In response to all the hate she has been getting for her love songs, the young songstress has boldly responded with... more love songs, with the beginning song already a bad rip off of the Temper Trap's Sweet Disposition, blatantly copying its rhythm and barely differing from its main melody. There's the Black Eyed Peas' use of electronic stammer, now also used Lady Gaga, on the title song 'Red', on, oh hell no, the word "red":
Losing him was blue like I'd never known
Missing him was dark grey all alone
Forgetting him was like
trying to know somebody you never met
But loving him was red
Loving him was red
The biggest fans of Taylor Swift claim that her lyrics are what make her, and it probably shows in this nursery rhyme composition, with no real depth to anything and some hipster connotations that will eventually take its cue for Instagrammed photos on Tumblr. Yeah. Try sitting through an hour of this.
I'm really gonna miss you picking fights
And me, falling for it screaming that I'm right
And you, would hide away and find your peace of mind
With some indie record that's much cooler than mine
Musically, is there anything to say? Her twelve string guitar is compressed in the production, that spacey beauty that makes the Beatles sound so good, this is the opposite, and the richness of the instrument is simply lost in the mix, but then she is a pop star and the guitars have never been uncompressed in her albums to begin with, nor is she a proper guitar maverick like her ex John Mayer was, simply putting out redundant chord after chord that do no make any impact at all. Is it a monkey drumming or is this drums from an iPad? Either way, her compositions are easy on the years, meaning they are not even existent.
So all these qualities mean that the fans are right, because in the end, nothing but the lyrics seem to have any importance, since musically the song is typically the same which raises some doubt to the term "songwriter". The use of dubstep in 'I Knew You Were Trouble' is sparse and pathetic, the additions of Gary Lightbody (and what kind of dumb name is that) from Snow Patrol and Ed Sheeran is forgettable. I already talked about lyrics and their relevance to world crisis like girls not getting the hot guy they've been ogling. All in all.... I have nothing good to say about this! If you're a girl who youtubes her songs instead of purchasing them or even pirating them in extremely high audio conditions, and will dress up to look pretty and with your budget earphones and your overpriced iPhone and think of that hot boy with a six pack who is obviously your prince, yeah this is for you.
The rest of you scroll down and check our other reviews. Introducing our new rank-
☆☆☆☆☆ For barbarians and bimbos.
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JE's Take:
Firstly, have a look at the thumbnail of the song's lyric video.
Oh oh trouble trouble trouble
oh oh trouble trouble trouble
This stuff is something you would more likely see in a penmanship exercise than a widely-heard pop song. Repeating words/themes is nothing new in music regardless of genre/style, but having to do so for multiple lines and across multiple songs smacks of desperation and sterility.
Not only that - one listen to the song (and it wasn't even a very close listen) and I could hear Taylor Swift's auto-tuning software in all its full technological glory. Now I'm not against good singers using auto-tune as a convenient means of saving time doing multiple takes; I'm against poor-to-mediocre singers like Taylor Swift using it to do simple things that they would naturally be unable to do like stay in pitch for one phrase. The fact that the auto-tune can be so obviously heard on the record goes to show that she needs that much pitch correction.
Lyrically, musically and artistically, this album represents the pop industry's collective slap in the face of the semi-literate world: it seems that the formula for fame and fortune nowadays includes copious use of cliche, repetitive and uninspired lyrics, unremarkable vocal work and a ton of digital assistance and enhancement.
Assigning a zero-star rating to this album is already being very generous.
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