(Republic)After the hard edges of 2017’s Reputation, Swift’s latest album revisits the catchy pop and romantic concerns that made her name
Taylor Swift is more of a lover than a fighter. The singer-songwriter doesn’t say it out loud on her seventh album – the successor to 2017’s Reputation, an aggressive record in which she came out swinging – but it’s hard to escape the conclusion on a record that Swift is calling “a love letter to love”. “I’m in my feelings more than
Drake, so, yeah,” she winks at one point.
Reputation’s murky mood board went big on snakes, bling and shade thrown and received, the aftermath of a highly public feud with
Kanye West and
Kim Kardashian West. By contrast, Lover is a kitsch-leaning festival of humour, pastels, butterflies and the desire not to be defined by negatives. It is, in large parts, a hoot.