Written by Sarah Burgener. Media by Kayla Morton.
Taylor Swift is back and better than ever. After deleting all of her posts on Instagram and Twitter, she surprised the world with an announcement of her new album. Teenage girls fell in love with Taylor Swift when she released her first album, Taylor Swift. Her girl next door vibe appealed to parents and her songs made girls that had never been in relationships cry over their exes. From “Teardrops on My Guitar” to “Picture to Burn,” her first album had many bangers that most girls still listen to when they are jamming out to throwbacks. She continued the theme of writing songs mostly about past lovers with her next albums, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, and 1989.
Her new album was announced on Instagram along with a series of short videos of a snake slithering. Could this be in response to haters referring to her as a “snake” because of the Kanye West and Kim Kardashian situation?
It all started in 2009 when Swift won an MTV Music Video Award for “You Belong With Me.” Kanye West marched on stage and interrupted her acceptance speech, explaining how he thought Beyonce truly deserved the award for her “Single Ladies” music video. After this scandal, West apologized to Taylor Swift and they became friends, even sending flowers to each other and posting pictures together online. The friendship stopped when Kanye West released “Famous” in 2016 where he included a lyric stating that he made Taylor Swift famous. Hearing this, Swift fans started to hate on West but he explained that he had permission from her before releasing the song. Hearing this, she claimed that she had only been told to promote his single and did not know that he said that about her in his rap. Later, Kim Kardashian, Kanye’s wife, released video evidence of Swift allowing the song to be released and even supporting his decision.
After supporting and listening to Taylor Swift since the beginning, I can see where people would be surprised with her release of “Look What You Made Me Do.” Swift is known for writing diss songs to her ex-boyfriends, and she even singled out John Mayer in her hit song “Dear John,” but she turns the dissing around to her haters in the industry with this new song. Since Swift has recently been involved in beef with Katy Perry, many fans think the recent song is a reference to her.
The feud between the two stars allegedly began in 2013 when Taylor Swift was on tour for her album Red and Katy Perry approached her dancers to be on her tour, Prismatic, instead. The dancers joined Perry and left Swift’s tour. So naturally, Taylor Swift revealed “Bad Blood” about a fellow pop star, which caused even more issues between the stars.
Now, we could all sit and debate over who this song is about or we could appreciate how this new album, Reputation, is coming about. Even if you aren’t a fan of this new song, you can still respect the marketing put into the unreleased album. So, if you don’t like her new single because it’s so different from her old sound, you just have to get used to it. Swift said it best in “Look What You Made Me Do”: “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Because she’s dead.”
