Taylor Swift Lover Album Review: Can getting it so right be getting it so wrong?

Taylor Swift’s much anticipated seventh studio album Lover, in three weeks became the best-selling album of the year in the U.S. Can you say this is much of a surprise considering the last record holder was Swift herself with the album Reputation? Lover has been breaking records in China and the UK and too many other places to list, but will it stand the test of time and outshine her previous works?

The Lover era represents a stepping into the light mentality after the darkness of the Reputation era; in Swift’s words the album is a “love letter to love itself.” Boasting her longest track list yet, the eighteen songs address all you would expect from Swift. The album starts by Swift announcing she has become indifferent about those who bring her down with the track I forgot that you existed. Then takes us on a journey through a celebration of love surviving turmoil, both from the outside and within the relationship itself. Swift applauds the strength and integrity of the people around her who are committed to bringing a calmness to the rollercoaster that is life. She calls out those who in her words ‘need to calm down’ instead of using their time and energy to attack people. Then brings us full circle - ending the album by chanting ‘let it go and step into the daylight’. Topically the album ticks all the Taylor boxes.

After the drastic sonic 180 with her album Reputation (2017), I was ready for anything. Going from easy listening to a dark jagged album that experimented with trap, and in my opinion succeeded, blew the doors wide open and proved she was capable of just about anything. So when the pastel colours started to return on Swift’s instagram I didn’t know what to expect from this era. It seemed like the old Taylor wasn’t in fact “dead” like she claimed.

The release of the lead single Me! under-whelmed me. . The opening lines of the song use the same vocoder effect of her hit single Delicate (2017), which instantly deflated my excitement as I had heard this before. For a lead single, I was surprised at the similarities between the track and her previous records. The collaboration with Brendan Urie of Panic and the Disco was a stroke of genius and like her collaborators from Reputation, an unexpected win. I see the collaboration as the single differentiating factor against 2014’s ‘Shake it Off' - without which I doubt ‘Me!’ would’ve been born. While for these reasons I still don’t categorise the song as revolutionary, I still have come to love and enjoy it.

While listening to the full Lover album, I found many sonic references to Swift’s previous works. Her nod to pop-punk on the track ‘Paper Rings’ is extremely reminiscent of Speak Now’s (2010) ‘The story of us’. The track ‘Soon you’ll get better’ could’ve stepped right out from her Fearless (2008) album. With the swooning backing vocals from country royalty, the Dixie Chicks, the song is quintessentially country Taylor. However, there was one track on Reputation, ‘Gorgeous’, that came across a little off brand for the era, but maybe this was just foreshadowing the tone of Lover. The young buoyancy could make the song ‘London Boy’s’ twin. The most obvious correlation for me came across in Lover’s ‘Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince’ and Reputation’s ‘So it goes’. The tracks are so similar I actually started singing the ‘So it goes’ chorus during my first listen of ‘Miss Americana’.

There are eight outstanding tracks on Lover that keep me listening to the album. One of which is the second single ‘You need to calm down’, my ultimate favourite. Again, at first listen (like the song Me!) it didn’t strike me as musically profound. After the bold maturity of her two previous albums I wasn’t expecting a song that felt so extremely youthful, bordering on childlike. Especially after the tone of the lead single (Me!), ’You need to calm down’ seemed like an odd choice as a follow up single. In the past, Swift has used the lead up to an album release brilliantly. Using single releases to not necessarily showcase the highlights of the album, but to illustrate the spectrum of sounds and themes - the perfect musical trailer for an album. So I trusted the brain of the 10-time Grammy award winner and the number 1 record label in the world and gave the song a few days to sink in. Needless to say, I get it now, because I can’t stop singing it. The melody of the song is so simple and has so much space that it's impossible not to remember. Swift’s vocal phrasing of the lyrics is unbelievably memorable to the point where they’re meme-able! I find myself singing the phrases ‘damn, it’s 7am’, or ‘you’re being too loud’ in Swift’s amusing accent daily. The opening lead synth is instantly recognisable from the first note, and in a way, is sing-able itself. If she was looking to get a positive message stuck in everyone’s head, this was the way to do it. The sassy sarcastic and nonchalant attitude of the track is like a pop version of her 2010 hit ‘Mean’. A song that went on to win Swift two Grammy Awards. Could ‘You need to calm down’ be heading the same way?

An honourable mention goes to the well over-due tune ‘The Man’. This track is so far the best musical articulation of the sexism facing the music industry and is relevant to every industry and working environment. I felt particularly proud of Swift for the lyrics in the bridge of this song, as they cleverly addressed a falling out with fellow musician Kanye West, while simultaneously calling out the absurd double standard our language has when it comes to men and women. Controversy erupted a few years ago over a song released by West with the tongue in cheek lyrics ‘Taylor and I might still have sex’. This comes nearly a decade after he interrupted her acceptance speech at the video music awards claiming she didn’t deserve to win. While West had spoken with Swift about the lyrics (evidenced by a video captured by his wife), she explained that the following line had not been approved by her and was later added to the track. West saying ‘Taylor and I might still have sex. Why? Because I made that bitch famous’. A line with extreme sexist undertones that undermined her success as a young woman, with West claiming he is the reason for her fame due to the Video Music Awards incident. Swift was extremely unimpressed by this comment; particularly with being referred to as ‘that bitch’. West’s response to this was that in Hip Hop music being called a bitch is a compliment. ‘The Man’ shatters that flawed belief by cross referencing men’s use of the word and in true Taylor Swift fashion, slaps the perpetrators right across the face by actually saying the word bitch, not once but twice!

Lover saw Swift collaborate without two members of her musical dream team, Max Martin and Martin Shellback. The threesome have been pop royalty since 2012 with their first collaboration ‘We are never ever getting back together.’ Her longtime friend, writer and producer Jack Antonoff stepped up into the role of co-executive producer alongside Swift. Her new additions to the production team make me question if Martin and Shellback simply weren’t available to make studio time with Swift. When she made the move from country artist to pop artist Martin and Shellback were the numbers she called. Max Martin oversaw the entire production of Swift’s first pop album 1989 (2014), winning Swift her second Album of the year Grammy and making her the first woman to do so. When Swift wanted to shed the shiny 80’s pop synth sound and create Reputation, an album full of dark hip-hop trap, Martin and Shellback were there again. For an album that has so much Taylor Swift nostalgia I’m curious about the choice of producers.

While Antonoff worked on the majority of the Lover album, three new collaborators came onto the scene. Frank Dukes is a producer popular for creating compositions that are sampled by artists for recognisable hooks. A collaboration I suspect stemmed from his work with Swift’s close friend Camila Cabello, in which he was the executive producer for her titular album in 2018. Louis Bell is an upcoming producer that Billboard has named Iconic due to his chart success in just four years. Scoring six number 1’s is certainly a great way to get Swift’s attention however, he was only given three tracks on Lover to collaborate on. Joel Little was the third newcomer to Lover working on four tracks. Little has many fresh names under his belt and a Grammy win for Royals with the artist Lorde.

Whether this was intentional or not, Lover definitely has something for every kind of Taylor Swift fan. I struggled to find a ‘new’ sound on this album even though multiple new producers were at work. Perhaps that was not the goal here though? Many critics are lyrically comparing it to her previous album Red - a record that felt very much like a sonic scrapbook. And I hear most sonic similarities to Swift’s most successful album 1989. Lover still feels like it’s coming out of the late eighties, probably a credit to Antonoff. As the first album to come out of her new home Republic Records, Lover might be purely designed for the fans. It sounds like her most successful record (1989) and it’s written like her most favoured (Red). Whether the record will garner the same response from the critics that it did her fans, is difficult to tell. The album is made in a way that would be hard pressed to upset any listener. While I have come to love Swift as a risk taker, Lover falls back on every proven to work technique of her past. Who do you prefer? The old Taylor? Or the who’s it gonna be Taylor?