By A.J. Harris
No one has sold more albums in the first week of release in the past three years than Taylor Swift, except for Taylor Swift.
Her new album, Lover, sold 867,000 units in its first week, besting the previous high of 2017’s Reputation.
So what are those 867,00 people getting for their money?
Well, a Taylor Swift album.
She spends the majority of these songs mining familiar territory, with an unsurprising sheen over everything. Amidst the expected pop numbers, there is the country song (“Soon You’ll Get Better”), the R&B-tinged slow burner (“False God”), and all of them rehashing the same subject that is her bread and butter: relationships. Failed ones, struggling ones, new ones, comfortable ones. Swift has always worn her personal life on her sleeve; it’s both one of the main attractions and main deterrents of her music.
But Swift knows what she is doing, and the songs for the most part are as overwhelmingly catchy as ever, for better or for worse.
Here we see an artist who has figured out the science of making a hit, writing a hook that you will be humming for the rest of the day, singing a chorus so simple and heartfelt that it applies to anyone.
And there are some pretty solid pop gems to be found here.
Highlights include the woozy romanticism of the title track “Lover,” which sounds like if Mazzy Star was a doo-wop group, and “The Archer,” which would sound right at home in an 80’s romantic comedy, playing in the background when the guy and the girl finally realize they are meant for each other.
Then there is “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” which is weird, unexpected, and excellent, with picked-violin strings, a steel drum, and ghostly background vocals.
Immediately stuck-in-the-brain catchy is “Paper Ring,” in which Swift practically dares you to stay still if you can, with its hand-clap chorus and faux-punk guitars. The song gets even better halfway through, when Swift turns a clichéd key change into utter bubblegum bliss. If you can sit still through this you might want to check for a pulse.
But along with the good, there is also the bad, and sometimes the downright baffling.
Her attempt at a strength anthem, “You Need to Calm Down,” is heavy-handed at best and self-indulgent at worst, and her inexplicable duet with Brendon Urie, of Panic! at the Disco, in “ME!” misses every mark it could. The two singers have zero chemistry, and Urie sounds both arrogant and whiny when he sings the cringe-inducing line “You can’t spell US without ME!,” which is just wrong, both literally and metaphorically.
Ultimately, at this point in her career, after six previous mega-selling albums, Swift has a formula and sticks to it, packing in questionable teenage-journal lyrics amid admittedly irresistible pop hooks. While this album treads no new ground, Swift’s songcraft is as strong as ever. This is an album which doesn’t require deep listening, and that can be refreshing.
Those who are already Taylor Swift fans will get exactly what they expect, and probably be happy about it. But for those of us who might have previously dismissed her music as sugary pop made for teenagers, we would find real enjoyment if we let go of our pretentions, relaxed, and maybe hummed a hook or sang a chorus. After all, she knows what she’s doing.
A.J. Harris can be reached at [email protected]
