On the other hand, Swift is a savvy businesswoman who knows which way the wind is blowing, and how simply drawn narratives can often seem more important than artists’ actual bodies of work. She’s also very aware of how the perception of her has shifted since the calendar flipped to 2016.

The Kanye West-Taylor Swift feud that has been percolating since West interrupted her Video Music Awards acceptance speech in 2009 took multiple turns last year. West released Famous, which included the line “I made that bitch famous!”, referring to Swift, who is mentioned in the previous line as a potential sex partner.

Swift then retorted during her victory speech for 1989’s album of the year win at the Grammys. Kim Kardashian West then “exposed” Swift’s approval of the line via Snapchat, before Swift asked to be “excluded from this narrative” via Instagram. There were smaller, more subtle twists that happened along the way, but that’s the basic story.

It’s ridiculous in a lot of ways, high school gossip amplified to feed the public’s hunger for drama. It’s also why her next album Reputation, which comes out on November 10, seems to represent a heel turn for Swift, or at least a lean towards the dark side.

This week Swift wiped all of her social media, snapping the blinds on her past life. She later teased something via a series of videos showing a snake glittering in low light. Reputation’s cover shows Swift posing defiantly, her constant press threatening to overtake her, the album title in a font normally reserved for metal bands.

Produced by Jack Antonoff, the album’s lead single is a skeletal slice of electro-pop that borrows its beat from the provocateur Peaches’ 2003 banger Operate and places Swift’s tremulous voice front and centre. That’s a welcome development in the wake of I Don’t Want to Live Forever, the 50 Shades Darker tie-in track from earlier this year that rendered her nearly unrecognisable as she traded sighs with Zayn Malik. It’s also a bold move in a pop market that seems averse to women who possess any sort of unique vocal personality.

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On Look What You Made Me Do, Swift’s lyrics are visceral and almost sloppy, with her rhyming “time” and “time” on the Lorde-channelling pre-chorus, and melodramatically declaring that “the old Taylor” is “dead!”. The chorus borrows its cadence from Right Said Fred’s 1992 body-shaker I’m Too Sexy, a ridiculous touch that at least cuts the acid a bit. There’s also a callback to Britney Spears’ 2007 track Piece of Me, which made references to the tabloid-chronicled problems that had plagued her earlier that year.

The songs Swift is borrowing from are superior to Look What You Made Me Do, although its potential for pop catharsis is off the charts. How will this track fit into the album’s greater narrative? Is it a prelude to Swift releasing a bitchy album, one where each celebrity who’s peeved her – West, Kardashian West, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Calvin Harris, whoever was rude to her cats – gets a diss track of their own?

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One thing is for sure, with a handful of Swift’s most iconic characters from songs past featuring at the end of her latest music video, it seems that fans can look forward to seeing more sides to her personality. After all, a heel turn doesn’t work without there being a return to being good somewhere on the horizon.