Taylor Swift is ready for fans to be blown away with the vault tracks on her sixth studio album, Reputation.
Swift, 33, mentioned Reputation’s never-before-heard songs during an interview with TIME after being named the publication’s 2023 Person of the Year on Wednesday, December 6. “It’s a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure,” she called Reputation, noting that the vault tracks are “fire.”
Reputation was originally released in 2017, one year after Kanye West referenced her in his song, “Famous.” At the time, his then-wife, Kim Kardashian, released a tampered phone call between West, 46, and Swift, making it seem like Swift consented to the lyrics. Kardashian, 42, and fans then started calling Swift a snake.
“I think a lot of people see it and they’re just like, ‘Sick snakes and strobe lights,’” she told TIME of the album, adding that the West and Kardashian feud felt like “career death.”
She explained: “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
Swift has already released Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version). Reputation and her debut album, Taylor Swift, are the two albums that remain. (Swift is rerecording her albums to have control over her master recordings after music executive Scooter Braun bought the rights to her music in 2019. Through the years, Swift has called Bruan, 42, a “bully,” and told TIME he “hates” her.)
“There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art,” she said. “But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies. Trash takes itself out every single time.”
Swift told TIME that friends and family — including her dad, Scott Swift, and Kelly Clarkson — encouraged her to “redo” her albums. “I’d look at them and go, ‘How can I possibly do that?’ Nobody wants to redo their homework if on the way to school, the wind blows your book report away.” Now, however, Swift sees the journey as “a movie.”
“I’m collecting horcruxes,” she said, referencing the Harry Potter series. “I’m collecting infinity stones [from the Marvel universe.] Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one.”
Swift recently wrapped up her last Eras Tour show of 2023 while playing in São Paulo, Brazil, in November. She’ll return to tour in February 2024, starting in Tokyo.
