Taylor introducing Delicate at the Chicago TS Now event

“So this next song is a song that I wrote about … I was kind of thinking a lot about the concept of a reputation. I knew very early on I wanted to name the album ‘reputation.’ It was one of the first things… so I was able to really kind of construct the album based on that concept. Usually, every time before, I think, I’ve kind of come up with the title of the album pretty late in the process. 'What are these songs, what do they all have in common, what’s a word I use a lot, what …' and so this one was different because I kind of built it out from the concept of a reputation. so there are a lot of like, 'I’m angry at my reputation’ moments. There are like, 'I don’t care about my reputation,’ 'I’m fine okay, I don’t care,’ and then there are these moments where it’s very like, 'Oh my God, what if my reputation actually makes the person that I like not want to get to know me? Oh no, that’s a reality that could happen!’ And so when I was thinking about that part of it, where your reputation, how real is it? It’s only real if it stops you from getting to know someone where you feel like you could connect with them in a really real way. So this is a song I wrote about that.”