Taylor Swift: Fearless

Fearless

Best song: Fifteen

Worst song: You’re Not Sorry

Overall grade: 5

Following the release of this album, Taylor Swift headlined her first tour, and I saw her play Wembley Arena in London. Her support act was a young Canadian musician who nobody had ever heard of, and his name was Justin Bieber. Two months later, everyone was talking about him. “I’ve seen him live,” I was able to say, and got starry-eyed looks in response.

Even if it did make Justin Bieber big, there’s still a lot to like about this album. It’s packed with danceable pop songs and mournful ballads that, in other hands, might seem like vapid carbon copies of other contemporary music, but not when Swift’s singing them. She’s just so earnest – her lyrics aren’t afraid to tell the whole truth of a story and even though the themes are still high school romances and teenage dramas in many places, she clearly believes what she’s singing about.

A huge country music fan would be likely to call this album ‘selling out’, but personally I think she was always going to turn to pop. It’s clear in some of the songs on her debut, like ‘Our Song’, but even more so in its bonus tracks and in a lot of her unreleased material from her early days, and combine that with the fact that, now in the limelight, she was probably exposed to a lot more pop music than country, and I don’t think it was a conscious decision to write her new songs in this way.

Taylor Swift is often accused of writing exclusively moany breakup songs, but that only applies to three songs here, and two of them are actually really good. The first is White Horse, which begins with her feeling downbeat and sorry for herself, having realised that ‘I’m not your princess; this ain’t a fairytale’ but goes on to see her getting up and feeling empowered as she decides that ‘this is a big world, that was a small town, there in my rearview mirror disappearing now’, takes charge of herself and leaves him. The other is ‘Breathe’, a song contrasting reserved detachment in the verses with an outpouring of emotion in the painfully honest chorus.

‘You’re Not Sorry’ tries to do the same thing as ‘Breathe’, but it’s a poor imitation, uninteresting musically and it doesn’t make me care about the outcome of the relationship is describes.

The complete opposite of these songs is the wonderful single-type material of ‘You Belong with Me’, ‘Forever And Always’ and the title track, all of which make me wish I was a twelve year old girl again, dancing around my room and singing out of key and wondering how it was that this Taylor Swift understood my feelings. You can hate them because they’re not as ‘serious’ as a lot of music or you can love them because they do exactly what they’re supposed to and they make you happy. I’m pleased to be in the second camp.

But there are two really, really standout songs on this record that I haven’t mentioned yet, and either one of them could be best song, cause I’m never sure which is better. ‘Love Story’ is the single that made her famous; you probably know it, it was shamelessly produced to be a hit but it can’t hide the fact that its retelling of Romeo & Juliet has a far broader, longer-lasting appeal than the average MTV audience. ‘Fifteen’ is where Swift gets to shine as the sole songwriter with a big-sisterly warning about the difficulties of high school where the music seems to develop and grow older along with the narrative. Clever stuff.

The only tracks that depart from the love song formula are the final two. ‘The Best Day’ is closest in style to the last album, lacking the anthemic choruses of this one and instead staying simple and understated. The fact that she writes a song for her mother is sickly sweet but the song itself is genuine enough to justify it. Lastly, ‘Change’ is the sweeping grand finale, full of power and triumph and soaring ‘hallelujahs’ over a string backing, and the best part is, it’s vague enough that you’ll always be able to apply it to your life.

I’d be very surprised if Taylor Swift ever took a political stand or put herself into a cause, but that being said I can think of far worse role models for young girls to have. In this album she speaks up for underdogs, takes moral high grounds, moves on, gives advice, has fun and even appreciates her parents. And she does it all to music that isn’t too bland or boring to actually listen to.