Speak Now
Jane Doe

If you are a fan of country music, you likely have this album CD in your car CD, on your iPod or somewhere handy. Taylor Alison Swift is a Country Music goddess. She produces incredible music. Since her debut single, in 2006, called, “Tim McGraw,” Swift has received multiple awards for her amazing record sales and live performances.

“Speak Now,” released on 25 October 2010 and is her third studio album. Critical and sales response was unexpected. “Speak Now” sold more than one million units in its first week of release. It debuted as number one on the “Billboard Magazine” “Hot 200.” As of 2011, “Speak Now” sold 3.8 million units in the USA and 5.5 million worldwide.

The original title for the album was, “Enchanted,” says Big Machine Records CEO, Scott Borchetta. He told Reuters, “[Taylor] and I were at lunch. She was playing me the new songs. I said, ‘This record isn’t about fairy tales and high school. I don’t think we should call it ‘Enchanted.’

“We talked a bit more,” says Borchetta. “Taylor excused herself from the table, for a moment. When she returned, she said she thought ‘Speak Now’ was a better title. That title came closer to representing who and where she was, at that moment.”

Written and recorded over two years, “Speak Now” the Country Pop style of Swift remains unique. Her lyrical themes remain the same, love, romance and heartbreak; her performances reveal how she grew from the last album.

“Speak Now” is an amazing collection of music we’ve come to expect from Taylor Swift. I’m especially fond of this album; I think to be the best American Pop or Country album I have heard and I have heard quite a lot. Taylor Swift is talented and seems fond of love songs; this album is full of love songs.

“Speak Now” contains some mind-blowing tracks. Swift uses to express different love story scenarios. She performs each track with such a captivating voice and incredible acoustics that the listener finds him or herself trapped in emotion. On many tracks, Swift simply outdoes herself.

Listening to Swift compels paying much attention to the lyrics as well as how she expresses emotion. Lyrically, Swift creates a relationship scenario with another, as in “Dear John” or “The Story of Us.” Both songs supposedly reflect her romantic involvement with John Mayer.

Her lyrics haunting stalk. She’s in love. There’s a break up. Then she realizes she’s still in love and wants her partner back. She thinks she’s lonely. Yet, she can’t go back.

This is the story of many lives. Her music intensifies listener experience. Thus, listeners identify, strongly, with Swift.

“Dear John,” in particular, confirms her genius. The lyric is a letter to a former boyfriend. He apparently treated her wrong. She questions him, after their involvement ends. Do you think I was too young to mess with you?

That bare question is cogent. This portrayal of maltreatment by a boyfriend is rare in Pop or Country music. How swift strings out the tale of a young girl in love with an older, perhaps abusive, man, again, reveals the particular genius of Swift.  

Another thing worthy of noting with the artist is that she works alone in her songs. On her last two albums, all the tracks have been solo singles. The artist is indisputably talented and confident.