Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Taylor Swift: Reputation

This is music built not upon compelling melody but upon the exploitation of the image she has built for herself (cleverly enough, it has to be said)

issue 18 November 2017

Grade: D+

I was suckered in by the brio of Taylor Swift’s first big single, ‘Love Story’, despite the clunking lyrics, which one forgave because of her youth. Just a nice slice of maybe overproduced FM country rock with a simple, but effective, chorus. Forgive me. I did not see the monster she would become. The morphing, over nine years, into a hideous colossus, a purveyor of ever more derivative and anodyne Kardashian pop. Music built not upon a compelling melody or rhythm or slice of lyrical wit but upon the exploitation of the image she has built for herself (cleverly enough, it has to be said).

She has spent the past few years on the front pages doing and then undoing a parade of slebdom’s most eligible and handsome men. Good, I have no objection to that.

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