Taylor Swift's new album 'reputation' confirms she's mad as hell (and in love)

"New Year's Day," the last song on Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated sixth studio album, reputation, is so good it makes me angry.

It’s soft and lithe and haunting and beautiful and a timely reminder that she is currently unparalleled among her pop star brethren in her ability to hone in on specific details – hand squeezes in the back of a taxi, glitter on the floor after an all-night party -- and turn those lyrics into a memory you didn’t realize you had.

If only more of the album reached that high.

As anyone who spends time online is well aware, Swift has rebranded herself, leaning into her darker edges and trying to adjust a public persona that has struggled over the last year or so amid feuds and various bad PR cycles.

Never fear! She addresses it all over reputation’s 15 tracks – Kanye and Kim, the media, her squad, boyfriends, haters – with varying degrees of success.

The album kicks off with a wink and a question: "Are you ready for it?" she growls as she clears her throat, achingly teasing the score settling that's to come.

But much of the first half of the album sounds like Avril Lavigne or Ashlee Simpson in their "bad girl" phases -- all heavy eyeliner and a nose ring, generic, and forgettable. Suddenly, her stellar specificity is gone. "I swear I don't love the drama, it loves me!" she snaps in "End Game." "My reputation’s never been worse so you must like me for me" she confesses in a breathy whisper on "Delicate."

Her anger is at its most intoxicating in back-to-back sexy smashes "I Did Something Bad" and "Don't Blame Me," which both are catchy, bombastic, and bound for radio success. The titles are also a handy guide into the dichotomy of the entire album -- righteous anger and petty vengeance but also how dare you! It's not my fault! I would never!

"If a man talks shit I owe him nothing / I don’t regret it one bit cause he had it coming" Swift sings with a smirk so strong you can nearly hear it through the speakers. Soon she doubles down: "Don't blame me / love made me crazy / if it doesn't you ain't doing it right," which we can safely brand as Swift's overall oeuvre thesis statement. It's easy to picture her, hair flying, rocking out to these songs in a stadium next summer, and that part is thrilling.

But while her skill in earlier work made her intimate, diary-like lyrics come complete with killer hooks and pitch-perfect melodies, here, she’s occasionally let down by her production (done primarily, like 1989, alongside pop maestros Max Martin, Shellback and Jack Antonoff), which too often sounds like experimental noise. It overwhelms and steals focus. It’s dishy to read, but not always a delight to listen to.

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Happily, she rallies by the end for a trio of true winners. The aforementioned "New Year's Day" is an "All Too Well"-esque piano treat, and it's preceded by "Call It What You Want," a dream-like ode to the intoxicating bubble of being in love and in your own little world. (Much of the back half of the album is actually -- surprise! --steamy love confessions, which find Swift exploring romance and her sensuality in a deeper way, moaning she bought a dress just "so you could take it off" and "the taste of your lips is my idea of luxury.")

But it's "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" that's really going to get people talking, and, obviously, launch a thousand think pieces in the process.

“This Is Why...” should have been the lead single for the album. It's bratty in the best way, channeling the part of ourselves we indulge when we're dishing to our friends and presenting events in the most sympathetic, truth-bending light. Swift runs through a litany of offenses, documenting, with pointed clues, her various ongoing feuds, from the media raining on the parade of her Squad Hangouts to Kanye and that infamous phone call ("Therein lies the issue / friends don't try and trick you / get you on the phone and mind-twist you").

Damnnn girl. This is fun!

A self-reflective mea cupla isn’t what she’s after here. The album isn't a reckoning with her reputation; it's more like a PSA. “Here's to you, 'cause forgiveness is a nice thing to do -- hahaha, I can’t even say it with a straight face!” she cracks.

For better or worse, sorry's not in her vocabulary. Your move.