With Reputation, we see Taylor in the first flowering of her classical phase. Classics in any field are those which show the mastery of the forms of that field, and enduring classics are those which represent the primal mastery of form itself. In Reputation, while Taylor’s manipulations of sound retain basic genre shape or form – a blues or hip-hop, for example, are very recognizably blues or hip-hop, she not only masters each of those forms, but she fits together otherwise incompatible genre shapes within songs. She does this by adjusting each form’s distance to and from the listener, from placement in the sound field nearer or farther to the removal or immediacy of the emotional fields of voice and words. She also manipulates loudness and compression, as well as sonic warmth and coldness. The basic genre shapes retain their traditional emotional dimensionality, though you see the beginnings of her stretching those dimensions to accommodate her increasingly more nuanced intentionality. She generally alters basic genre shapes toward an abstraction which represents a range of historicity, which reflects the conception of Reputation as the dimensionality of the contrast between what you are to yourself and what you are to others. She shows her powers to summon and constrain the images of the past. You see in Reputation the essence of that which she is and who she becomes.
Remember back to her juvenalia: though clearly rooted in a country-oriented genre, she shifts within a song in and out of specific dimensions of that genre. She had the ability at a young age to summon specific emotions in the specific order necessary to match a multi-dimensional conception that operates both as a story told to you and as a perfect example of that kind of story. She modulates the extent to which intonation of voice and accompaniment match genre expectations. This modulation within her primary genre area bespeaks her ability to see and hear the nuanced differences that define a genre across its dimensions. There are hints of more removed genres in her early work, but you clearly hear how these other genres relate to the version of her country-oriented genre. Remember that in her early transitional piece, Fearless, she plays with the line between the country and pop genres by carefully mis-matching voice and music until she resolves that multi-dimensional dissonance into a form of pop. She does this with the same intentioned nuance she applies in Reputation to resolve dissonances between otherwise remote genres. And of course she does this with such fine control you are transported through the transitions without realizing what she’s doing until she’s done it. That was true then and it true in Reputation. This is a flowering of her ability to transport you across multiple dimensions so you arrive at her chosen destination with the appropriate senses of surprise and inevitability.
Reputation also marks the beginning of Taylor’s mastery period. She has achieved a mastery that extends through the sound she produces to a mastery of self. This is what allows her to carefully reveal the essence behind the perfectly shaped, rouged lips we all know. Note the opacity of references like ‘golden tattoo’ or the personification of her auspicious thread as ‘his initial on a chain ’round my neck’. Now we understand them for what they are. The flowers of Reputation become the garlands and bouquets which fill the world.
jomi: playing with perception 