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Speak Now by Taylor Swift
Speak Now is the third album Taylor Swift has produced, and I think her best yet. Taylor’s lyrics have always been heartfelt, and sung beautifully, but she outdoes herself this time. Speak Now offers a wide variety of songs, all of them not just fun to listen to and sung well, but full of profound lyrics.
What I love most about Taylor Swift is her versatility. She can sing love songs, breakup songs, fast songs, slow songs, happy songs and sad songs. And all of them are believable because she writes them herself, and they mean something to her. Each song on Speak Now is like a glimpse into Taylor’s life, all of them tell a story.
Mine, the first single off of her album, is about believing in love, and finding brilliant, true love, even when it’s difficult. It’s happy, it’s catchy, and her voice sounds beautiful. It’s all about love, something Taylor’s so good at, and has done before, yet Mine manages to be so different than anything Taylor’s written before.
Another stand out to me is her song Enchanted. Enchanted is like the best kind of fairytale. It’s slightly mysterious, it’s charming, and it’s… enchanting! It’s a classic love story, Taylor sings about a love that is all consuming, and makes you feel completely enthralled by it. Underneath the sweet lyrics, such as ‘This night is sparkling, don’t you let it go/ I’m wonder-struck, blushing all the way home’ and ‘All I can say is it was enchanting to meet you’ there’s shadows of doubt. Taylor sings ‘Please don’t be in love with someone else/ Please don’t have somebody waiting on you’. The hints of doubt only serve to make it a better song, and every time I finish listening to it, it makes me want to listen again.
Are love songs not your thing? No worries! Although Taylor does love to sing about love, she sings about plenty of other topics. Long Live recalls her experiences performing onstage with her band, and the thrills she gets from it. Never Grow Up is a bittersweet song about time, change, and growing up. Growing up is a topic I think lots of people are secretly, or in some cases not so secretly, afraid of. Growing up can be terrifying, because it’s the mysterious unknown.
However, I think my favorite songs on the album are her more angst-filled songs. Dear John describes her brief relationship with John Mayer, and the various ways he hurt her. When Taylor sings lines such as ‘You paint me a blue sky and go back and turn it to rain/And I lived in your chess game but you changed the rules every day’ you can tell by the emotion in her voice how deeply she’s hurt.
These are all great songs, but if I had to choose one favorite it would be Back To December. To me, it has it all. A beautiful melody, lyrics that are so perfect in every way, and the emotion in Taylor’s voice is just amazing. When she sings ‘So this is me swallowing my pride, standing in front of you saying I’m sorry for that night’ you can tell how much she means it, every single word.
In short, I love Taylor Swift, and I love Speak Now. Whether she’s singing about revenge, love, break ups, or the thrill of performing, she has a lot of talent.
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