Did Taylor Swift’s gamble in 2017 pay off?
No press, faux-rapping, and a bad reputation. In 2017, Taylor Swift came out both swinging and oddly silent with Reputation, throwing out the handbook she wrote herself. But was it worth it?
To awkwardly paraphrase a film about 1970s con artists, what if you were Taylor Swift post-Snapchat exposé and you had to find a way to survive, but knew your choices were bad?
For the embattled pop princess, 2015 and 2016 lived in the shadow of 1989 for reasons that barely had anything to do with music. When Kim Kardashian exposed her as more media manipulative than any celebrity with a clean image would care to admit, it looked like Taylor Inc. was coming down.
Swift is no con artist, but to her detractors, the line between media savvy and manipulator is so thin, she might as well be. However, the difference between the two is control. The savvy play the game; the manipulators force it to their favor. With Reputation, the notorious control-freak former country queen threw out her perfectionist handbook and let go of the reins completely. No press, no covers, and no comments on her most honest and experimental record to date.
It was an enormous gamble for a pop star with a tarnished image. But did it pay off?
Sales
The sales stats are standard for Swift. Reputation debuted at number 1 by multiple measures (without streaming numbers), became the first artist to have four albums sell a million records in a single week, topped iTunes, and was declared the best-selling album of the year only a week after its release. The album was just short of 1989’s one-week sales, but the record was nearly matched through a series of new tactics that artificially boosted organic sales and earned her the title “capitalism’s favorite pop star.”
Verdict: It’s a win, but only on paper and without context.
Charts
“Shake it Off”, her first single off pop breakthrough album 1989 spent 12 consecutive weeks at No. 1 only to be dethroned by her second single, “Blank Space”. Meanwhile, “Look What You Made Me Do” similarly debut and parked itself at No. 1 … for three weeks before being knocked off by Cardi B’s hit “Bodak Yellow”, triggering a slow plummet down to where it now sits at no. 72. Swift has three other songs currently on the list — all below 35. One fascinating and largely overlooked reason is how the Hot 100 charts are being increasingly dominated by hip-hop.
Verdict: A loss that she and the industry probably knew was coming.
Critics
Every single Swift album has earned an aggregated Metacritic score in the 70s — a rare feat of generally good reviews since her debut album. But there is a ranking, and Reputation sits smack at the bottom of the stack with 71 compared to the much-adored1989, at 79. However, a closer look reveals that some of the most respected music publications rated it best and cited her personal growth, while her lowest scores were from websites that are historically Swift-averse. As her most personal album yet, Reputation was also a referendum on Swift herself. 1989 was lauded for its irresistible, practically perfect pop sound that could have been considered even more of a compliment to the many producers behind it than Swift. For better and worse, every comment on a track was either a compliment or slight to the former country queen.
Verdict: A personal victory for Swift, an objective loss for Reputation.
Public Perception
Swift will never be able to shed the somewhat sexist labeling of her music as boy-crazy and love-obsessed. But her ability to keep her most recent relationship whisper quiet while still writing her most mature tracks on love yet have diluted her post-Hiddleswift obsessed-girlfriend image. Similarly, the manipulating, exposed victim-routine that nearly destroyed her reputation last year will never be fully forgotten. In “Look What You Made Me Do”, she admitted to her faults while coming out swinging in the epitome of sorry-not-sorry. Her fans ate it up as an example of bullied star finally fighting back in a game where their opponents weren’t completely clean either (Kanye West should have never used sexist language, for example). However, outside observers called it petty and vindictive in the shallowest way.
Verdict: Draw. Swift will always be divisive. The only difference is that she seems to care less.
Media
For Reputation, the often-overexposed celebrity gave the press an ice cold shoulder, scrapping the traditional album press tour completely with one very notable and telling exception. After a brave and brazen testimony on the stand, Swift won her countersuit against a radio DJ who was fired after groping the star at a backstage meet-and-greet. She joined the ranks of “The Silence Breakers,” named People the Year by TIME magazine for exposing rampant sexual harassment across industries. But the Internet was outraged to find Swift on the cover, arguing that other women in the #MeToo movement like Rose McGowan were more deserving. Every press encounter places a celebrity in the hands of a publication. Swift paid the price of an editor’s decision to place the most high-profile celebrity on the cover over arguably more deserving women while being reminded of her cherrypicking the safest issues to speak up on.
Verdict: Win. Swift maintained strong sales and reviews comparable to her previous albums without doing a single press event. Apparently, silence is golden — as long as your profile is as high as Swift’s.
Conclusion
With her career on the line, Reputation threw out the traditional pop star manual like a Hail Mary across the field and lived to tell the tale in a game where the last one standing wins.
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