I've done a music review post once before, on Owl City's music, and since then I've toyed with the idea of doing another music post. I have a couple in mind, but for today I picked Taylor Swift. A lot of people don't like her and I can't quite figure that out, but my husband and I greatly enjoy her music.
Taylor Swift grew up in Pennsylvania and relocated to Nashville, Tennessee at the age of fourteen when her music career started to gather momentum. She became the youngest songwriter ever hired by Sony/ATV Music Publishing House and went onto set new records similar to this and win quite a collection of awards. Such as her third single,
Our Song, making her the youngest person to write and perform her own number one song on a country chart, her record
Fearless won four Grammy Awards and made her the youngest Album of the Year winner, her fourth record, Red, had U.S. opening sales of 1.2 million - the highest recorded in a decade and making her the only female artist with two million plus opening weeks. Her singles,
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together and
I Knew You Were Trouble became worldwide hits. She's won six Grammy Awards, eleven American Music Awards, seven Country Music Association Awards, six Academy of Country Music Awards, and thirteen BMI Awards. She's sold over 26 million albums and 75 million digital downloads. In addition to music, she's also begun expanding her talents and has appeared in an episode of
CSI as well as the movies
Valentine's Day {2010} and
The Lorax {2012}. She also supports art education, children's literacy, natural disaster relief and charities for sick children. There's a whole lot more about her but I think you get the general drift; she's a very interesting person. To learn more about the artist herself, please check out
Wikipedia where I got some of the above information and her own
website.
Now, onto her music. Her debut album,
Taylor Swift, was released in 2006 and quickly caught people's attention. Most of the songs on the album can be described as coming-of-age songs and were written when she was in middle school, coming to the realization that her pursuit of music was causing her peers to reject her, leaving her isolated and developing a keen observation of people. Thus explaining how she was able, at thirteen, to write about relationships without actually being in one. As is characteristic of Taylor Swift, she wrote the songs herself. The release of this album must surely have been a big deal for her, since she'd been trying for so long to achieve this accomplishment. In regards to the label rejections she'd put up with, she had this to say: "I can understand. They were afraid to put out a thirteen-year-old. They were afraid to put out a fourteen-year-old. Then they were afraid to put out a fifteen-year-old. Then they were nervous about putting out a sixteen-year-old. And I'm sure if I hadn't signed with Scott Borchetta [head of Big Machines Records], everybody would be afraid to put out a seventeen-year-old." The album contains fourteen songs, three of which are bonus tracks. The songs are
Tim McGraw, Picture to Burn, Teardrops on my Guitar, A Place in this World, Cold as You, The Outside, Tied Together with a Smile, Stay Beautiful, Should've Said No, Mary's Song {Oh My My}, Our Song, I'm Only Me When I'm With You, Invisible, and
A Perfectly Good Heart. While my husband has his own favorite songs from this particular album {he likes all of Taylor Swift's songs for the most part anyway}, none of them really captured my attention and held it like some of her other songs. They're still great to listen to and have as background music when I'm working on a novel.
Her second album,
Fearless, was released in 2008 and this is really where my attention starts getting involved. Plus, this album contains a special personal tie to my life because one of the songs on it was mutually selected by my then-boyfriend as "our song" and has remained steadfastly "our song" through the last year and a half we've been a couple. This album became a chart-topper and the best seller for 2009, setting and breaking new records for the music community and sticking Swift quite firmly in the spotlight. The songs on the album are:
Fearless, Fifteen, Love Story, Hey Stephen, White Horse, You Belong With Me, Breathe, Tell Me Why, You're Not Sorry, The Way I Loved You, Forever and Always, The Best Day, and
Change. These songs also helped give the artist her reputation for break-up songs. While I personally don't care for the song
Fifteen and
Tell Me Why mysteriously disappeared from my computer's playlist, I do actually have a couple favorites from this album. The title song,
Fearless, has an energy and visual quality to it that I quite like, particularly in the line: "I don't know why but with you, I'd dance in a storm in my best dress/fearless/." The imagery of storms is one of my favorite mental pictures - especially in my own writings.
White Horse, You Belong With Me, Forever and Always, and
Change are the remaining songs I enjoy from this album. But it's
Love Story that I play over and over again, with fond and long-lasting memories, because it's "our song."
Swift's third album,
Speak Now, was released in October 2010 and sold over one million copies in it's first week of U.S. release. In this album, Taylor branches out from country music and into more modern stuff, exploring and stretching her lyrical and musical talents. It also is a transitional album, leaving the Jr. High and high school themes behind and moving into more grown-up adult themes - all while somehow keeping her innocent view of the world in tact. This is probably my favorite of her albums. The songs are:
Mine, Sparks Fly, Back to December, Speak Now, Dear John, The Story of Us, Never Grow Up, Enchanted, Better Than Revenge, Innocent, Haunted Last Kiss, and
Long Live. Personally, I didn't like
Never Grow Up because I've spent the majority of my life trying to grow up as fast as possible, and
Dear John also mysteriously disappeared from my computer. During our courtship and engagement, my husband and I {fortunately or unfortunately, we still aren't quite sure} were able to closely identify with many of the songs on this album, including
Back to December and
Last Kiss which became rather painful to listen to at one point. However, we also took encouragement from them, especially
Mine and
Long Live. My personal favorite of all the Taylor Swift songs {
Love Story aside of course} is
Sparks Fly and my husband and I are still continually enchanted by
Enchanted.
Taylor Swift's fourth and latest album,
Red, was released in October 2012 and quickly skyrocketed the sales. Her single,
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together toppled iTunes charts all over the world and became a hit song. During a YouTube webchat {which my husband and I watched} in August 2012, Swift explained the meaning behind her album title: "All the different emotions that are written about on this album are all pretty much about the kind of tumultuous, crazy, insane, intense, semi-toxic relationships that I’ve experienced in the last two years. All those emotions — spanning from intense love, intense frustration, jealousy, confusion, all of that — in my mind, all those emotions are red. You know, there’s nothing in between. There’s nothing beige about any of those feelings." While I have as yet to listen to the album in it's entirety {we're debating buying it at some point in time}, I have heard some of the songs {thank you YouTube!} but I'll get to those in a minute. The sixteen songs on the album are:
State of Grace, Red, Treacherous, I Knew You Were Trouble, All Too Well, 22, I Almost Do, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Stay Stay Stay, The Last Time, Holy Ground, Sad Beautiful Tragic, The Lucky One, Everything Has Changed, Starlight, and
Begin Again. Of these sixteen songs, I've heard the two hits
I Knew You Were Trouble and
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together in addition to
Red, 22 and
Begin Again. While the official music video for
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together {gosh, long title to type} had a lot of talking prior to the actual song, I did like the beat of it.
22, though, is probably my favorite of the songs thus far; it's fun and bouncy with a love of life that's comfortable and relaxed. I'm intrigued by the song
Starlight; titles like that always catch my eye.
To wrap up this post, Taylor Swift's music, while in some respects probably similar to lots of other music out there, stands out in that it's innocent, clean and usually has a cheerful bounce to it. It's an enchanting thing to listen to but sometimes it's also great battle scene music and a wonderful brain teaser. Each of her songs has a personal connection and meaning to her, and a meaning to the words and the arrangement of the words. The story behind
Enchanted is definitely one of my favorite behind-the-song stories. As for the artist herself; people come and go in this world. Idols rise and far, people make and break it all around us everyday. So, for now, she will stay as a favorite in my book, and I will continue to look forward to new songs from her. Pasted below are some YouTube videos of my favorite songs {I hope they can play for you}. Also, Taylor Swift released a line of perfume, named for her song
Enchanted and it is actually enchanting, though expensive. My husband and I were able to try a free sample and I quite liked it.
Here is the YouTube video for
Love Story.
And for
Sparks Fly
And for
Enchanted
As well as
Eyes Open which is a single released with her
Hunger Games song
Safe and Sound
Taylor Swift has accomplished much in her whirlwind career. She's a chart-topper and a talented young lady. She's also {to my knowledge} not tattooed, pierced, doesn't drink or do drugs, and isn't in the media for bad behavior. I like to think she's a Christian too, but that's trickier to tell nowadays. She keeps to herself and brings smiles to people's faces. There are heartwarming stories of her helping out children with cancer and doing good deeds. She has an interesting taste in clothing that is usually 90% modest in my opinion. There's always something about someone's wardrobe choices that I don't like. But I generally like Taylor's choices. Her music is uplifting, bright and I can relate to a lot of the songs - particularly Love Story. It's rather uncanny how close that song paralleled my own love story with my husband. Her previous album, Red, was a gradual step in a new direction and contained many wonderful songs that were a blast of fresh air to my musical library.
And this move wasn't an abrupt one either. If you really look closely at he songs in Red, you will see a definite difference between them and her older hits, such as Love Story, Fearless, and Sparks Fly. The happy innocence is gone, replaced with the knowledge of reality. She figured out that life really isn't a fairy tale and she dealt with that realization in musical style, to her fans' delight. One of the things I have always loved about her music is that she draws inspiration from her life experiences. You have to write what you know and Taylor does just that. Some people give her flack for writing about her breakups and heartaches, but I like it. Would you give a writer flack for taking their experiences and writing about them in their books? We writers use writing as a sort of self-therapy and we always get our revenge in print. We also explore new genres, with hit and miss success. That's what Taylor Swift is doing. She has country down and now wants to stretch and explore; if I were her, I would be pretty bored of the same old same old by now. So it's no surprise that she wants a change.
