DAVE'S DIARY - 13 DECEMBER 2010 - TAYLOR SWIFT CD REVIEW
2010 CD REVIEW
TAYLOR
SWIFT
SPEAK NOW (BIG MACHINE-UNIVERSAL)
THE PRINCESS AND THE OUTLAW
"Don't you think I was too young to be messed with/ the girl in the dress/cried the whole way home/ I should have known." - Dear John - Taylor Swift.
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Provocative
country pop princess Taylor Swift and septuagenarian outlaw country
singer David Allan Coe share a lethal writing weapon. They plunge daggers through the hearts of their ex-lovers and dates. They also favor long tonsorial tresses - Swift, now 21 au naturel, and Coe, 71, a waist length hair extension. But that's where similarities end. Swift lived in luxury, buffered by vast cast of record company aides and wealthy parents, when she penned chart-topping tunes about John Mayer, Joe Jonas and actor Taylor Lautner. |
Coe was in
prison at Swift's age and later parked his hearse outside the Grand Ole
Opry to play and pitch songs - some written about his seven wives.
Swift delivers her finely crafted, demographically formulated tunes with
the dexterity of an energised artist.
This time around she has ditched her mentor - Music Row hit writer and
collaborator Liz Rose.
Swift's writing has bloomed without Rose - she now takes all credit and
royalties for her post-teen love laments on her third album.
She maximises emotional contrasts - the apologetic Lautner hit Back
To December and vitriolic Mayer taunt Dear John.
"Don't you think I was too young to be messed with?" she asks
about the 12-year age difference between combatants in the latter as "the
girl in the dress/cried the whole way home."
BETTER THAN REVENGE
"She's an actress/but she's better known for the things that she does on the mattress." - Better Than Revenge - Taylor Swift.
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She
nails Kanye West to a crass cross in Innocent and bangs sharp edges
of the eternal triangle in Better Than Revenge. Loretta fought for peers' access to the pill and equality but never stopped a rival's wedding at the altar as Swift does in Speak Now. |
Swift reaches
for a Petra Pan moment in Never Grow Up, ploughs past in videogenic
Last Kiss, ruptured romance in The Story Of Us and Haunted,
unbridled love in Enchanted, Sparks Fly and idyllic finale
Long Live.
She reaches deep into her inner psyche as a quixotic queen to reach her
target audience.
Country pop may not be the favoured genre of this writer but Swift is
the mistress of the muse with an album selling more than a million copies
on debut in a depressed market place.
But depression is not in Swift's mood swings.