Karma

People think Karma was recorded in 2016 — a rough year for Taylor. To understand why, here’s a refresher: In 2016, Taylor was coming off the success of one of her biggest album rollouts yet. 1989, her full tilt into the world of being a mega pop star, had been released in 2014, and she spent most of 2015 on the road, touring stadiums with her “The 1989 World Tour” in support of it. However, the next year was a rocky one for her: She had made amends with Kanye West after he had interrupted her acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, and they were publicly friendly until February 2016, when he released the song “Famous,” which features the lines “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why?/I made that bitch famous.”

Taylor spoke out against the song and it led to a back-and-forth discussion about whether or not she had approved its controversial lines. The feud peaked in July, when West’s wife Kim Kardashian released videos on her Snapchat in which Taylor seemed to approve the song over the phone. Taylor then left social media and mostly stopped making public appearances for the rest of 2016. Up until then, she’d consistently released an album every two years. But now she had an uncharacteristically long gap in her discography, leading to speculation that perhaps she had something planned before stepping away from the spotlight.

In 2016, Taylor also debuted a new look and seemed to be dropping hints that a new era was coming. That spring, she did a very un-Taylor Swift-like thing: She chopped off her long bob and bleached it, an edgier-than-usual aesthetic for her. She appeared on the cover of Vogue, at Coachella, and at the Met Gala with the new look. Pop Rollout 101 has taught fans that a new hairdo and completely revamped style doesn’t come out of nowhere and, like other stars, Taylor has frequently used a major hair change to indicate a new era. Her styling changed, too, and she went for a more glam (but sometimes also punk) aesthetic than she had previously.