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Swift's gentle touch is as enduring as her songcraft, and this musical maturity may not quite jibe with her age but it does help make Fearless one of the best mainstream pop albums of 2008.
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Though they're written by a teenager, Swift's songs have broad appeal, and therein lies the genius and accessibility of her second effort.
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She's 18--wide-eyed, naive, hopeful--and that's how she sounds on Fearless, her superb new album.
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Her supple, lightly twangy vocals fit the album's lilting melodies (most of the slick, radio-friendly instrumentation here is purely functional), and her sentiments, though sometimes naive, are refreshingly age-appropriate.
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Her music mixes an almost impersonal professionalism--it's so rigorously crafted it sounds like it has been scientifically engineered in a hit factory--with confessions that are squirmingly intimate and true.
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Swift has the personality and poise to make these songs hit as hard as gems like 'Tim McGraw' and 'Our Song' from her smash debut, and, once again, she wrote or cowrote them all.
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It's troubling that the album does not show significant refinements of the promise she demonstrated on her debut, but Swift's age still gives her ample time to hone her craft into something more substantial and more sophisticated.
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The Pennsylvania native delivers another pleasant assortment of precocious pop country on Fearless, a set that keeps her natural polish in the middle of the mainstream road, and sports uncommon refinements for a singer her age.
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Swift may not possess the vocal power to fully sell her more lyrically generic material (Underwood's great gift), but for the most part, this remarkably self-aware adolescent's words don't falter, masterfully avoiding the typical diarist's pitfalls of trite banality and pseudo-profound bullshit.
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I'm moved nevertheless by what can pass for a concept album about the romantic life of an uncommonly-to-impossibly strong and gifted teenage girl, starting on the first day of high school and gradually shedding naiveté without approaching misery or neurosis.
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She writes everything, and has a feel for timeless songwriting that means she can cover Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' live, and it works.
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Mixed feelings are very much par for the course listening to Fearless, a record that does something bland and uninventive but does it incredibly well.
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UncutThe music is classifed as country, but it's really clinical pop, enlivened by Swift's confessional lyrics. [Apr 2009, p.101]
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Q MagazineHer giggly peers will find she speaks their language, while grown-ups will prefer her to keep quiet. [Apr 2009, p.110]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 1,300 out of 1520
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Mixed: 46 out of 1520
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Negative: 174 out of 1520
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Feb 16, 2013
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May 18, 2011
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Nov 14, 2011