Love London Love Culture rounds up all the latest reviews for Taylor Swift’s new album…
The Guardian: **** “Swift is a smart cookie. She’s smart enough to write lyrics far better and wittier than the average pop fare, inverting the cliche of the love ’em and leave ’em Romeo”
Pitchfork: “an aggressive, lascivious display of craftsmanship, but her full embrace of modern pop feels sadly conventional.”
Spin.com: “On Reputation, as on her more country-indebted albums, the production is generally there to merely frame her songwriting, which remains as singularly strong as ever”
Variety: “Swift and her producers aren’t afraid of letting a song’s otherwise huge production drop out for an a cappella aside, just for aural shock value.”
Consequence of Sound: “Reputation’s strongest moments are its most restrained. “Gorgeous”, “Delicate”, and “Call It What You Want”, three of the more mid-tempo songs, offer a reprieve, especially when they’re each paired against the soulless production of everything else.”
NME: **** “Is this a relatable record? If you’ve ever wanted to exact revenge on someone, the answer is yes.”
Vulture.com: “Reputation strikes the exact mix of necessary roughness and personal reckoning needed to shake off a calendar year of mounting turmoil.”
The Independent: **** “One of Swift’s greatest talents as a songwriter is to encapsulate those small moments, often in a new relationship, that you as a listener cannot.”
The Metro: **** “Reputation proves once again that Swift is still – at her peaks – one of the best pop lyricists and melodists of a generation.”
BBC: *** “Reputation, like Taylor Swift, is a product of its time. It’s an overtly commercial, well-targeted, highly professional piece of pop art.”
Rolling Stone: **** “Reputation is her most intimate album – a song cycle about how it feels when you stop chasing romance and start letting your life happen.”
Slant Magazine: **** “Retribution is paired with resurrection throughout the album, which is clearly positioned as a rebirth for the singer.”
Drowned in Sound: “This isn’t the New Taylor – this is the same Taylor Swift there’s always been. It’s just that, after three years of media barracking, she’s past caring who knows it.”
The Times: ****”This is a clever electro-pop album with the principles of Nashville country songwriting at its core”
Reputation is available to buy now.