Taylor Swift emerged as a country music icon six years ago, blending the genre with mainstream popular music. Her debut album burst with freshness reflective of her naïveté and inexperience with teen romance.
However, Taylor Swift’s new album, Red, which she released on Oct. 22, breaks away from her previous albums in a manner reflecting Swift’s fleeting youth.
Through this album, Swift speaks with more experience both in life and love. The album received a fair deal of hype due to the release of four promotional singles starting in August.
In a webcast with her fans, Swift debuted her first single “We Are Never Getting Back Together.” The song served as prep for her new album’s departure from Swift’s traditional style, giving fans her signature breakup theme with a more “pop” beat.
The song’s approach to shattered relationships spun a traditionally sad topic on its head, furnishing it with a set of motivational lyrics in a way only Taylor Swift could. “This is exhausting,” Taylor Swift sighs during a simulated phone conversation with an ex at a break in the song.
Her voice sounds differently than it had while she was pining over “Drew” in her famous “Teardrops on My Guitar.” Her tone exhudes less desperation and more confidence.
Swift, to the discontent of many of her country fans, took on a slightly different tune, no longer straddling the “pop-country” bridge in many of her songs, and instead adding strong rock undertones. A change in appearance accompanied the new musical style, with Swift straightening her signature curly locks, adding a fringe along with red lipstick.
“I Knew You Were Trouble,” was released as the third promotional single, featuring a more melancholy tone and leaving the taste of remorse lingering on millions of fans lips as they sang along.
The song courses through a realization that Swift should have known better before falling for the unidentifiable “him.” Swift fluctuates in the chorus from high to low, and while the lyrics themselves cling together with cohesion, the result is an inexplicably catchy tune.
The theme of this album was not lost on her most avid fans, as Swift relinquishes her previously childish persona and replaces it with a more mature and likable one.
The relationships she describes in this album are more complex and thus have attracted a more diverse fan-base while maintaining her 13-year-old die-hards as well as gaining some older fans with whom her lyrics truly resonate.
The most blatant evidence of Swift’s maturity fighting its way through her lyrics is in her song “22,” which strikes a significant contrast to her previous “Fifteen” which was released in late 2009. The dance-beat paints a picture of a “girls night out” with an older audience in mind.
As with many of her albums, Swift’s fans were left scrambling to determine who the songs on this new album are about.
While the melange of rock, pop and country sounds can muddle any clear
indicators as to who the celebrity exes are, one thing was most definitely clear: Swift had no intention of ever getting back together with them, “like ever.”