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Review: Taylor Swift - Red

Songwriting genius usually lasts only a few years.  Take the greatest songwriters of all time, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. They couldn't write a bad song from 1965-1969.  Afterwards, they couldn't even manage another half dozen. Or Eminem. He had the greatest run in rap history from 1999-2002.  Since then, his music output has been almost entirely crap.

There are some exceptions.  For example, Bono of U2 wrote great songs at a steady clip from 1984 all the way to 2004.  Unfortunately, Taylor Swift is not one of them.  Over the past half decade, she's had the best run in country music history.  That run ends here.  That's not so say Red is a bad album.  It's not. It's a very good adult pop album. It's just that the genius isn't there anymore. There's no "Teardrops on My Guitar," no "Love Story," no "Back to December."  The best we get is "Begin Again" and "The Lucky One."  Both of them are well-written, but neither would've even made the top three on any of her previous albums.

On the bright side, she's broadened her horizons:
  1. She wrote three dance pop songs with Max Martin. The first of them, "I Knew You Were Trouble," is actually rather decent, once you get over the oddity of Taylor Swift singing over a dubstep backing track.
  2. She dabbles in arena rock.  "State of Grace," in particular, with its chiming guitars and and mediocre songwriting, is a dead ringer for a modern U2 song.
  3. Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol and Ed Sheeran, who have written a combined total of one good song over the past half decade, happily lend their mediocrity to the proceedings.  [On a related note, Snow Patrol's Eyes Open (the one with Chasing Cars) is one of the greatest albums of all time. Listen to it if you haven't already.]
All of this makes Red a more diverse and interesting listen, but ends up having no lasting value.  Basically, of her four albums, Red sounds by far the best on the first listen and by far the worst by the fourth

Bonus: As I was going through Red, I came across this song: "I'd Lie."  It's a lyrical and melodic tour de force that blows every song on Red out of the water.  Apparently, it got left off of her first album in an act of criminal negligence by her record label.  Have a listen.

tl;dr: Red is not bad, but it's her worst. "Begin Again" and "The Lucky One" are solid though

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