Anyone hoping that Taylor Swift's "Reputation" will be a cold blade of revenge will be surprised by the gooey romance of her new single, "Gorgeous."
Released Thursday night, the song is a hard turn from the angry, slightly unhinged electro-rock of her recent singles. Instead, it's a maudlin pop ballad about, yep, falling hard for a super-hot dude despite some minor reservations.
It's built with modern sub-bass and synth pings (albeit with some silly flourishes like sampled baby talk and hokey chimes). But the drippy, devotional lyrics and Swift's delivery are weirdly indebted to the kind of teen pop heard on mid-2000s TV shows such as "The Hills."
It's not quite what we expected from the new, supposedly more cold-blooded Swift we recently heard on "Look What You Made Me Do."
(And for what it's worth: Sunset and Vine in Los Angeles is home to a Bank of America, a Walgreens and an apartment block of YouTube vloggers _ is that really the corner you want to be falling in love on?)
The song returns Swift to Shellback and Max Martin, the Swedish producers and writers who helped design much of her pop crossover album "1989." That record was a global smash, and while "Reputation" will need no help hitting the top of the charts, it does seem like it'll be more all over the map than previously expected.
