Rating: NN
Taylor Swift’s fame is so indelibly intertwined with her music that it’s hard to hear her third album through its tabloid-baiting backstory. If you’ve listened to the 20-year-old pop-country crossover artist’s previous efforts, you’ll be familiar with her predilection for confessional songwriting aimed at her supposed revolving door of famous boyfriends and acquaintances.
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Celebrity aside, Speak Now is as hooky as its predecessors but differs in its often angry, spiteful tone. Swift is tearing a page from country music’s spurned lover playbook, but her unctuous vocal delivery has a tendency to undermine her more pointed lyrics. The album expands Swift’s repertoire from country to blues and brooding arena-ballad territory, but ultimately she plays it too safe with the arrangements, watering down the slightly darker country and blues edges with slickly produced power pop and a sugary sameness indiscernible from any number of today’s radio-oriented artists.
Top track: Mean
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