Fearless Taylor = best Taylor.
"We Are Never Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever Getting Back Together" is catchier than something like "White Horse" but lyrically it's about ten times more obnoxious. Red is a more mature refocusing of her themes but that's also why it's less interesting; her themes are fundamentally immature so they feel more authentic coming from a perspective of childish earnestness rather than the confidence of a successful adulthood.
On her early albums the lack of structure is the structure, scatterbrained musings about life without the filter of any real experience and fundamental misunderstandings of Shakespeare, problems that seem very big but really aren't anything at all. No doubt that wide-eyed high school aesthetic was as deliberately manufactured as all the other Taylors, but Fearless's veneer of inauthentic authenticity elevates it above her unabashed pop material in this critic's eyes.
Listening to her trembly faux-country pining and fearing and fantasizing, you can believe that these are the thoughts of a real teenage girl rather than something meant to appeal to teenage girls. It is shallow and simple and self-involved, and feels more real than anything she's done since.
Now it's just all superficial pop songs about boys in cars, catchy to be sure but visibly manufactured and shellacked. Not to say that Fearless is some organic artistic triumph of true lyrical mastery but it is genuine in its artificiality in a way post-Kanye Taylor isn't.
Fearless is generic teen pop but Taylor at the time was a generic teen popstar. It's her most honest album by virtue of its vapidity.
No comments:
Post a Comment