Taylor Swift has been pretty quiet in the world of entertainment for the past few years. After receiving harsh comments from other artists and critics, she took a break from producing anything.
The latest we got from her was the single “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” which was a duet with Zayn, the former One Direction member. The single was released in December of 2016 and is included in the “Fifty Shades Darker” soundtrack. The song quickly reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and had over 188,000 copies sold within the first week.
Taylor’s last album, “1989,” was released in 2014. In this album, she stepped away from her starting grounds in country music, and dove into the world of pop music. With the release of this album, Swift announced a huge world tour. This tour consisted of 85 different shows, a total revenue of $250,733,097 and a total attendance of 2,278,647 during the span of eight months.
Exactly three years after the announced “1989” and released the single “Shake it off”, Swift teased the world with pictures on her Instagram page of something new coming soon.
She announced her new album and the lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do” on August 24, 2017. It was the most watched music video on YouTube within 24 hours, and the most plays in a day on Spotify.
Shortly after releasing her song, dozens of reaction videos popped up on Youtube, along with positive and negative reviews of the song. Both the music video and lyric video on YouTube contain dark imagery and uses colors like black and red. Both videos use snakes in them, which was hinted at in the teaser photos. The lyrics talk about how she has risen from the dead, how she doesn’t trust anyone, and that she’s got people that “ruined her reputation” on her list.
The music video begins at a graveyard and her burying her old self. The video includes Taylor’s different stages of evolution that she has done in her different music videos. The “new” Taylor is shown standing above the others and is now in control. In this song, she has made is perfectly clear that the old Taylor is “dead.”
On September 2, Swift introduced her second single from the album during ABC’s Saturday Night Football game. The full song was released on her Instagram page shortly after. The single “…Ready For It?” has a lighter tone than “Look What You Made Me Do”, but still has lyrics emphasizing her comeback to the music industry. There is currently not a music or lyric video for this single.
The title of Swift’s new album is “Reputation.” The cover for the album contains an image of Taylor and different newspaper headlines with her name in them. It is set to be released on November 10, 2017 with 15 different songs. As of now, there is not a date for a new single or confirmation of another world tour.
Paige Rogers
Reporter