Speak Now - Taylor Swift
Any album that includes the line "
someday, I'll be living in a big old city" is a easily a country album, and this one of Swift's earlier albums is just that.
I remember back during this timeframe when local country station WQDR advertised its "new country" format, I'm certain that Swift was one of the artists with her music featured in that commercial. WQDR, which was prior to 1984 a rock station (hence its call letters being afterwards referred to "We Quit Doing Rock") was transitioning as many stations did back then from your "old man's country" to the format of more power pop and young country artists like Swift here.
After hearing this through, there were a few themes I picked up on, some already mentioned here as well.
First, the music on the album is the best part of this. It beats the vocal delivery, which in places is fine, but in other songs, such as "Better Than Revenge" or the up and down spoken nursery rhyme delivery in "Enchanted", really didn't work as much for me. But then again, this is an early album written by someone leaving their teens and is aimed for and enjoyed by that target audience, of which I am not one. So, I get all of that.
I went back and listened to Allison Moorer whose country album I immensely enjoyed. I found both the music there to be better with a more of a bite, and the mature and more personable vocal delivery more enjoyable, so it wasn't the country genre itself that I have an issue with.
I did like the more slower and ballad-like songs here, so I'll note the ones that did work best:
- "Innocent" - ironically a song about the Kanye West–Taylor Swift incident at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, I thought this was the best song on here and I liked the guitars and her vocal delivery was well matched to the music tempo.
- "Back To December" - the one single from this album that I connected with. I liked the mature lyrics in this song, and who here wouldn't want to go back in time to rectify something that didn't go well? Something anyone can identify with. The music here with the string section here was the best part.
- "Never Grow Up" - when I first heard this, I immediately thought of The Cranberries "Never Grow Old", as both songs had a similar message and was a nostalgic look back to years of childhood and not being in a rush to enjoy the simple things later taken for granted.
So, this will have been the 2nd Taylor Swift album I've heard next to
1989, which I'll again mention because it gave us the better reworked version of the same songs from Ryan Adams which in essence was looking for a sound somewhere between Bruce Springsteen's 1978
Darkness on the Edge of Town and the Smiths' 1985
Meat Is Murder. So, instead of settling for a "middle of the road" 5, I'll score this a
6/10 for the promise and delivery of what was to come in both future albums, the Adams one I'd score highest, and ultimately have Taylor Swift to thank for that initial inspiration.
(The end)
