On October 22nd of 2012, Taylor Swift released her fourth studio album, Red, consisting of 16 songs with features from Gary Lightbody and Ed Sheeran. One word I would use to describe this album is emotional. This album highlights the “red” emotions such as intense love, frustration, jealousy, confusion, and joy. It takes you through the highs and lows of being in a relationship, getting out of a relationship, and trying to have fun and live life in between. Although Big Machine (Taylor’s record label) promoted the album as a country album, this album spans a multitude of genres including pop, rock, folk, british rock, country pop. Retrospectively, Red can be seen as the transitional record that took Taylor from her country sound to mainstream pop. After proving herself as a capable songwriter by writing all of the songs on “Speak Now” by herself, Taylor wanted to venture outside of the comfort zone and collaborate with other producers, songwriters, and singers to learn as much as she could from them. Some of my favorite songs from this album are: Red, All Too Well, 22, Lucky One, Begin Again, Moment I knew, Come Back Be Here, I Knew You Were Trouble, and We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. Today I will be talking in detail about the first few songs, and give a few remarks on the last songs. 

     In the title track Red, is the second song on the album where she compares the emotions she feels during a relationship and after the end of a relationship with different colors. Taylor says, “ Losing him was blue, like I’d never known/ Missing him was dark gray all alone/ Forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you’ve never met/ Cause loving him was red/ Yeah, yeah, red/ Oh burning red.” During this chorus, Taylor takes us through the different stages of heartbreak – losing someone, missing someone, trying to forget them, and reminiscing on the relationship, and she assigns them each a very accurate color description. The color blue is usually associated with sadness, but Taylor takes it a step further by saying that it was a kind of blue that “she had never known” which shows the depth of the sadness that she felt. After sadness, she then moves on to missing her ex-lover. When I think of the color gray I think of a colorless, gloomy, and miserable state of mind. I think missing someone is very accurately described through the color of “dark gray” because this state of mind can sometimes consume all aspects of your life, which might leave you in a state of disinterest in life – which I also associate with this color. I think the next line is particularly interesting because Taylor says that trying to forget the person was like “trying to know someone, you’ve never met”. I remember when I first heard the song, I thought “but that’s impossible, how could you possibly know someone you’ve never met?” – and that’s when I realized that was exactly the point Taylor was trying to make. For her, it was impossible to forget him, because their relationship had left such a big impact on her. I really like how Taylor described the relationship as “red”, but not just any shade of red, it was burning red. Usually you associate the word burning with fire or passion and I think the choice of using “burning” instead of “deep” or “dark” perfectly shows how much she had loved and lost in this relationship.   

     It would be a crime for me to talk about the Red album, without talking about All Too Well. One thing you should know about Taylor Swift is that in every album, Taylor Swift very deliberately chooses a “track five” song. This song is usually a tear-jerking, emotion packed song where Taylor lets all of guards down and shares her most vulnerable lyrics. “All Too Well” was the first song that Taylor wrote for this album, after going through a six-month writing block following a painful break-up. She had initially written a song that was ten minutes long because she had so much to process through, but she had pared it down to a five and a half minute song for the album. “All Too Well” has what I believe is one of the most iconic bridges that Taylor has ever written. The lyrics for the best part of the bridge are: “Hey you called me up again just to break me like a promise/ So casually cruel in the name of being honest/ I’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here/ ‘Cause I remember it all, all, all, too well”. I think you can see exactly why this song was a track five, because the bridge is just short of her basically sobbing about her heartbreak. Promises are meant to be kept between two people, just like a strong relationship – but “break me like a promise” shows how Taylor feels betrayed by this person. I think the pairing of the words “casually” and “cruel” creates such a strong picture of who Taylor is describing. It evokes feelings of being manipulated and used and shows how Taylor was suffering while the ex-lover couldn’t care any less about how she felt. 

     Switching to a more happier note, the song 22, is the first song that fully established her new pop sound. Although on the surface this song may seem like any other pop song, Taylor is able to communicate her conflicting emotions in this song as well to go with the overall theme of heartbreak and confusion. Every single song on this album talks about heartbreak in a different way, and this song is no exception. In this song, Taylor shows how she chooses to have fun and leave the past in the past to move forward. My favorite line in this song is the part that goes “we’re happy, free, confused, and lonely in the best way” which I honestly think is the perfect one-liner to describe the entire album as a whole. 

     In The Lucky One, Taylor talks about her fears of her settling into her fame and fortune. In each of the three verses of this song, Taylor talks about three different women (rumored to be Joni Mitchell, Kim Wilde, and Audrey Hepburn) who had it all, but then chose a life of solitude after their fame led to all of their secrets being exposed to the media. Through this song, Taylor explains how she thinks it is important to step back from doing the thing you love, when it does not bring you anymore joy. Also, although this is a Taylor Swift blog, I feel like it is important to note the production on this song done by Jeff Bhasker. I think the decision to go the soft-rock route highlights the lyrics of the song and also pays homage to 1900’s stars that are being talked about in the song. 

     Just as Taylor does in this album, I will conclude this post with the song Begin Again. After all of the confusion, pain, and frustration that Taylor vents and works through in the rest of the album, Taylor still manages to stay optimistic about love and life, and she shows it through this song. The song talks about the feelings of anxiety and vulnerability that come with getting your heart broken and trying to find your person. The line “On a Wednesday in the cafe, I watched it begin again” paints such a wonderfully ordinary picture that shows that even after going through the painful experiences she has gone through, Taylor chooses not to settle because she has learned from her past and grown up. On a less heavy note, the music video for this song is set in Paris, and it is one of her most beautiful and charming videos, so definitely check it out!

     As of right now, Red (Taylor’s Version) is set to come out on November 12th 2021! Red Taylor’s Version will have 30 songs on the album including the ten minute version of Taylor’s track five “All Too Well”. It will also include her charity single Ronan that she wrote about a four year boy of the same name who died from neuroblastoma in 2011, and performed for the Stand Up to Cancer telethon where all the proceeds went to charity.