Anthony Guererro
The Paw Print
Country-pop superstar singer-songwriter Taylor Swift returned to the music scene with her third studio album entitled Speak Now. It consists of 14 songs including the already successfully popular song “Mine.” The good music and catchy melodies definitely do not end there. Throughout the album, which Swift wrote entirely solo, she once again visits past loves and failed relationships, but also makes her first apology, sings about the Kanye West incident at last year’s VMA’s, and “never wants to grow up.” In the opening prologue to the album’s lyric booklet, Taylor Swift writes, “Speak now or forever hold your peace, the words said by preachers at the end of wedding ceremonies all over the world, right before the vows. It’s a last chance for protest, a moment that makes everyone’s heart race, and a moment I’ve always been strangely fascinated by. So many fantasize about bursting into a church, saying what they’d kept inside for years like in the movies. In real life it rarely happens.”
There are 14 songs on Swift’s third album. They consist of Mine, Sparks Fly, Back to December, Speak Now, Dear John, Mean, The Story of Us, Never Grow Up, Haunted, Better Than Revenge, Innocent, Haunted, Last Kiss, and Long Live. Each song tells its own story and fits into the overall compilation perfectly. The first single off the album was “Mine.” It continues the traditional love story set to a catchy melody that Taylor Swift has become so well known and popular for. In the melody Taylor swings, “do you remember we were sitting there by the water?/you put your arm around me for the first time/you made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter/you are the best thing that’s ever been mine.”
The second single in promotion of this album is titled “Sparks Fly.” Another sort of love story, a listener cannot help but to be captured by this catchy country pop-tune. It is apparent Swift is talented at making simple girl jealousy and regret sound very good by adding guitars and drums. They lyrics of the chorus are simple but effective, “drop everything now/meet me in the pouring rain, kiss me on the sidewalk/take away the pain/cause I see sparks fly/whenever you smile/get me with those green eyes baby/as the lights go down/give me something that’ll haunt me when you’re not around/cause I see sparks fly/whenever you smile.”
“Back to December” is the third single recently released off of the Speak Now album. It is admitted by Taylor that this is an apology to one of her past loves, and the first of such a song she has written and released. There is popular speculation the song is directed at famous ex-boyfriend Joe Jonas. The lyrics of the chorus are powerful and effective at conveying the sense of an apology the songwriter intended; she sings, “so this is me swallowing my pride/standing in front of you saying I’m sorry for that night/and I go back to December all the time/wishing I’d realized what I had when you were mine/I go back to December, turn around and make it alright/I go back to December all the time.”
This album is actually very deserving of all the attention it is receiving. It is perhaps one of the greatest albums ever written by Taylor Swift. No doubt she will win prestigious awards for her work. If you have not given Taylor Swift a chance, it might be time to change your position lest you miss knowing a legend.
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