Taylor Swift: 2022

As we get ready for the big Taylor Swift month, I've been listening to "Reputation," which seems better, as the years pass.

"Reputation" is weakened by Ms. Swift's silly Kanye West obsession, which just isn't as interesting as she thinks it is. But sometimes Swift puts Kanye aside, and she writes incisively about her love life, which is still sort of fascinating in the "Reputation" days. (Now, today, I can't find Joe Alwyn fascinating.)

I think the highlight of "Reputation" is "Getaway Car," which is just astonishing. Swift was in a bad relationship with Calvin Harris, and she left him to be with international film star Tom Hiddleston, but she understood that she was using Hiddleston just as a distraction (though Hiddleston seemed unaware). The insights this moment yields are fun: "Nothing good starts in a getaway car." I'm especially fond of Swift as a noir antiheroine, sending a brisk note to Hiddleston: "I'm in a getaway car; I left you in a motel bar. Put the money in the bag and I stole the keys; that was the last time you ever saw me." It's so startling!

I also admire the suspenseful, precise storytelling in "Delicate":

Dive bar on the east side, where you at?

Phone lights up my night stand, in the black.

Come here; you can meet me, in the back....

Swift gets to the sex so quickly (and so effortlessly!) ....

Third floor on the West side -- me and you.

Handsome -- your mansion, with a view.

Do the girls back home touch you like I do?

I miss the "Reputation" days. We all didn't know what we had.

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