I never thought I’d ever find myself writing a Taylor Swift album review (I already have so many pending reviews as it is) but I can’t help it, I just felt drawn to “Lover” the words just started coming out, I had to write them down while having breakfast on a Monday morning.
After her Reputation album (2017) wherein we saw a grittier Taylor Swift, who was also at the time in the middle of a very public feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian-West. We see Taylor return to a happier place in Lover, her seventh studio album.
Before you even listen to the first track of her album, Swift herself tells the listener in a Love, Taylor: Lover Enhanced Album (experience) on Spotify- about the first track off the album a light and finger-snapping-inducing track I forgot that you existedshe says: “I wanted to bring us out of the reputation album era, This song closes the book in resolving that whole conflict with a shrug.” for the rest of the album, she gives the listener snippets on her thoughts and approach to the album and in some of the songs, which makes the whole experience a little more personal.
Much like the purple and pink hues of its album art, Taylor Swift’s latest release “Lover” is filled with messages of self-love its so refreshing and even those songs that tell of other stories (Cruel Summer, The Man) are told in such an infectious pop spectacle you can’t help but sing and dance along.
I have to applaud how smart and impressive The Manis (it’s one of my favorite tracks from the album) in the song, Swift tells the story of her career and how she has always been viewed and portrayed differently in the industry just because she is a woman. “I’m so sick and tired of running as fast as I can/ Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man”. She paints this picture, where she is an Alpha male, being celebrated with her accomplishments, “They say I played the field, before finding someone I could commit to” this, instead of being ridiculed at how she’s gone through one relationship after another.
In Arher Swift sings about the dichotomy of being both the perpetrator and victim, of experiencing being both the archer and the prey. In another brilliant use of imagery, she sings “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put me together again/ Because all my enemies started out as friends”.
It’s interesting to note that the two singles off the album, Me! and You Need to Calm Down are actually some of the weakest songs, yes, this is still the case, even if I am a fan of Brendon Urie, whom she collaborates with in the former. The videos for both songs being a bit too distracting it’s a bit hard to concentrate on the songs themselves. Turns out, You Need to Calm Down is not so bad and an actually fun way to deal with haters and Internet trolls.
No, Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince is not about singer Halsey and her 2015 single New Americana” –instead Swift goes political and talks about the “ðisillusionment with our crazy world of politics and inequality, set in a metaphorical high school” and finding that one person despite all the noise. Again, another impressive story-telling from the singer-songwriter, who is turning thirty and perhaps we will see her writing more songs with more social themes. This is of course more of a question of what’s in the future for Miss Swift. For now, she can sit back and enjoy the success of Lover which (according to Billboard) is already 2019’s top selling album in the U.S, just after two days on sale.
And fans can rest, knowing that Taylor is back and that now we know that she is a lover and not a fighter, and its okay, we’re loving it. (4/5).