After plenty of teasing and quite a bit of waiting, Taylor Swift has finally given fans the gift they've been wanting for three years...That's right, ladies, gents and Swifties all around the world, #TS6 is here! 
 
 The singer revealed on Wednesday she will this year release her sixth studio album, Reputation, her first major record in three years. Reputation is set for release on Nov. 10, according to her Instagram. She also revealed that the first single from the record will be released Thursday night. 
 
 She also revealed its cover art. It features a black and white photo of Taylor dressed casually in a loose-fitting shirt and sporting wet hair, dark lipstick and a chain choker while standing amid a backdrop of fake newspaper headlines and articles, all containing repeats of two words, "Taylor Swift." 
 
 It comes hours after the singer released the third in a series of three videos making up a larger one of a slithering snake—an animal her critics have often associated with her over the years, and days after she purged all of her social media accounts. ||||| Photo: Big Machine Records/GMA/Twitter 
 
 Apparently there are things that even Taylor Swift can’t shake off. As demonstrated by “Look What You Made Me Do,” the first lead single for her upcoming Reputation, the former country star and current pop behemoth has spent no small amount of time brooding on the hit her reputation took in summer 2016 when her statement that she had never given Kanye West permission to talk about her on his Life of Pablo single “Famous” was belied by Kim Kardashian West’s release of a recorded conversation between Swift and West in which she, well, gave Kanye permission to talk about her on “Famous.” If Swift hasn’t been thinking constantly about revenge since then, there’s no indication of it on “Look What You Made Me Do,” whose lyrics linger, then linger further, on the damage she’s suffered. 
 
 It’s grievous. She herself openly admits that it was fatal. “I rose up from the dead,” Swift sings in the pre-chorus; the bridge concludes with her announcement that the old Taylor can no longer be heard “because she’s dead.” Pop music is never not repetitive, but Swift’s repetitions, for the first time ever in her career, sound wearying instead of catchy. She talks about a revenge list, then talks again about revenge: “Maybe I got mine, but you’ll all get yours.” True, the threats could sound convincing with the right delivery — anything can sound ominous with the right delivery. But Swift’s lines start out wrapped in a melodic cadence that (matched with production that manages the neat trick of being both lurching and insubstantial) can only be described as “Disney-villain karaoke,” leaving it only when she broods monotonously in spoken word. 
 
 I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me 
 
 I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams. 
 
 For all the serpent-themed hype leading up to the launch of the song, Swift’s words lack venom, fangs, and smoothness. They have the consistency of wet flour, and their meaning could be converted into a series of impotent hisses without any loss in translation. She claims to have gotten harder, but only comes off as brittle; she says that defeat made her smarter, but sounds if she’s endlessly smarting. It’s impossible for anyone but her most die-hard fans (which are, to be fair, legion) to think that the song represents Taylor in a position of strength; more-casual listeners accustomed — over the course of five good to very good albums — to the high floor and medium ceilings of Swift’s compositions will be appalled at the depth to which she’s fallen. As far as her archnemeses Kim and Kanye go, it’s completely impossible to imagine them doing anything but laughing, hard, at “Look What You Made Me Do.” They’ve “made” Taylor Swift release the worst music of her career: What could possibly be less intimidating than that? 
 
 If the sinking, imploded sense that Swift’s song summons feels familiar to careful listeners, there’s a reason. Drake, too, was a pop juggernaut whose carefully constructed public image was damaged enough by a prolonged feud with a boisterous rap artist that he ended up making a mistrust-laced collection that signaled a decline from the total prominence he formerly enjoyed. “Look What You Made Me Do” looks to be to Taylor what “Summer Sixteen” was to Drake last year: a song heralding an upcoming album (11 weeks prior to release for Swift, 13 for Drake) whose scant handful of decent lines (her drama/karma couplet is nice enough) is saddled with anesthetic delivery and an indefensibly corny hook (Drake, if you’ll recall, was “looking for reveeeenge”). Judging solely from its lead single, Reputation already has the potential to be Taylor Swift’s Views: a collection whose stature as a commercial juggernaut fails to overshadow its more permanent character as a creative debacle. Recent history doesn’t have to repeat itself, but if it does, there’s no way to say that she didn’t have fair warning. ||||| Is Taylor Swift releasing new music? Her mysterious snake videos hint yes 
 
 CLOSE Taylor Swift shared a cryptic video snippet Monday across her social media accounts of a snake. USA TODAY 
 
 Yep, it's a snake. 
 
 Taylor Swift continues to tease fans with mysterious videos on social media, her first posts since wiping her accounts on Friday. 
 
 Just after 11 a.m. ET on Monday, Swift posted a ten-second video of what appears to be a snake's tail on Instagram and Twitter. 
 
 On Tuesday, around the same time, she posted a second clip of the snake. 
 
 On Wednesday, the snake finally reared its head in an additional, heavily-CGI'd video. With the tail, middle and head of the snake all represented, fans were left guessing whether Thursday will actually bring new music. 
 
 The posts are the first updates on Swift's social media sites since her official pages were blacked out (including Twitter, Instagram and her own website) prompting speculation of a new album announcement. 
 
 Coincidentally, last Friday marked the three-year anniversary of Swift's Shake It Off release and 1989 album announcement, hinting that her much-anticipated sixth album may be around the corner. 
 
 More: Taylor Swift erased from social media and fans can't shake it off 
 
 Joseph Kahn, Swift's go-to music video director, quoted her tweet with a smiley-face and cracked a joke about Monday's solar eclipse, with many Internet commenters speculating that the two events were related. 
 
 In 30 minutes, as a show of power, @taylorswift13 will blot out the sun. — Joseph Kahn (@JosephKahn) August 21, 2017 
 
 Tswift trying to eclipse the eclipse https://t.co/0fThmqPB6n — Sydney Esiason (@sydneyesiason) August 21, 2017 
 
 Only Taylor Swift could out hype a solar eclipse💁🏻 https://t.co/ZvGP8mlRxR — Brooklyn and Bailey (@BrookAndBailey) August 21, 2017 
 
 As fans have pointed out, Taylor has been associated with snake imagery since her drama with Kim Kardashian last year. Right around the time Kardashian "exposed" Swift on social media, she tweeted a string of snake emoji, which fans interpreted as her taking shots at Swift. 
 
 And earlier this year, Swift fans commemorate the anniversary of the drama by celebrating "National Snake Day" on July 17 as a holiday in Swift's honor. 
 
 Twitter had plenty of jokes about Taylor embracing the snake. 
 
 Instead of being very much excluded from this narrative, I guess she's owning it https://t.co/WhxLTA4FUv — Phillip Picardi (@pfpicardi) August 23, 2017 
 
 No way...is Taylor Swift leaning totally into her supposed "snake" role people love giving her?! HERE FOR THAT!! Give it to em good, Taylor! https://t.co/azmocrQC7Y — Jeff Benjamin (@Jeff__Benjamin) August 21, 2017 
 
 Queen of taking the hate and turning it into art. 🐍 https://t.co/e6ZfI5Rcj4 — Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) August 21, 2017 
 
 i see a snake? im guessing her album is self-titled https://t.co/tRzFVOs8M1 — san (@duarxgui) August 21, 2017 
 
 Oh yes, a smart business woman using self deprecation to her advantage https://t.co/CBlF5l5jNF — nick (@touchnick) August 21, 2017 
 
 "Snakes shed their skin to allow for further growth and to remove parasites that may have attached to their old skin." #TS6ISCOMIMGhttps://t.co/ymiMvoniFK — Katie Krause (@Katie_Krause) August 21, 2017 
 
 Viewers also thought the video's mysterious tail resembled a dragon, prompting a flurry of Game of Thrones references. 
 
 Taylor Swift, the real Mother of Dragons. https://t.co/SYpIVkj4hq — Brandon Davis (@BrandonDavisBD) August 21, 2017 
 
 Is this like a Game of Thrones reference? TSwift's the new mother of dragons, y'all. https://t.co/OxVid1KPLE — Brian Truitt (@briantruitt) August 21, 2017 
 
 is this a dragon? did she just start watching game of thrones? so many questions I'm dying https://t.co/wc8bIGsOlE — sania (@jacobpercIta) August 21, 2017 
 
 the mother of dragons we deserve 😩😩😩 https://t.co/QJBYqH0D2T — Randolph (@rabdolph) August 21, 2017 
 
 One date that Swift fans should keep in mind: Sept. 30, the end of the eligibility period for next year's Grammy awards, which would give the singer a hard deadline if she wants any new music to qualify. 
 
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– Taylor Swift had the internet buzzing about what she might be up to after her social media accounts recently went dark and then came back to life with snakes (lots of snakes). And on Wednesday, she revealed the answer: She's releasing another album, Reputation, due out Nov. 10. The first single will be released Thursday, E! reports. Reputation will be Swift's sixth studio album and her first release in three years. As for the title, it probably has to do with those aforementioned snakes; BuzzFeed delves into how the snake emoji, as used by her critics, has become inextricably intertwined with Taylor—and why she might now be attempting to "reclaim" it.