Loving This Album Was Red

If you ask any Taylor Swift super-fan what one of the best, most nostalgic albums of hers it, the collective answer would probably be Red. The 2012 country-pop album included some of the most heart-wrenching and danceable tracks from Taylor Swift’s discography. Including hits such as “22” and “We Are Never Getting Back Together”, she made chart toppers with this album, beginning to a name for herself in the pop industry.

Today, October 22, 2021, we celebrate the 9 year anniversary of Red.

Red was Swift’s transition to pop music. Prior to this release, she was a primarily country artist. However she makes it clear that even in the face of reinvention, she didn’t have to sacrifice her singer-songwriter skills or the integrity of her music.

The album opens with “State of Grace”, built on top of pop drum beats and guitar riffs. This song is a lot like the other ones in her pop era: dreamy, lyrical, and fun. Taylor Swift explains in an interview, “State of Grace is a song I wrote at the beginning process of making this album, and I think it helps to define what the rest of the record is about, just with one line.  There’s a line in the song that says ‘Love is a ruthless game/Unless you play it good and right”. In an avid listener’s opinion, “State of Grace” is the best opening tracks she has had to date. It perfectly explains the conflicting emotions of sudden romance in your young adult years. Touching on toxic relationships, freedom, and adventure all in one track, it sets up exactly what the rest of the album will portray for the listener. The title track “Red” does something similar for the opening of the album. The record’s namesake is about the struggle after a breakup, remembering the good and the bad, in “flashbacks and echos”. The album Red does just that.

This album houses some of her greatest hits including “We Are Never Getting Back Together”, “I Knew You Were Trouble”, and “22”. Anyone listening to the radio in the early 2010s can recall these chart toppers as anthems for pop fans everywhere. Bold breakup songs about taking back your independence, and dance music celebrating spending time with your friends, Swift reached out to a whole new audience than before. Her past hits were country songs similarly about love or breakups, but this way she gave fans songs to belt in the front seat of their car or at a school dance. These song were the beginning of the legacy she has as an artist today.

To myself, and to so many other Taylor Swift fans, Red is so much more than dance tracks and top hits. It included heartwarming and tear jerking ballads such as “All Too Well”, “Treacherous”, and “Sad Beautiful Tragic”. These songs are bound to give the first time listener a shock, as the emotional content is a lot different from songs like “22”. “All Too Well” is a fan favorite. In a BuzzFeed article polling the best Taylor Swift songs from each album, 38% of voters chose “All Too Well” giving it a 50% lead for first place. Swift has mentioned in several interviews how difficult this song was to create, as she had to filter many emotions and experiences into the 5 minute and 27 second track as recalls her failed relationship with actor Jake Gyllenhaal. She remembers it being perfect, and new, and young. However she remembers the pain of the break up, all too well. It’s a song that, even though listeners haven’t had a celebrity relationship themselves, we can still feel every level of emotion Swift gives us in the song. We too can remember immense pain all too well.

Red is the next album lined up to be released as a rerecording by Swift on November 12, 2021. Fans anxiously await new vault tracks that will be released on top of the new recordings of each song. This era of music was so pivotal for Swift’s career, and personally I can’t wait to hear more of the music she wrote around this time. However, what is making fans especially excited is the 10 minute version fo “All Too Well” that will be included at the end of the rerecorded album, an unedited and unabridged version of the fan favorite.

I’m excited to rekindle the Red era as a college student, because I was only 9 years old at the time of the original release, and I loved it just as much. This is a time for us all to appreciate what simple pop music with country roots can do for us an a new era of music, “and watch it begin again”.