Album Review: “Red”

Olivia Wicik
Editor-in-Chief

“Tonight’s the night when we forget about the deadlines,” sings Taylor Swift in “22”, one of the better songs on her new album, “Red”. For most of us college students, forgetting about the deadline isn’t realistic, but for multi-million record selling Taylor Swift, I’m sure it can be. It’s been two years since Swift has released an album, and “Red” is already the #1 album in the USA, on iTunes. Swift’s fourth album was released Tuesday at midnight and anxious fans, especially in the Twitter world, have been expressing their excitement all week. Swift herself kept fans on their toes by tweeting an hourly countdown all day on Monday. She tweeted a picture of herself with the accompanying tweet “this is my last day of life before #RED. Midnight. Tonight.”, which scored over 25,000 re-tweets and over 19,000 favorites.

As far as the well-anticipated album goes? It’s far from her country roots that can truly be seen in previous albums. Listeners can decide whether this is a good or bad thing. The “pop” feel is present in many of Swift’s songs, but they are also the better half of the album. (Example, “I Knew You Were Trouble”, which uses auto-tune.) The other, slower and more country sounding songs, such as “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” seem to lack her usual heartfelt emotion.

The collaborations she includes are, however, great indeed. “The Last Time” features Snow Patrol lead singer Gary Lightbody, and their two voices sound almost angelic together. It’s truly a touching song, which embodies more of that deep emotion that fans love and that was so present in her last album, “Speak Now”. “Everything Has Changed”, featuring Ed Sheeran, is also one of the better songs on the album, and seems more true to her country roots.

For me, this album isn’t as whiney and heartbreaky-achey as the previous ones, which is a positive. I like the fun, upbeat tempo featured in a lot of her songs, but can also appreciate the honest, more serious and sad lyrics as well. There is something to listen to, whether you are having a good or a bad day. The song “Stay Stay Stay”, really hit home for me. I thought I was the only one who threw phones when mad at a guy, but I’m not surprised that Swift was in my brain when writing this album, too. What, I’m not the only girl who swears that Swift writes her songs about my life? Oh…awkward.