (Taylor’s Version) will feature any guests. If the album does feature collaborations, a bunch of high-profile names have shown up in the discussions: Selena Gomez, Sabrina Carpenter, Ariana Grande, Lorde, BLACKPINK, Shawn Mendes, Post Malone, Troye Sivan, and even Nicki Minaj. Imagine the collaborations we’d receive!
While all of this sounds so incredible, these are all sadly just rumors that have circulated the internet and through the dazzling community of Swifties. Personally, I’m so excited to see if and how many of these concepts show up in reputation (Taylor’s Version). The imagery, the vocals, everything just gives me chills thinking about it. What do you think about some of these expectations? When do you think we will finally get the anticipated announcement we’ve all been waiting for? After all, only time can tell. As Taylor herself said, “There will be no further explanation, there will just be reputation”.
TO BE CONTINUED UPON AN ANNOUNCEMENT…
