reputation Review

The first half is the part everyone remembers and the part that has dated. Look What You Made Me Do is a novelty with a great sneer and a borrowed chorus, and ...Ready for It? is louder than it is good. The writing across those tracks is defensive, score settling, and vague about who deserves the score settled, which is the weakest mode she has. Then the album turns. Delicate is a beautiful, nervous song about the beginning of something, with a vocoder treatment that makes her sound genuinely uncertain.

New Year's Day closes on a piano and a mess of glasses on a floor. Getaway Car is a perfect pop record hiding in the middle. Dress and Call It What You Want are warmer and more specific than the marketing suggested. The production, from Antonoff and Martin, is the most textured of her career and it deserves better lyrics than it often gets. A misunderstood album that is not quite as good as its defenders now insist.