its singles won four MTV Video Music Awards. Background On her synth-pop fifth studio album 1989 (2014), American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift changed her sound and image from country music to pop. Within a year of its release, 1989 sold over five million copies and confirmed Swift's status as a global pop star. During promotion of 1989, Swift was a target of tabloid gossip; her "America's Sweetheart" reputation, a result of her wholesome, innocent image, was tarnished by the publicizing of her romantic relationships and disputes with other celebrities. Swift's mid-2016 dispute with rapper Kanye West, who released the single "Famous", led to an internet cancellation movement against Swift, in which she was labeled a "snake". Swift secluded herself from press attention and released her sixth studio album Reputation in November 2017, as an answer to the media attention surrounding her celebrity. Before Reputation release, Swift cleared her social media accounts, and began posting images and videos of snakes. Reputation has a dark, heavy, hip hop-influenced production, and contains songs with themes of vengeance and drama. Swift avoided promoting the album in mass media as she had done for her previous albums, instead holding fan-exclusive listening sessions and performing on television a few times without being interviewed. Reputation is the first album Swift released outside her usual two-year album release cycle, and her last under her 12-year, 2006 contract with Big Machine Records. Swift supported Reputation with her Reputation Stadium Tour (2018), on which she used a giant model of a cobra as a stage centerpiece; the tour broke the record for the all-time highest-grossing U.S. tour. In November 2018, upon completing the Reputation Stadium Tour, Swift signed with Universal Music Group label Republic Records, whose contract allowed her to own the master recordings to her albums. She endorsed two Democrat candidates for the 2018 midterm elections in her home state of Tennessee; it was the first time she publicly voiced her political opinion. Swift said she wrote Reputation as a "defense mechanism" that allowed her to cope with the experience. She secluded herself from press attention because she needed to protect her mental health and stop feeling obliged to "explain herself". Commenting on her forgone "America's Sweetheart" reputation, Swift said it was liberating to relinquish her self-awareness of the title and her attempt to be "always smiling, always happy". On the Reputation Stadium Tour, Swift was inspired by the love