Reputation (stylized as reputation) is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released on November 10, 2017, through Big Machine Records. The record was primarily produced by Jack Antonoff, Max Martin, Shellback and Swift herself, who also serves as the executive producer. Featured artists included on the album are English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran and American rapper Future.
The album has topped the charts in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. According to Nielsen SoundScan, Reputation sold 1.216 million copies in the US during its first week, becoming 2017's best-selling album in the country, and 2 million copies worldwide.
Video Reputation (Taylor Swift album)
Release
Swift first announced through Instagram on August 23, 2017 that her sixth album would be titled Reputation and released on November 10, 2017. The album's lead single, "Look What You Made Me Do", was released the next day. On September 2, Swift teased a second song during ABC's Saturday Night Football telecast and was later posted on Instagram, titled "...Ready for It?", previewing the new track. The song was released on September 3, 2017 as a promotional single. On October 20, 2017, Swift released a third song titled "Gorgeous" at midnight as a promotional single. A track named "Call It What You Want" was released on November 2, 2017 as a promotional single with an accompanying lyric video.
On November 7, Bloomberg reported the album will be kept off streaming services upon release for an undetermined amount of time and will only be available to purchase in digital and physical formats. Later that same day, Swift posted the album's track list to her social media accounts. Reputation became available to streaming services on December 1, 2017.
Maps Reputation (Taylor Swift album)
Music and lyrics
Greg Kot, writing for Chicago Tribune, described the album as "another shift, this time into electronic pop". Neil McCormick, from The Daily Telegraph, defined it as "brash, weaponised pop", while Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield said that "Reputation builds on the synth-pop of 1989". Swift explained that the album had a linear timeline, starting with how she felt when she started working on the album, and transitioning to how she feels now. The album's opener, "...Ready for It?", is a "pop-oriented", "electronic-inspired" electropop and industrial pop song, with elements of tropical house, dubstep and trap music. Swift states the song "introduces a metaphor you may hear more of throughout the rest album, which is like this kind of Crime and Punishment metaphor". The track is "basically about finding your own partner in crime", Swift said.
"I Did Something Bad", the album's third song, was written on the piano. Swift explained to iHeartRadio that the idea for the production of the song came to her in a dream. Swift described the concept to producer Max Martin, and Martin used Swift's voice and pitched it down to create the effect that takes place after the chorus. Swift's goal for "Delicate" was to use the vocoder to create an "emotional" and "vulnerable" sound for the track. She explains the song is about, "what happens when you meet somebody that you really want in your life and then you start worrying about what they've heard before they met you." Lead single "Look What You Made Me Do" started out as a poem and is "about realizing that you couldn't trust certain people, but realizing you appreciate the people you can trust." It interpolates the song "I'm Too Sexy" by the British dance-pop group Right Said Fred.
Swift structured "King of My Heart" such that each individual section of the song was its own phase of a relationship, with the sections getting deeper and more fast-paced as the song went on. The twelfth song on the album, "Dress", contains many lines that Swift had "came up with like a year before". It was described by critics as Swift's "sexiest song to date" and bringing out her sensual side at last. "Call It What You Want" was recorded at Jack Antonoff's home studio in Brooklyn. Swift said the song best represents her current emotional state. The album's closer, "New Year's Day", explores the flip side of the romanticism of a New Year's Eve kiss, and is about how the one that sticks around the next day to "give you Advil and clean up the house" is the person that matters more.
Artwork and packaging
Reputation's cover art was photographed by Mert and Marcus in London. The cover features Swift in a grey sweater and choker necklace with newspaper headlines of her name over one side of her face. The typeface used for the headlines is reminiscent of the signature font of The New York Times.
Target released two 72-page magazines that contain different content, including the album in the US. Walmart distributed it in Canada. The magazines contain photos, handwritten lyrics, poetry and paintings by Swift. The Reputation Vol. 1 magazine cover was shot by Mert and Marcus. Vol. 2 was shot by Benny Horne and features Swift in a camouflage jacket.
Promotion
In August 2017, United Parcel Service (UPS) announced it will be the "Official Delivery Partner" for Reputation. UPS trucks in select cities feature the Reputation album cover. The company asked fans to take pictures of the trucks and post images to Twitter with a hashtag for an "improved opportunity" to buy concert tickets.
A month before the album's release, Swift hosted exclusive secret sessions in London, Rhode Island, Los Angeles and Nashville. She said, "Everything about this album is a secret." Each party had a number of attendees, with a total of 500 fans chosen from around the world, for whom the album was played but none of them leaked any music. The behind the scenes footage for the sessions was released on November 7 on ABC's Good Morning America. Swift partnered with AT&T to produce a multi-part behind-the-scenes series chronicling the making of Reputation, titled "The Making of a Song". The series was played on the channel from November 13.
On November 9, a performance of the song "New Year's Day" was premiered during the broadcast of an episode of ABC's Scandal. It was filmed in one of the secret sessions, held at Swift's home in Rhode Island on October 18, with an audience of 100 fans. An extended version of Swift's performance was aired on November 10, during The DUFF's air on Freeform. On November 11, Swift was the musical guest on the fifth episode of the 43rd season of Saturday Night Live, where she performed "...Ready for It?" and "Call It What You Want" from the album. It was her first appearance on live television following the album's release, and she appeared on the show after eight years.
Singles
On August 24, 2017, "Look What You Made Me Do" was released as the lead single from Reputation. The song broke several major records including the most Spotify streams in a 24-hour period by any artist. It hit number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 with the biggest sales and streaming figures of the year, becoming the fifth song by Swift to top the chart and also the first solo number one by a woman with 84.4 million streams since Adele's "Hello" in 2015 and the second biggest after "Harlem Shake" (103.3 million). Its accompanying music video later premiered at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards and was viewed 43.2 million times on YouTube in its first 24 hours, the most in any video in history breaking the 36 million views of "Gentleman" in 2013.
On September 2, 2017, Swift teased on Instagram that the first track off Reputation, titled "...Ready for It?", was going to be released as a promotional single. It was made available for digital download with the pre-order of Reputation on September 3. On October 24, the song was sent to rhythmic contemporary radio as the album's second single and the official music video premiered three days later.
"End Game", featuring Ed Sheeran and Future, was released to French radio on November 14, 2017 as the album's third single. Sheeran confirmed in early December that a music video for the song will be released.
"New Year's Day" was serviced to American country radio as the album's fourth single on November 27.
"Gorgeous" was sent to UK radio stations on January 12, 2018 as the album's fifth single.
"Delicate" was sent to contemporary hit and adult contemporary radio as the album's sixth single on March 12, 2018. Its music video premiered at the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Awards.
Promotional singles
On October 19, 2017, Swift announced she would be releasing a new song titled "Gorgeous". It became available the next day through digital retailers and streaming services as a promotional single from the album. The song reached the top ten in Canada and Australia and the top twenty in the United Kingdom and United States. On November 2, Swift announced she would be releasing the second promotional song from Reputation, while posting teasers on her official Twitter and Instagram accounts. The track, titled "Call It What You Want" was released at midnight on November 3, 2017.
Tour
In August 2017, Swift partnered with Ticketmaster for a bundling program, with people wishing to buy her concert tickets could gain priority by purchasing merchandise and pre-ordering Reputation. On November 13, 2017, Swift announced she would be embarking on the Reputation Stadium Tour in 2018 in support of Reputation, first announcing North American dates. The tour is set to commence on May 8, 2018, at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, and to conclude on November 9, 2018 at the Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand, with a total of 51 dates in stadiums throughout North America, Europe and Oceania.
Critical reception
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, Reputation received an average score of 71 based on 28 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The Guardian writer Alexis Petridis opined Reputation, "may be mired in bitterness and gossip, but the pop star's songwriting smarts and lyrical prowess are impossible to deny on her sixth album", noting the songs see "Swift cutting her last ties with her Nashville roots in favour of the blare and honk of EDM-influenced pop". Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield writes Reputation, "shows the darker, deeper side of the pop mastermind". Sheffield also remarked, "As one of the all-time great pop masterminds, she's trying something new, as she always does."
Roisin O'Connor of The Independent says "Call It What You Want" is "arguably, the best song Swift has ever made", also praising Jack Antonoff's production, calling it "essential" to the album; "[Antonoff's] love of Eighties synth-pop is the perfect counterbalance to Max Martin and Shellback's dance and electronic touch". Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph states, "Reputation is a big, brash, all-guns-blazing blast of weaponised pop that grapples with the vulnerability of the human heart as it is pummelled by 21st-century fame." McCormick continued, "This is an album with blockbuster event status, preceded by a satirical hit ("Look What You Made Me Do") in which she provocatively ditched her "girl-next-door" image for something more glamorously sophisticated." Troy Smith from The Plain Dealer said the album served as a reminder of Swift's songwriting talent, labeling "New Year's Day", "End Game", "Delicate" and "Dress" as standouts of the album.
In a negative review, Geoff Nelson of Consequence of Sound gave the album a D+ rating writing, "Swift's sixth studio album, is a bloated, moving disaster." Nelson continued, "Reputation doesn't improve past its initial singles, even if the chorus of "...Ready for It?" is one of the few vestiges of 1989 Taylor on the album. Elsewhere, Swift finds trouble: She raps, she adopts African-American Vernacular English, and she bizarrely collaborates with Future." Nelson called "Gorgeous", "Delicate", and "Call It What You Want" the "strongest moments on the album".
Year-end lists
Accolades
Commercial performance
Worldwide, Reputation sold two million copies in its first week. A week prior to the album's release, pre-orders for it were reported to be over 400,000 units in the United States. Billboard stated that this is over twice the amount of pre-sales than Swift's previous album, 1989, which sold 1.29 million copies in its first week. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the album sold roughly 700,000 copies during its first day in the country and 1.05 million within four days of release, becoming 2017's biggest-selling album in the US. The album ultimately became Swift's fifth number-one album on the US Billboard 200 when it debuted atop the chart with 1.238 million album-equivalent units that consisted of 1.216 million traditional sales, becoming her fourth album to sell a million copies in the country in its first week. As a result, Swift became the only act to have four albums sell more than a million copies there within a week since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991. Reputation also had the largest album opening in the United States since Adele's 25 in 2015 as well as the 10th largest overall sales week in the nation for an album since Nielsen SoundScan tracked its sales, and became the first album since 25 to sell a million copies there within a week. It additionally sold more that week than any other album on the chart combined.
With 256,000 more album-equivalent units earned and another 232,000 copies sold the next week, Reputation stayed at number one and became the first album to top the country's chart for two weeks since Jay-Z's 4:44 earlier that year, the first by a female to overall spend more than one week at the summit since Rihanna's Anti in 2016, and first by a female to hold the highest position for its first two weeks since 25. Reputation then became the fourth album to spend three or more weeks at the top spot during 2017 after Starboy by The Weeknd, More Life by Drake, and Damn by Kendrick Lamar as well as the first album since 25 by a female artist to do so overall, receiving 147,000 more album-equivalent units and selling an additional 131,000 copies during its third week. The album subsequently dropped to number 3 in its fourth week with 70,000 copies sold and 112,000 album-equivalent units earned before returning to the top spot three weeks later. It was then displaced the next week by The Greatest Showman: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. With 1,903,000 copies sold and 2,336,000 album-equivalent units earned by the end of 2017, Reputation was the year's best selling album in the country and had its third largest overall consumption behind Damn and Sheeran's ÷. It has been certified 3× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). By March 2018 the album sold over 2 million pure copies in the US becoming the first album to do so in two years.
After selling 50,000 copies in Canada during its first day of availability, the record also became Swift's fifth album to top the Canadian Albums Chart, entering at number one with 80,000 copies among 81,000 consumption units. It had the country's largest opening for an album since Drake's Views in 2016. The record then sold 15,000 more copies and earned another 17,000 consumption units over the following week, giving Swift her fourth consecutive album to spend more than one week at Canada's top spot. After receiving an additional 11,000 consumption units during its third week, Reputation became the first album since Damn to spend three consecutive weeks atop the Canadian charts and gave the singer her second-longest run at number one behind 1989. It then descended to number 3 during its fourth week on the chart.
The album sold slightly over 65,000 copies in the United Kingdom within three days, and opened atop the UK Albums Chart with 84,000 copies, becoming her third album to reach the nation's summit. Reputation also had the UK's fifth-biggest album opening sales week of 2017. It then fell down to number eight the following week. The album has been certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). It had Australia's third largest opening of the year with first week sales of 54,976 copies behind ÷ and Pink's Beautiful Trauma, and gave the singer her fourth number-one album on the ARIA Albums Chart. Reputation was also the country's 458th album to debut at its summit and 814th overall to reach the top position. The record then remained atop the chart for another week and was certified Platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), giving the singer her fifteenth week at number one in the nation, before Beautiful Trauma replaced it at the top spot. It additionally entered at number one in Ireland and New Zealand, and was certified gold by Recorded Music NZ (RMNZ) for shipments of 7,500 units.
Track listing
Sample credit
- "Look What You Made Me Do" contains an interpolation of the 1991 song "I'm Too Sexy" by the band Right Said Fred.
Personnel
Adapted from the album liner notes.
Charts
Certifications
Release history
See also
- List of Billboard 200 number-one albums of 2017
- List of Billboard 200 number-one albums of 2018
- List of number-one albums of 2017 (Canada)
- List of number-one albums of 2017 (Australia)
- List of UK Albums Chart number ones of 2017
- List of fastest-selling albums
- List of number-one albums of 2017 (Belgium)
- List of number-one albums of 2017 (Ireland)
- List of number-one albums from the 2010s (New Zealand)
- List of Scottish number-one albums of 2017
References
External links
- Reputation on Swift's official website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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