Swift provides girlish charm, subtle maturity on Red

Almost two years after the pop-country star’s third album, Speak Now, Taylor Swift returns to the music scene with Red, an album that reflects the singer-songwriter’s ever-evolving musical identity.

Though Swift herself is clearly recognizable as the starry-eyed, hopelessly romantic darling of the music world, much of her career has reflected a certain musical ambiguity. Her eponymous 2006 album firmly categorized her as a country artist with songs such as “Tim McGraw” and “Picture to Burn,” featuring allusions to iconic country singers and descriptions of “Georgia stars” and “pick-up trucks” — all standard country music tropes.

But Swift’s follow-up releases Fearless and Speak Now illustrated a crossover to the pop charts. Hits such as “Love Story” and “Speak Now” might have featured Swift’s characteristic, light-hearted country vocals, but up-tempo percussion beats and plodding guitar lines also hinted at subtle rock influences. Though Swift possesses six Country Music Awards, her success in the genre hardly seems appropriate: She doesn’t fit into that box quite so neatly.

Red seems just as musically diverse but not in a bad way. The 16-track album dabbles in multiple genres and succeeds in just about all of them. Swift’s latest release is unpredictable — at least in terms of musical style.

“I Knew You Were Trouble” stands out as decidedly electronic. Though the song begins with a pop-rock guitar riff, it quickly shifts to a danceable vibe when the beat drops in the chorus. Swift enhances the head-bobbing quality of the song with impressive vocals that shift effortlessly between high and low notes. Even if “I Knew You Were Trouble” provides a different tone than the rest of Red, it calls attention to itself as one of the album’s best tracks and should garner attention as a single in the not-so-distant future.

Still, this dance-inspired track comes after Swift has introduced several other genres on her latest work. Opener “State of Grace” jumpstarts the album with a hard-rock tone. Driving drum beats dominate soft instrumentals before a lazy guitar line echoes Swift’s drawn-out vocal melodies. There’s a definite energy in the first song of Red, as crashing cymbals and the syncopated vocals of background singers enhance a track that’s already kicked off the album to a nice pace. Here, Swift proves she handles rock well, paying homage to the genre’s major characteristics even as she maintains her own signature charm.

But by the time she hits track three, Swift has switched back to her country roots. “Treacherous” slows things down with repetitive acoustic guitar chords that put the focus on Swift’s drawling vocals and well-crafted lyrics. Perfectly timed decrescendos ease Swift back into verses where she describes sexually-charged scenes through lines, such as “I’ll do anything you say / if you say it with your hands,” and “All we are is skin and bone / trained to get along.”

There’s a subtle maturity on tracks like “Treacherous” and the similarly descriptive songs “All Too Well” and “Sad Beautiful Tragic.” Swift has gone from channeling fairy-tale metaphors of princes and white horses to crafting her own moments of amorous danger. It’s a welcome change from a singer notorious for recording the exact beginning, middle and end of her short-lived relationships with a diary-style openness. On Red, Swift has broken her habit of relying on the names of her beaus (“Hey Stephen,” “Dear John”) in favor of capturing the emotional intensity of her romantic encounters.

But even as she demonstrates lyrical and musical growth, Swift has managed to maintain characteristic schoolgirl charm and unabashed innocence. “Red,” the album’s titular track, features an appropriate blend of Swift’s idealism and mature complexity. The song contains some of Red’s most clever lyrics, demonstrating Swift’s newfound ability to capture a wide range of emotions in a just a few measures.

“Losing him was blue, like I’d never known / missing him was dark gray, all alone / forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you’ve never met / but loving him was red,” Swift sings, stringing together a series of simple but effective metaphors. On tracks like these, it’s easy to believe Swift is channeling a variety of life-changing romantic experiences instead of a series of shallow, high-school-crush episodes.

Swift truly impresses with the album’s tenth track, “The Last Time” (featuring Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol). Swift’s even mezzo meshes perfectly with Lightbody’s hazy intonation in a series of chilling vocal harmonies underscored by violins and dragging drums.

“This is the last time I’m asking you this,” Swift and Lightbody sing. “Put my name at the top of your list / This is the last time I’m asking you why / you break my heart in the blink of an eye.”

With this track, Swift provides a clear glimpse into the future of her music: lyrically profound, melodically haunting and comfortably adult.

Still, with Red, Swift hasn’t quite solidified her more mature image. Tracks like “22” and “Starlight” are downright goofy and careless. Poppy, synth-tinged instrumentals underscore Swift’s half-shouted-half-sung vocals while forgettable lyrics like “I said oh my, what a marvelous tune / it was the best night” fail to hold the listener’s attention.

The same rings true for Red’s first single “We Are Never Getting Back Together.” Though the track debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, it contains all of the immaturity of former hits like “Mean” and “The Story of Us,” but lacks the vengeful spite of “Picture to Burn” and “Better Than Revenge.”

“So he calls me up, and he’s like, ‘I still love you,’ gushes Swift valley girl-style in a faux-phone conversation. “I mean this is exhausting, you know? Like we are never getting back together. Like, ever.”

But the childishness of “We Are Never Getting Back Together,” “22” and “Starlight” does serve a higher purpose on Red.

“This album is about the other kinds of love that I’ve recently fallen in and out of,” Swift writes in the prologue included in the Red’s CD booklet. “Love that was treacherous, sad, beautiful, and tragic. But most of all, this record is about love that was red.”

If Swift’s goal here was to chronicle the multifarious nature of love, she succeeded. With her fourth album, Swift proves that she is capable of successfully relating a wide variety of emotions and experiences — including the immature ones.

Red proves to be a more than worthy addition to Swift’s discography, and we can bet that it certainly won’t be “The Last Time” she pleasantly surprises us.