Taylor Swift’s ‘Reputation’ Has Its First Great Cover
Image by Screenshot/Youtube
Oh, Taylor. What are we going to do with you? While “Reputation” wasn’t exactly hailed as a masterpiece by the American public, the treacly, cliché-ridden lyrics and sticky, conventional EDM inspired hooks coalesced into an album that facilitated one of the finest bits of musical theater to ever haunt the aimless void of YouTube.
Meet Broadway actresses Shoshana Bean and Cynthia Erivo. You’ll know them from “Wicked” and “The Color Purple” and that pleased gurgle you inadvertently make when exposed to their powers. Shoshana Bean is publicly Jewish and, by virtue of her Broadway status, Cynthia Erivo spends a lot of time with Jews in public!
I might be up for this, I miss this. https://t.co/zdSRZQVGaO
— Cynthia Erivo (@CynthiaEriVo) August 12, 2016
The two friends covered Taylor Swift’s “I Did Something Bad” and the world liked what it heard.
This minimalist cover sounds like Taylor Swift got eaten by Lorde. With a violin and a cello in the background, Erivo and Bean glare down through the camera through the remains of the fourth wall that their stares have presumably just destroyed. From the hilariously petty lyrics (“I never trust a playboy/ But they love me/So I fly him all around the world/And I let them think they saved me”), to the elaborately overacted stoicism, to the Broadway trained voices, if you’re going to listen to a Taylor Swift cover anytime soon, let it be this one.
“It’s not often that I [am] moved to do a cover,” Bean wrote on the YouTube video’s description. “I have to be pretty crazy about the song. This one was love at first listen and has STAYED on repeat.”
Even Taylor Swift had to agree.
Absolutely stunning. https://t.co/6itJC1bk6W
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) December 2, 2017
This marks the first time the two friends have done anything musical together, radiating with a shared, sympatico malevolent fury. Please, pull a Ryan Adams and cover the entire damn album.
Shira Feder is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected]
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
