Today’s the big day, friends — the day Taylor Swift’s new album drops!
Or, well, it already did drop, because it’s not 1999 and you don’t have to beg your mom to take you to the mall after school to pick the CD up.
But you know what we mean.
Right at this very moment, you can hop on iTunes or run to the Target or whatever you prefer and purchase Reputation, and isn’t that so exciting?!
Even if you don’t love the smooth sounds of Swifty, it’s always fun to analyze all the lyrics and figure out who she’s singing about.
And that’s exactly what we’re going to do today.
So far, at least two of the tracks seem to reference Taylor’s feud with Kanye West — “I Did Something Bad” and “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.”
“I never trust a narcissist,” she sings in the first verse of that first song, “but they love me. So I play ‘em like a violin and I make it look oh so easy.”
“‘Cause for every lie I tell them, they tell me three. This is how the world works, now all he thinks about is me.”
It’s a little vague, but then she sings “If a man talks sh-t, then I owe him nothing. I don’t regret it one bit ‘cause he had it coming.”
That’s what’s making people think this part of the song could be about Kanye, because we all know he talked a fair bit of sh-t about her.
But then again, one could also say that Calvin Harris did the same thing last summer after their breakup, you know?
In the bridge, Taylor sings “They’re burning all the witches, even if you aren’t one. They got their pitchforks and proof, their receipts and reasons.”
That part could also be about several things — her reputation did take a lot of hits in the past year or so, hence, you know, this whole entire album.
But could it be about Kanye and Kim Kardashian? With the line about “receipts,” it’s definitely possible.
Because when you think of Taylor Swift and receipts, you pretty much definitely think of that phone call between Taylor and Kanye that Kim recorded and leaked.
You remember — Kanye released his song “Famous,” the one that contained that lyric about having sex with Taylor because “I made that bitch famous.”
Taylor was very offended, but later Kim released a recording of a phone call that proved that Kanye had run the lyric by her before recording the song, and that she was cool with it.
After that, Taylor clarified that she was cool with the sex lyric and the thing about how he made her famous, but her issue was the word “bitch,” which he didn’t run by her during their talk.
It seemed weird at the time, because in a line like “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous,” the idea seems much more offensive than that one word.
But that’s Taylor’s story and she’s sticking to it, and even if “I Did Something Bad” doesn’t reference Kanye, “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” almost certainly does.
In this one, she begins by describing “big parties” and “feeling so Gatsby for that whole year” before asking someone “Why’d you have to rain on my parade?”
In the chorus, she sings “This is why we can’t have nice things, darling, because you break them. I had to take them away.”
“This is why we can’t have nice things, honey. Did you think I wouldn’t hear all the things you said about me? This is why we can’t have nice things.”
Again, this could be about Kanye or an ex-boyfriend, but it’s the second verse that makes it pretty clear that good ol’ Yeezus is to blame for all this.
Here, just check it out in its entirety:
It was so nice being friends again / There I was, giving you a second chance / But then you stabbed me in the back while shaking my hand / And therein lies the issue
Friends don’t try to trick you / Get you on the phone and mind-twist you / And so I took an ax to a mended fence
But I’m not the only friend you’ve lost lately / If only you weren’t so shady
See, because there was a period when she was friendly again with Kanye after he ruined her special moment at the VMAs all those years ago. She did give him a second chance.
Then he released “Famous” and hurt her feelings when she thought they were cool — he “stabbed [her] in the back,” so to speak.
The “get you on the phone and mind-twist” you is what makes this painfully obvious, because even on the small chance this isn’t about Kanye, she had to know what everyone would think with a pointed reference like that.
And then “I’m not the only friend you’ve lost lately,” well, we know what happened with Jay Z, don’t we?
In the bridge, Taylor gives “a toast to my real friends, they don’t care about that he-said-she-said,” and also to her “baby,” who “ain’t reading what they call me lately.”
“And here’s to my mama,” she continues, “had to listen to all this drama. And here’s to you, ‘cause forgiveness is a nice thing to do.”
But then she laughs and says “I can’t even say it with a straight face.”
It doesn’t look like she’s letting this go anytime soon, does it?
At least it’s more fun this way.
