The Old Taylor is Dead (Kind Of): An In-Depth, Historical Look At How Taylor Swift Views Her Reputation

Taylor Swift is undoubtedly the world’s biggest pop star. Over the past decade, she has evolved from sweet country songbird to unforgiving PR queen and consistently divisive personality in the media. But how much is Taylor Swift really concerned with her reputation?

Swift’s discography reveals her path to fame and all the drama, broken hearts, and bad blood along the way. With her sixth studio album finally out, Genius put together an in-depth examination of Taylor Swift’s entire career of lyrics (standard album releases only), including graphic representations of her lyrical themes to determine once and for all what her reputation really means to her.

Throughout her discography, we identified seven major themes that Taylor has used to craft her persona:

• Sweet Romance: pure love songs dedicated to love interests past or present, e.g. “Tim Mcgraw,” “Love Story”

• Revenge: calling out someone who has directly wronged her or addressing other public dramas, e.g. “You’re Not Sorry,” “Better Than Revenge,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”

• Innocence: young, naive, optimistic views of romance; or involving her adopting the other girl/outsider persona, e.g. “Hey Stephen,” “The Story of Us,” “Fifteen”

• Break-up: classic Taylor melancholy break-up songs that don’t belong in the ‘revenge’ category. Many of these also tend to be filled with “wistful longing,” e.g. “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” “White Horse,” “I Wish You Would"

• Fame: the pitfalls of being rich and famous, e.g. “Mean,” “The Lucky One”

• Storytelling: either commenting on or describing someone else’s story, e.g. “The Best Day,” “Tied Together With A Smile,” “Starlight”

• Sex: for lack of a better term, the new material on reputation about romance that is decidedly not sweet—the old Taylor is dead and she now writes sensual lyrics about bodies, beds, and alcohol, often with heavy breathing and moaning, e.g. “Dress," “Don’t Blame Me," “Gorgeous”

Out of a total of 82 tracks, the themes break down as follows:

There is a fairly even split to her subject matter, with the majority of her songs dedicated to love and broken hearts. The second-most significant portion is an expression of her ‘playing victim’ through revenge tracks (more on that later). However, a chronological breakdown yields further insight into how Taylor Swift’s lyrics have evolved over the years. By changing genres and trends, Swift’s career has endured. Examining each album chronologically shows exactly how much of the old Taylor has survived the ordeals of fame and fortune. An album-by-album analysis looks like this:

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Swift broke onto the scene in 2006 with her debut self-titled album. With her blonde curls and ‘girl-next-door’ persona, the sell was almost too easy for the American pop-country scene. She fulfilled country music tropes by referencing blue jeans and a Chevy truck on her debut single “Tim McGraw” (his name functions as a meta-reference to the genre itself):

When you think happiness
I hope you think that little black dress
Think of my head on your chest
And my old faded blue jeans
When you think Tim McGraw
I hope you think of me

The rest of the album is a showcase of the then-16-year-old Pennsylvania native’s songwriting talents. While there are hints of the vengeful Swift we’ve come to know and love (or love to hate) on tracks like “Picture To Burn” and “Should’ve Said No,” the majority of her lyrics focus on innocent romanticism.

For example, “Our Song” is rich with poetic imagery and nostalgic fondness for a high school flame:

I was riding shotgun with my hair undone
In the front seat of his car
He’s got a one-hand feel on the steering wheel
The other on my heart

Other tracks like “Mary’s Song (Oh My My My),” also draw on the country tradition of storytelling. The song is about the decades-long romance her neighbors shared. It was a winning formula. Taylor Swift brought the burgeoning star critical accolades and huge commercial success. It went on to notch 63 weeks on the Billboard 200 albums chart, the most total weeks on the chart for an album in more than a decade.

The title of her follow-up album, 2008’s Fearless, spoke volumes about Swift’s new M.O. With her growing fame came new co-writers and producers, a new musical and business vision, and new romances.

A particular motif in Swift’s early work is “The Other Girl.” Swift famously claimed she was something of an outsider in high school, so part of her appeal has always come from selling herself as an underdog. After all, what young heartbroken teenager doesn’t relate to the forlorn lyrics of “Fifteen”?

Swift most famously used this persona on her smash hit “You Belong With Me”:

But she wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts
She’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers
Dreaming ‘bout the day when you wake up and find
That what you’re looking for has been here the whole time

This social outcast persona became the foundation of nearly a decade more of breakup ballads and revenge riffs. As for her infamous string of celebrity boyfriends, “Forever And Always” is an early example of her brush with public life as a confession of her breakup with Disney star Joe Jonas.

While some critics have since called Swift out on this victim complex, it resonated with her audience, and Fearless was an even bigger success than her debut. She also addressed her growing public profile on the reflective yet optimistic “Change”.

Then, there was Kanye. Little more can be added to the discussion surrounding the events of the 2009 MTV VMAs, but it pushed Swift into the spotlight in a new way. Using the controversy as lyrical fuel, her third album, 2010’s Speak Now was another step away from the innocent country girl playing in Blue Bird Cafe. She was now a confident pop star commanding stadiums across the world.

“Innocent” is definitively about Kanye West, and while “Better Than Revenge” isn’t explicitly about Yeezy, it literally has the word “revenge” in the title. Swift’s vindictive, defensive character was coming to the forefront as she found herself the target of tabloid headlines and opinion pieces to the point that even President Obama got involved.

Regarding her new fame (or infamy), “Mean” reads as a “dose of reality” sequel to the naive tone of “Change.” While she was known for fantasizing about living in fairy tales, the experience with Kanye woke her up to the scrutiny of the public eye.

Someday, I’ll be living in a big old city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Someday, I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean?

She explained the song as a shot at her critics in a 2010 interview with E! News:

There’s constructive criticism, there’s professional criticism, and then there’s just being mean. And there’s a line that you cross when you just start to attack everything about a person.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) the new level of scrutiny, Swift pushed on to bigger and brighter things with her first dramatic reinvention on Red. Reportedly named for a series of “semi-toxic relationships” she experienced, the album experimented with new pop and electronic elements like the dubstep-influenced “I Knew You Were Trouble.” She combined this with a new faux-hipster aesthetic, embodying the experience of “22”-year-old females coming of age: partying, dating, and dancing the night away.

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22
Everything will be alright if you keep me next to you
You don’t know about me, but I bet you wanted to
Everything will be alright if we just keep dancing like we’re 22

Diehard fans were shocked, but it opened up a whole new market for Swift. Red became the fastest-selling album in over a decade with 1.21 million copies sold in its first week. To date, it has sold more than six million copies worldwide.
Beneath the surface, though, certain aspects of the old Taylor remained. Songs like “All Too Well” and “Stay Stay Stay” reminded fans of her country roots, while others, like “Everything Has Changed” (co-written by her new bestie Ed Sheeran) and “Starlight,” proved that she still knew how to write heartfelt ballads.

If Red was Swift taking a bold step away from her old reputation, 1989 was her speeding away in a neon pink convertible with the top down. She was done playing coy. “Shake It Off” heralded the arrival of a new sassy Taylor Swift.

’Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off

Peak sassy Swift is on display with “Bad Blood,” which is supposedly about her other famous celebrity beef with Katy Perry. In an ironic twist, the outsider became the queen bee of her own “it crowd”: her femme squad was a shameless display of clout in a media-obsessed world, asserting her position as the dominant force in pop music. It was also a slightly surreal flex of her crossover appeal into the hip-hop world, featuring Kendrick Lamar on a guest verse. If she could pull off a K-Dot feature, what couldn’t she do?

Only a hint of the sweet, romantic Swift remained. More tracks seemed driven by a Machiavellian approach to fame than introspective balladry. The anthem “Blank Space” was a self-aware stab at her public reputation as a reckless heartbreaker:

‘Cause we’re young and we’re reckless, we’ll take this way too far
It’ll leave you breathless, hmm, or with a nasty scar
Got a long list of ex-lovers, they’ll tell you I’m insane
But I’ve got a blank space, baby, and I’ll write your name

How much of 1989’s reinvention was genuine self-exploration and how much was calculated business move is anyone’s guess. The results are unambiguous: the 1989 World Tour was Swift’s most successful tour, playing to almost 2.5 million fans and generating more than $250 million in revenue to become the highest grossing tour in the world that year. She went on to top 2016’s highest paid entertainers list.

Despite ongoing controversies in the media, there was no stopping Swift’s career. Whether it was shirking Spotify, being labelled an “obnoxious Nazi Barbie” by feminist critics (at one point, literal Neo-Nazi groups started calling her “an Aryan goddess”), or more recently her sexual assault case, Swift was never far from the headlines. It all came to a head when she butted heads with Kanye yet again.

From afar, it seemed like the two had made amends. However, when West rapped about her on “Famous”, it reignited their conflict:

For all my Southside niggas that know me best
I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex
Why? I made that bitch famous (Goddamn)
I made that bitch famous

More than a year later, and months removed from Kim Kardashian infamously exposing the call between Swift and ‘Ye, Swift came out swinging with her first single “Look What You Made Me Do.” On the song, she proudly declared the old Taylor was dead. The accompanying video depicted her literally battling every past version of her image to rise up victorious as a new vicious Taylor.

With the announcement of reputation, it was clear her new mission was to defend and reclaim her character:

I’m sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now
Why? Oh, ‘cause she’s dead!

The album reveals an artist completely aware of her “bad reputation.” “End Game,” “I Did Something Bad,” and “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” all revolve around this concept.

I hit you like bang, we tried to forget it, but we just couldn’t
And I bury hatchets, but I keep maps of where I put ‘em
Reputation precedes me, they told you I’m crazy
I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me

Swift has some fun with her reputation and attempts to parody it, but on tracks like “Delicate,” she reflects on how it’s actually impacting her personal life:

This ain’t for the best
My reputation’s never been worse, so
You must like me for me

While previewing the album during a not-so-secret “Secret Session,” she talked about the song “Delicate” saying:

This is a song where the idea of reputation is definitely something that I play on for the entire album but when the album started off it’s much more bombastic. ‘I don’t care what you say about me! I don’t care say about my reputation. Blah.’ But, like, then it hits this point on track five where it’s like what happens when you meet someone who you really want in your life and then you start worrying about what they’ve heard before they met you? You start to wonder like, ‘Could something fake, like your reputation, affect something real like someone getting to know you?’ You start to wonder how it all matters. This is the first point of vulnerability in the record where you’re like, ‘Oh, maybe this does actually matter a little bit.’

While much of the album can be read as shots at the West-Kardashian camp, it arguably fails to fully deliver on its promise of a completely new Taylor. Her latest relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn seems to have inspired her to write swooning ballads again, albeit via synths and drum machines with help from the likes of Max Martin and Jack Antonoff.

A song-by-song breakdown reveals that while most of the tracks are heartfelt love songs, Swift is more overtly sensual than ever before. She describes wild nights in bed (“Dress,” “Gorgeous”), obsessive fantasies (“Getaway Car,” “King of My Heart”), and makes her first ever references to alcohol and getting drunk on “Gorgeous”."

Carve your name into my bedpost
‘Cause I don’t want you like a best friend
Only bought this dress so you could take it off
Take it off, o-o-off

Amidst the bass drops, dramatic sci-fi imagery, and rap features, Taylor never truly kills off her romantic side, a point that is is perfectly captured by album closer “New Year’s Day.” As a stripped-down piano ballad, the track is a complete reversal of the album’s central thesis. It is a simple declaration of love and a promise of commitment despite all the newfound production sheen as well as the tabloid rumors that surround her life. In fact, the lyricism and story elements on “New Year’s Day” are strongly reminiscent of the young girl who first rose to fame playing love songs in Nashville:

Don’t read the last page
But I stay when it’s hard, or it’s wrong
Or we’re making mistakes
I want your midnights
But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day

Swift may have started this album cycle with the intention of lampooning narcissism and the absurd melodrama of her celebrity quarrels. Along the way, however, she fell in love again and her lyrics reflect that.

Taken as a whole, Taylor’s lyrics show an artist growing increasingly obsessed with her own public image:

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Of course, these analyses are qualitative and open to interpretation. It is clear however that as her career has progressed, Swift has written more about her public life and reputation. She acknowledges the narcissistic nature of the entertainment industry but ironically references herself on reputation more than ever before (more than even Kanye). Her mix of self-aware satire and genuine self-expression blends more and more with each album. However, reputation also has a new sexual identity (‘bad reputation’) overtaking her sweet, romantic origins. Over the course of her career, Taylor has lost her innocence in relationships, the media, and her music.

reputation is set to give Swift her most successful opening week ever before it has even hit streaming services. The album has received generally positive reviews from critics, and fans are enamored with Swift’s bold willingness to try new things conceptually and musically while still clinging to a fragment of the old Taylor. With her latest album, Taylor Swift proves that her reputation isn’t everything it seems to be.