Welcome to this week in Ringer Culture. I'm Liz Kelly here to bring you a compilation of the best offerings from the culture side of things here at the Ringer Podcast Network.

First up, we have Justin Terity and Cam Collins on Damage Control, giving their thoughts on Taylor Swift's new album Reputation.

Taylor Swift's new album Reputation is born. It is hardly a Taylor Swift album. It did not really get much of a rise out of me one way or another. I will copy liking, I will copy liking one song and it wasn't one of the singles. I will copy liking Endgame.

The one that had Ed Sheeran on it. I don't even know what's Endgame featuring Ed Sheeran. I don't even know what to say for myself.

I don't know what to say. That's your pick. I apologize. That's your critics choice. That's what this album has done to me. I charity helped me help me with this album because you wrote about this as well this week.

I went into this album having at least among our friends collectively agreed that we were preparing for it to be a failure because the singles, look what you made me do, etc.

They were provoking something that was not provocative. They were just not interesting. They were bad songs. But more importantly, they were putting forward a persona that just the old Taylor is dead. I don't know what to say. Who is that?

I don't reiterate what you just said. We were expecting some bullshit, but this isn't the bullshit we expected. I think that's it, except I kind of did expected because I will say you pointed out that the singles are just all over the place and not great.

People were panning them and they sort of bricked relative to the 1989 singles, certainly which stayed. They went number one and they stayed number one. That's what they did. These songs are debuting high, but they're just dropping like flies.

In terms of the fact, as far as the bullshit that one did or did not expect goes, the second single from this album is a song called Ready For It, which may be a promo single actually.

The second song we got to hear on the internet from this album is Ready For It. And Ready For It is a song that every time I try to listen to it and watch the music video, I just struggle to understand not only what the song is about, but what the emotional through line of it is.

It seems so musically confused and emotionally confused that an emotional through lines or Taylor's thing. Right, that's the thing. That's her talent. Like you know what the emotional through line of blank spaces.

Well, to be fair, she has the same emotional through line that she's had since she was 12. Sure. But right, it's legible. I get it. She is not the first child talent load. I have to grow up and have a musical career. You know what I mean? These, no, she's not the first to fail to grow. That's also true.

That's also true.

But I find this album frustrating because everything about it on the individual song level and then on the level of how songs relate to each other.

Everything about it sounds like it's made by a person who doesn't know she sounds like somebody who doesn't know what a Taylor Swift song is supposed to sound like anymore. She's lost in the sauce.

I would never call myself a Taylor Swift stand, but I've also always had to concede despite always being suspicious of her. Her persona that she can write a hook.

But I don't know what to do with this album in which nothing stands out really about her. Right, like these songs could belong to anybody.

I think pop stars get to hide behind persona and narrative a lot. Right. So I'll say that we encourage it. You know, I take 1989, which is a hugely successful Taylor Swift album.

At least three years ago had massive singles. So let's take one of the biggest singles from that album. Bad blood.

Which I think is a horrible song. You think, okay, I think that song is horrible. But but constitutionally, I get what that song is.

It's petty, bratty, combative, rawa, anthem song. Got it. Okay, I get what this is. It's a combative pop song. Sure.

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