Oh, Kanye West, you have a lot to answer for. Only two tracks into Taylor Swift’s Speak Now I could understand your desire to rip that microphone out of her hands at the MTV Video Music Awards – but, in doing so, you have angered the teenage girls, and their middle aged counterparts who live in perpetual puberty, who could be heard chanting: “One of us, one of us”. An unfathomably popular pop star was thus propelled into the stratosphere and given the perfect platform from which to blast the soundtrack of her own vapid existence, her mediocrity spun into gold records by the masses whose only prerequisite in pop is to find a likeness of themselves.
Honestly. This is awful, unimaginative music differentiated from its predecessor only by the sheer spite on some of the tracks. ‘Better Than Revenge’ ups the tempo and includes the withering put-down “She took him faster than you can say sabotage/ She’s an actress/ But she’s better known/ for the things that she does on the m-attress.” Meanwhile, in ‘Dear John’, she chastises her former flame John Mayer for creeping on teenage starlets – an interesting and personal snap-shot of the sleazier side of the fame game. However, those feistier moments aside, Taylor’s pretty, pallid voice lacks sufficient vigour to sustain such vitriol, and soon we’re back to sweeping orchestrals, plodding guitars and a bit of banjo to signify her country roots.
Apparently 20-year old Swift wrote every track here herself. Next time out, a few collaborations might not go astray!
Key Track: ‘Better Than Revenge’