Review: Taylor Swift's New Single 'Look What You lot Made Me Exercise' Is Dead on Arrival

Swift. Photo: Big Machine Records/GMA/Twitter

Apparently there are things that even Taylor Swift can't shake off. As demonstrated by "Expect What You Made Me Do," the first lead unmarried for her upcoming Reputation, the former land star and electric current pop behemoth has spent no minor amount of time brooding on the striking her reputation took in summer 2016 when her statement that she had never given Kanye West permission to talk nigh her on his Life of Pablo single "Famous" was belied past Kim Kardashian West's release of a recorded conversation between Swift and Westward in which she, well, gave Kanye permission to talk nigh her on "Famous." If Swift hasn't been thinking constantly about revenge since then, there's no indication of information technology on "Look What Yous Fabricated Me Do," whose lyrics linger, and so linger farther, on the damage she's suffered.

It'southward grievous. She herself openly admits that it was fatal. "I rose up from the dead," Swift sings in the pre-chorus; the span concludes with her proclamation that the old Taylor tin no longer exist heard "because she's dead." Pop music is never not repetitive, simply Swift's repetitions, for the outset fourth dimension ever in her career, sound wearying instead of catchy. She talks nigh a revenge list, then talks again about revenge: "Maybe I got mine, just you lot'll all go yours." True, the threats could sound disarming with the right delivery — anything can sound ominous with the correct commitment. Simply Swift'due south lines start out wrapped in a melodic cadence that (matched with production that manages the neat trick of existence both lurching and insubstantial) can only be described as "Disney-villain karaoke," leaving it only when she broods monotonously in spoken word.

I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me
I'll be the actress starring in your bad dreams.

For all the serpent-themed hype leading up to the launch of the song, Swift's words lack venom, fangs, and smoothness. They have the consistency of wet flour, and their pregnant could be converted into a series of impotent hisses without any loss in translation. She claims to accept gotten harder, but only comes off as brittle; she says that defeat made her smarter, just sounds if she's endlessly smarting. Information technology'south impossible for anyone simply her most dice-hard fans (which are, to be fair, legion) to call up that the vocal represents Taylor in a position of strength; more-casual listeners accustomed — over the course of five good to very proficient albums — to the high floor and medium ceilings of Swift'south compositions volition be appalled at the depth to which she's fallen. As far every bit her archnemeses Kim and Kanye go, it's completely incommunicable to imagine them doing anything but laughing, hard, at "Look What You Made Me Practice." They've "made" Taylor Swift release the worst music of her career: What could perchance be less intimidating than that?

If the sinking, imploded sense that Swift's vocal summons feels familiar to conscientious listeners, in that location'south a reason. Drake, too, was a popular juggernaut whose advisedly constructed public image was damaged plenty by a prolonged feud with a boisterous rap artist that he ended upwards making a mistrust-laced collection that signaled a reject from the full prominence he formerly enjoyed. "Look What You Fabricated Me Do" looks to be to Taylor what "Summer Sixteen" was to Drake last yr: a vocal heralding an upcoming album (11 weeks prior to release for Swift, 13 for Drake) whose scant handful of decent lines (her drama/karma couplet is nice enough) is saddled with anesthetic delivery and an indefensibly corny hook (Drake, if you'll recall, was "looking for reveeeenge"). Judging solely from its lead single, Reputation already has the potential to be Taylor Swift's Views: a collection whose stature as a commercial juggernaut fails to overshadow its more permanent character equally a creative debacle. Recent history doesn't have to repeat itself, but if it does, there's no way to say that she didn't have fair warning.

The 'Disney-Villain Karaoke' of Taylor Swift's New Vocal