Love her or hate her, almost everyone has an opinion on Taylor Swift. Whether it’s her infamous “long list of ex-lovers” or her beef with Katy Perry, Swift is an artist who the media just cannot avoid talking about. On reputation, her sixth studio album, she seeks to address this situation directly. While Swift surely delivers lyrically and vocally here, she does falter conceptually in addressing her notorious reputation by flip-flopping between both apathy and blaming others for her choices.

After a lengthy absence from social media and the public eye, Swift reappeared in August, entirely clearing her accounts except for a single video of a snake. Three years and a buzz-worthy lead single (Look What You Made Me Do) later, she proudly declares that “the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now […] because she’s dead,” in a decidedly self-referential and era-defining manner. A significant aspect of this era has been Swift’s choice to stay very low-key; no talk show runs, very little promotional performances, and sparse social media posts. In a way, it seems she is try to reclaim the power to write her own narrative.

Although the album wasn’t released until November of 2017, reputation was the best-selling album of the year. It sold 1.2 million copies during its first week, catapulting it to the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart. Clearly one element of Swift’s reputation that she has preserved is her track record for being a hugely successful artist, even in the era of digital streaming.

The album features lead songwriting by Swift herself and the production is split, with roughly the first half the result of Taylor’s work with Max Martin, Swedish hitmaker, who has been responsible for some of the biggest hits of the decade and worked with Taylor Swift on her previous two albums. The second half is comprised of production by Jack Antonoff, who worked with Lorde on Melodrama.

In an iconic and fitting fashion, reputation begins with the upbeat and suggestive “…Ready For It?” From the melodic rapping in the verses to the bass-heavy, hard-hitting production, Taylor clearly separates herself from “the old Taylor” and establishes herself an identity far different than the country girl that she first appeared as in 2006. Certainly the Taylor Swift almost 12 years ago would not feature Future, as she does in “End Game,” the second track on the album.

While Swift addresses her “big reputation” and insists that she doesn’t love the drama, it loves her on “End Game,” the third track, “I Did Something Bad,” is where she truly begins to discuss the album’s alleged focus: people’s perceptions of her. With snarky wordplay, the song discusses the singer’s relationships with Kanye West and Calvin Harris, both people who she feels have wronged her. However, Swift still refuses to take any blame for her actions, as she sings “they say I did something bad.” Rather than accepting that she may have committed some wrongs to gain her reputation, she insists that it’s the media’s slanted retelling of her life that unfairly labels her.

“Look What You Made Me Do” is another obvious example of this kind of denial of fault. Throughout the track she talks directly to Kanye West, calling out her disdain for his “tilted stage” and warning him that maybe she’s got her karma, but “you’ll all get yours.” While the anti-chorus used in the song represents an interesting and fresh dynamic for pop music, this again seems like a misstep in suggesting that others are the reason that Taylor Swift makes her decisions.

Where the album falls short in her inability to accept guilt, reputation makes up for it with exactly what Taylor Swift is best at: writing emotionally-charged love songs that perfectly convey her infatuations with expansive story-telling and creative reinventions of what could otherwise be considered a rehashing of already well-trodden territory of her discography. “Don’t Blame Me” features Swift likening an intense love to a drug addiction and lamenting for her crazy behavior but explaining that if she was acting any other way, she probably wouldn’t truly be in love.

In “Delicate,” the songwriter reveals that “My reputation’s never been worse, so you must like me for me.” The song features heavy use of a vocoder, which creates robotic, androgynous sounding vocals that tie the song together as she continually wonders if her lover is ready to move forward in their relationship. She realizes that people might have a lot to say about her, but she just doesn’t care here (a stark contrast from the previously discussed songs), instead she only looks to her lover for reassurance.

This apathetic nature towards the naysayers is fully realized in “Call It What You Want To,” the penultimate song of reputation. Swift addresses her reclusion from the public eye and her steady romance surrounded by “all the drama queens taking swings,” but assures the listener that “they fade to nothing when [she] looks at him.” In this song, she convincingly reveals her carefree nature towards what anyone wants to say about her in the news. This is a far more mature side of Taylor Swift than the petty drama and shifting of blame that holds back some of the rest of the album.

Taylor Swift is an enigma of an artist: her sound is always developing and drastically changing each album cycle. Reputation is no different in this respect; she pushes the boundaries of her genre and refuses to be anything but who she wants to be and on her own terms. While the LP could have discussed Swift’s media pitfalls with a bit more sophistication, reputation is absolutely an important and commercially-successful album that is one of her finest works.

Listen to reputation on Spotify below: