By Victoria Vogler | Assignments Editor
Since her album release in October of 2010, I’ve been waiting with open arms Taylor Swift’s 4th album, Red. And now, two years later, it’s finally here. The album opened to more unprecedented anticipation than ever before. By 10 o’clock on its debut day, Red hit number one on iTunes in 31 countries.
Red has 16 news songs, five of which were released prior to the album dropping. The overall feel of the album is still her signature country-pop sound, but more of the tracks seem to be leaning towards the pop genre. Tracks like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “22,” and “Starlight” are the hippest, most upbeat songs on the album, which to her original country-loving fans, can be a disappointment. Over the span of her 4 albums, each release has received critiques about her pop “spill over,” as she dubs it. But for her country fans, there are several songs in this album that are Swift’s classic sound.
“I Almost Do,” “Red,” “Treacherous,” “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” and “Holy Ground” fall under the classic Swift category, but almost in a predictable, “I’ve heard this before” kind of way, which upset me a little bit. I’m in no way dislike these songs, I just wish she would use different chord progressions to give her music a bit of variety and shed the comfortableness of sticking to the same thing.
The rest of her album had a very different sound than usual, with almost a rock-esque attitude, much to my pleasure. She also had a couple collaborations with wonderful male vocalists’ Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol and Ed Sheeran, to add to the differences of this album.
I was greatly impressed with the lyrical side of this album, as the lyrical aspect was largely improved from the last album. Her words flow very well, and the actual lyrics are a lot more mature and well written, and just overall much better than the last albums.
The album was well received, with first day Red album sales on iTunes topped 262,000 plus 4.2 million song downloads. Overall, this album has been my favorite from her, with all the different styles and sounds and voices. If you’re a Swift fan, or not, this album definitely has something you can relate to and enjoy.
