Swifts Earns Green with ‘Red’

Our girl Taylor Swift spent some more time dating, loving and breaking-up just to bring us back something red.

The country star released her newest album on Oct. 22 through Big Machine Records. “Red” is Swift’s fourth album and is currently number one on iTunes. It serves as a follow-up to her 2010 release of “Speak Now.”

Even before the release of “Red,” fans knew the album would be a hit when the lead single “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” gave Taylor her first ever number one on Billboard’s Hot 100.

The can’t-help-but-scream-along song sold 623,000 copies its first week and can probably serve as any girl’s break-up anthem.

Even more must-haves for your break-up playlist include songs like “I Knew You Were Trouble” and for the gloomy, “Sad Beautiful Tragic.”

“I think that for me, the boldest song on the record is a song called ‘I Knew You Were Trouble,'” Swift said in an interview with “Taste of Country.” “It’s bold sonically because it sounds like that chaotic feeling of just feeling like you got tricked.”

Perhaps another one of the top songs on the album is one titled “Red,” for which the album is named. With words like “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,” Swift paints all the different colors of a relationship.

Not much different from her other albums, the starlet has yet again given us a front row seat to the ups and downs of her dating life–which keeps us wondering… what will happen when she finally settles down?

With songs like “Begin Again,” Swift instills hope as she teaches that as some relationships end, others can still come our way.

Unlike some of her other songs, I’m beginning to question whether or not Taylor Swift is truly a country artist anymore. Her songs are great and catchy, but they seem to be more pop than anything else.

Also new to her songs are the artist features. No longer is her album strictly “Taylor.” On tracks “Everything Has Changed,” featuring Ed Sheeran, and “The Last Time,” featuring Gary Lightbody, Swift shares the spotlight with different male artists.

At first, the duets were not exactly favorable, but the more I hit repeat, the more I grew accustomed to them. I think the features are something new that we can eventually grow to at least like, if not love.

Still, my heart lies with tracks that are Taylor-only.

Songs like “State of Grace” and “22” keep fans motivated and wanting more. Swift, perhaps a poet before anything else, never fails to come up with perfect lines.


etarkazi@ramapo.edu