By: Luke McCormick
Taylor Swift
provided photo
“Fearless”
Release Date: 11/11
Record Label: Big Machine Records
3.5 out of 5
Most 18-year-olds are worried about getting into the college they want to attend or jacked about a new friend request on Facebook or excited about not having to beg an older sibling to buy cigarettes for them anymore.
Taylor Swift just bides her time by writing insanely catchy pop (there isn’t much country to this record at all) tunes.
What makes this record so endearing is the fact that its tracks were penned by this blonde starlet and not a stable of Nashville session guys.
Swift has dominated the country music world since her debut dropped two years ago and looks to continue to keep its charts in a chokehold with the release of her sophomore effort. The guitars sore (and twang occasionally), the pianos jerk tears and the strings are arranged to ping hearts.
Swift is so adept to writing choruses that burrow their way into your brain that it must be infuriating to other country songstresses. Songs like “Fifteen” and “You Belong With Me” are so embarrassingly catch I almost don’t want to listen to them anymore, at chance I’ll get caught singing one in front of some male friends. Thanks Swift, I’m writing you an angry letter the first time I get chastised for singing “You be the prince and I’ll be the princess.”
Her penchant for writing these down to a T, near perfect pop gems is also one of the record’s faults. Each song is so cutesy, radio ready they are a bit difficult to take as 13 back-to-back tracks.
But screw it, last year Miranda Lambert’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” was my country guilty pleasure (still better than “Fearless”) and Swift is definitely this year’s front-runner.
