Taylor Swift has confirmed details of her forthcoming sixth album and its lead single, alluding to her tricky couple of years in the spotlight.
In a burst of Instagram posts, she revealed that her upcoming collection is titled ‘Reputation’, with the first single coming “tomorrow night” (Thursday 24 August).
The singer also posted the album’s artwork, which sees her posing in black and white, with her name spelled out to resemble newspaper headlines.
The album will be out on Friday 10 November and its title is presumably a reference to the fact that her name has rarely been out of the news since the release of ‘1989’, although the stories haven’t exactly always been positive.
Over the past few years, Taylor’s been involved in an ongoing feud with Katy Perry, as well as being called out by ex-boyfriend Calvin Harris, who accused her of trying to “bury” him on social media.
And that’s without delving into her beef with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, which culminated in the Snapchat story watched around the world, when the reality star posted snippets of a phone call proving that her husband had contacted Taylor regarding certain lyrics to his song, ‘Famous’, in which he claimed that he “and Taylor might still have sex”.
In the days before the reveal, Taylor erased her entire Twitter and Instagram history, and over the past few days, posted a cryptic video of a snake - an apparent reference to the nickname she earned on social media in the wake of Kim’s Snapchat posts.
Half an hour before posting it was posted on Instagram, the album artwork leaked online and was shared by fans on Twitter.
Her announcement coincides with the Video Music Awards, which Taylor has a long history with, from Kanye’s much-discussed stage invasion during her acceptance speech in 2009.
Taylor’s most recent VMAs appearance was in 2015, where she performed with Nicki Minaj, who she’d previously issued a public apology to when she misconstrued comments the ‘Super Bass’ rapper had made about white artists being given preferential treatment.
Given how personal Taylor’s songwriting has been known to be in the past, we can’t wait to see how much of her troublesome couple of years makes it onto the album...