Continuing my ranking of Taylor Swift’s albums…
One of the biggest surprises for me when reassessing Taylor Swift’s catalog was how far 2010’s Speak Now slid in my estimation.
Don’t get me wrong… it’s a great album. But before my deep dive into each of her releases, I would have named it as her best. In fact, I did just that when I recently placed it on my list of the best albums of the decade.
Continuing my ranking of Taylor Swift’s albums…
Red was a transitional album for Taylor Swift, marking her first steps into more muscular pop territory (and her first collaborations with Swedish hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback). It was also her longest album to that point, at 16 tracks.
You can feel the strain on both of those fronts, as Red feels way too long and way too unsure of itself.
This Elvis Costello track shows up on one of the reissues of his 1983 album Punch the Clock.
It’s a testament to the depth of Costello’s catalog that a song this good can end up as a forgotten B-side, and also that after months of Costello Weekends, plenty of Random Weekend appearances, and a bunch of other Song of the Day posts, I still have to much great material of his to mine.
I started listening to Pink sometime in the late 2000s, when her latest album Funhouse was charting well and receiving a lot of critical acclaim.
I also enjoyed her next album, 2012’s The Truth About Love, but after that I stopped keeping up with her releases. She has dropped two studio albums since then that struggled to find an audience. Last year’s Hurts 2B Human hasn’t even cracked 100,000 U.S. sales, while most of her earlier releases were in the millions.
Continuing my ranking of Taylor Swift’s albums…
Taylor Swift’s sophomore effort, 2008’s Fearless, turned her into a major star and remains her best-selling album to date, reaching Diamond status and selling more than 12 million copies worldwide. It was the best-selling album by anybody that year, making Swift the youngest artist in history to achieve that feat.
This album starts off like gangbusters but begins to falter after its midpoint. Five of the first six tracks made the cut for me, but only one of the last seven.
Meet Me In Montauk 