Taylor Swift's "Lover"

Review of Taylor Swift's seventh album, Lover, as published on Dream State Magazine.

For nine years, I have stood firmly by my belief that no album could ever top Taylor Swift’s Speak Now. Not only has it been, undoubtedly, the most important album in my life, but I genuinely believe that it is inexplicably and powerfully magical; its lyricism is unparalleled, and the vulnerability Swift exhibits at every moment, in every breath and every word, touched something in my little middle-schooler soul that I thought could never be touched in a similar way ever again. Imagine my surprise, then, when halfway through my first listen of Swift’s latest studio effort, Lover, I came to an earth-shattering conclusion: I had a new favorite album. It was nearly unfathomable. And I’ll be honest, there were a few moments, specifically after the release of lead single “ME!” and its follow up, “You Need To Calm Down,” where I genuinely thought that I would not enjoy this album. But the tides began to turn upon hearing “The Archer” and “Lover,” and honestly? I have never been more excited to be proven wrong in my life. 

Lover, Swift’s 7th studio album and the first released under her new label, Republic Records, is produced primarily by Swift and long-time collaborator Jack Antonoff and is her first body of work of which she retains complete ownership. The importance of creative freedom to this album is not lost on me, and I’m certain is not lost on many of Swift’s diehard fans, of which I am unabashedly one. She’s been very vocal about her unwavering belief that all artists deserve full ownership of their own work, and there is an elation to this album which I believe is partly due to Swift’s finally feeling confident in exercising complete control over her own creative process. There are moments during this album in which her happiness and freedom are so loud, bright and bubbly, so in your face, that to ignore it would be foolish. And even when she is touching on her lowest emotional moments, you can still sense a certain contentedness in the work. Swift appears to have taken a deep, full breath of fresh air for the first time in a long time, and the artistic result is stunning. She has produced, without a doubt, her best album yet.

One early standout on this album is “The Man,” wherein Swift discusses how perceptions of her self and her career would differ if she were a man. The emphasis on being the man here is integral to an understanding of the song, as it should be no secret that Taylor Swift is the music industry, whether the majority of the population is ready to have that conversation or not. Swift’s acknowledgment of this fact here is refreshing. “What I was wearing, if I was rude / Could all be separated from my good ideas and power moves,” she declares, and while this song is not necessarily telling us anything we didn’t already know about sexism, there’s a certain power in laying out the facts, plain and simple. She’s upfront about her frustrations and anger, her discontent, her bitterness, singing “If I was out flashing my dollars I’d be a bitch, not a baller / They paint me out to be bad, so it’s okay that I’m mad.” And yet, it doesn’t read the same way that much of reputation did. It doesn’t feel stale or repetitive, or even remotely like anything she produced on that album. Despite how clearly fed up she is with the hypocrisy she constantly encounters, this track still maintains the sense of wonderment that much of this album looks through the lens of, even when she details this predicament. It’s Swift at her most confident and unafraid.

But it is wonderment, truly, that captures the essence of this album. Songs like “Paper Rings,” “Cornelia Street,” and “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” all occupy very similar emotional spaces despite sounding almost nothing alike because they all engage with that magic that made much of Swift’s early work so enlightening. I hesitate to label this album sonically cohesive, but I believe its achieved something else that is even more important, even more impressive — emotional cohesiveness. Swift has detailed love in all of its chaos, its glory, its coziness, its charm, its difficulties; its quietest moments, like reading all of the books beside a lover’s bed and memorizing the creaks in the wood floors, and its most bold and brash, like those instances in which a love all of a sudden registers with the same emotional intensity as a religion. She approaches all-consuming romance and complete heartbreak alike with the same tenderness and awe. Lover is a deftly, meticulously crafted illustration of true love distilled down to its very core. It is an absolute feat. 

I could write theses on every single song from this album, but I’ll save you all the trouble. Favorites of mine include “I Think He Knows,” “Death By A Thousand Cuts,” and “False God,” but I find it nearly impossible to even begin to rank this album because each song is just that good. There’s not even a single note in any song that I would deem skippable. And while I’m the first to admit that some of these songs are decidedly not my groove, every song truly makes sense within the context of the album. Lover’s highs far outrank its lows; in fact, its highs are so high that you’ll forget there were even lows in the first place.

However, it’s “Cruel Summer” which undoubtedly takes the cake. I feel confident in saying that this track is objectively the best on the album. At one point, I listened to it so many times in succession that for a while, I genuinely thought I needed to go to the hospital. I felt utterly rabid, unhinged, feral, every other word you could possibly conjure up to capture that same feeling. As a fellow Sagittarius, I felt incredibly validated by Swift’s dramatization of those crucial moments in which you realize you’re falling completely, head-over-heels in love with someone and there’s no chance in hell you’re going to be able to slow down and consider the consequences of your actions now that you’ve entered into that obsessive mindset. It serves as an impeccable thesis statement for this album. “Bad boy, shiny toy with a price” she croons in the first verse, making it clear that she signed up for harmless fun; but as the song continues, it becomes apparent that things suddenly became really serious, really fast, and she’s in far too deep to back out now. She perfectly captures this realization in an unimaginably flawless bridge, screaming “‘For whatever it’s worth, I love you, ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard?’” The sudden switch in mindset is jarring and forces the listener to confront the anguish of the track, as her emotional turmoil is subtly masked by a deceptively happy beat. Swift’s vocals soar as she nearly growls out her frustration with being so enraptured by this relationship, whilst simultaneously betraying how resigned she is to this newfound fate, how comfortable she is with embracing this reality. “Cruel Summer” is pop-perfection, full stop, and clues the listener in early to the lyrical complexity that the album as a whole contains, and the emotional journey each listener experiences. If it’s not the next single, I’ll probably have to contact the police.

Finally, I would be remiss not to touch on the album’s closing number, “Daylight.” While 1989’s “Clean” still retains its status as my favorite closer out of all of Swift’s albums, “Daylight” stood out to me immediately as an incredibly, intensely special song. It’s one that I believe will stand the test of time within the Swiftie community, and I am so inexplicably drawn to it. It is the embodiment of Swift’s “calm after the storm” focus for this album; it feels and sounds like receiving a big, warm hug after a particularly soul-crushing period of time. I got full body chills the first time I heard it, and I still find myself tearing up when that first chorus hits. Written by Swift alone, it surveys her perspectives on past relationships and her expectations for the perfect romance in comparison to this real, tangible and everlasting love that she has now found and works hard to maintain. It’s self-referential without being overly so, giving fans just enough of a taste of the past without ever sacrificing its focus on the present. “I once believed love would be burning red / But it’s golden / Like daylight” she nearly whispers with a certain reverence. She cherishes this love so dearly, and it is so apparent in this track that it’s nearly painful. While the track’s final (sung) lines of “Step into the daylight and let it go” came as no surprise, the inclusion of an audio clip of Swift talking about how she wants to be defined by what she loves threw me for an absolute loop. Full disclosure, I had about a 15-minute complete breakdown after listening to this song for the first time. I sat in my bed and just wept and wept thinking about how important Swift and her music have been to my life. As a lifelong fan, I grew up with her. I jumped on the Taylor Swift train the moment I first heard “Teardrops On My Guitar” and I don’t plan on getting off anytime soon. To hear proof of her contentment, to experience her depiction of the true, magical love she has always strived to find, was incredibly overwhelming and gave me an unbelievable sense of hope. If Swift, despite a life stuck in the public eye, despite all the drama she’s survived throughout her career, could find this kind of love? There’s no doubt that the rest of us can too. 

Lover stands to become a career-defining album. If you told me I had to choose only one of Swift’s albums to present to someone who had never before been exposed to her art and which captures the essence of her artistry, of her ethos, I would undoubtedly choose this one. After all, as she herself said, “You are what you love.” And Lover is the bravest, most honest, most confident representation of herself that Swift has provided thus far.