WANG: Was this the first time there was outrage over album art simply because it was…ugly? It was like the “graphic design is my passion” meme, and was like, where did Taylor Swift’s money go? I feel like this could be a running theme for most of the imagery throughout all her eras, actually. I sometimes wonder if she presents herself as intentionally naïve when she comes up with album and music video concepts. Also, why couldn’t she at least have used real text from real articles instead of just her name for all the copy?

MAICKI: It felt like something that would’ve been nominated for a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award in 2004, and I mean that in a bad way. Everything about this era was aesthetically atrocious, from the fonts to the styling to the music videos. And that’s a shame, because there were some real jams on that album. I'm looking at you, "Getaway Car."

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WANG: Why did Taylor Swift’s edgy version of a bad girl still look so... wholesome? I mean the entire “Look What You Made Me Do” video, with her dressing up as all her past alter-egos and declaring the "old Taylor is dead" is so... villain from a children’s movie. And that extended into her writing too. I think that’s why her “edgier” songs addressing her reputation and her feuds didn’t work for me because some of the issues that she was getting pushback for weren’t childish issues. So the concept as a whole kinda fall flat, and made it disingenuous and corny.

MAICKI: People wrote this album off immediately, and part of that definitely had to do with the bad singles and her public image coming out of 1989. But I can’t help but feel like a lot of it had to do with the literal imagery. Nobody asked for that CGI snake.

WANG: It sucks because there are some really great songs on the record! “Delicate” is probably one of my favorite songs of hers, ever. “Endgame” slaps, don't @ me. The video for "Endgame" is surprisingly one of her better ones, visually, because it’s just her looking rich and hanging out with rich people on a yacht. There's no posturing. For “Delicate” she does her awkward/weird act in the form of a Maddie Ziegler-interpretive dance which comes off really hammy — she’s literally the embodiment of European beauty standards. That video does not do that song justice.

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MAICKI: More than anything, this album crystallized that, although Taylor makes good music, her taste can skew mad corny.

