Taylor Swift: Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift

Best song: Tim McGraw

Worst song: Stay Beautiful

Overall grade: 4

The first time I listed to Taylor Swift was when this was the only album she’d released. A friend of mine posted the lyrics to ‘Mary’s Song’ in a forum signature on the Internet, and considering I was something of a hopeless romantic at the time, I fell in love with it before I’d even heard her sing it. I wanted a relationship like that. So I listened to it, and I listened over and over again, and then I started listening to all her other songs (the rest of this album, as well as a whole bunch of unreleased songs that you can find on YouTube). Taylor Swift just ‘got’ me, so I played them all out until I was sick of them, and then she announced her second album! It was an incredible moment for a 12-year-old.

As time went on and I started to listen to older and more obscure music, most popular or mainstream artists that I’d previously liked started to seem insignificant in comparison to what Roger Waters was singing about on ‘Comfortably Numb’, and steadily I stopped listening to them. But strangely enough, that’s never happened with Taylor Swift. I’ve gone on to buy her third and fourth albums and consider her to be consistently above the quality of most of what my housemates play, and I think her being lumped in with other ‘MTV artists’ of today is quite unfair.

Now, among those who do like Swift, this album is generally either their favourite or least favourite, and for the same reason whichever it is – it’s a full blown country album. (One of only two that I own. I don’t consider country to be a favourite genre of mine, though I have nothing against it either and enjoy the occasional song – see ‘I’m Gonna Hire A Wino To Decorate Our Home’. Or maybe I just find that song hilarious. Whichever.) Either they have the opinion that she was never as good once she started incorporating pop influences, or that she didn’t become as good until she had those pop influences.

I’d call it the worst, not because of the country, since the fairly simple, acoustic style worked well for her at a time when she had less songwriting experience, but because the record as a whole lacks diversity (the production is incredibly similar on all the songs and Swift’s voice sounds identical throughout), continuity (a lot of the songs sound awkward next to one another and are better appreciated when played individually), and lacks anything spectacular (songs are fairly good throughout, but a serious listener would be unlikely to call them superb). I guess it’s also been hurt by my overplaying it, as many of the songs don’t hold up so well to long term listening – they’re good on the surface only.

But I have a lot of respect for the fact that, even at age 16, she has a solo or co-writing credit on all of her songs. Most of the songs are about love, something she often gets criticised for, but they show a lot of different perspectives on the subject – so for each one that’s a little stupid, like the childish reasons for infatuation on ‘Stay Beautiful’, there’s always a ‘Tim McGraw’ that has a much more mature outlook, in this case the bittersweet memory of a summer romance that had to end. And there’s several examples of songs that relate to different subject matter – see ‘A Place in this World’, ‘The Outside’ and ‘Tied Together With A Smile’.

It’s hardly a massive statement of a debut, but the talent’s definitely here.