Taylor Swift - Speak Now [2010]

I've made the case that Taylor Swift's album-to-album progression is incremental, but at the same time very measurable and visible. From a mainstream popularity perspective, however, Speak Now is the first (and, so far, I would argue only) album to be a holding pattern for her. It probably didn't win over any people who weren't already Taylor Swift fans, and served mostly to consolidate her position as a country crossover superstar for whom the “country” label was increasingly looking like an artistic dead end.

That's not to say that there's not a meaningful artistic progression in Speak Now, but it's in an area that, while valuable, is meaningless to the format of radio singles: this is where Swift legitimately writes a solid album, not just a couple great hits and some filler. So for all that it felt like a holding pattern from an MTV perspective in 2010, it's an invaluable step for her as a songwriter.

First, a rundown of the songs: “Mine” is the lead single and leadoff track, and it's a charming, catchy song that easily matches “Love Story” and “You Belong to Me”, if not necessarily surpassing them – which would be more of a problem if it was the best song on the album, but it's not. It's not even the best single! “Back to December” tops it, and was my favorite track by her for a while. But even that can't compete with “Mean”, which is just such a wonderful song – the first track of hers where she folds humor into her persona, and it proves to be the secret ingredient that she was missing all along. More on that aspect in the Red review. Even without it, it's the best possible kiss-off to her old country style, a tantalizing hint that maybe she had something special in that area after all.

Even more notable is that there are quite a few non-singles to recommend, for the first time in her career. I'm speaking especially of the mid-album run of “The Story of Us”, “Never Grow Up”, “Enchanted” and “Better Than Revenge”, which are a particularly strong run that successfully keep up the momentum of the hits in the first third. And I have to particularly call out “Enchanted”. That is an astonishing song – a time-stoppingly huge, heart-in-throat ballad that damn near decimates everything in its proximity.

As important and great as it is that Swift produced enough great material to have, for the first time, some worthwhile deep cuts, she can't keep it up quite enough for a 14-song, 65-minute album. And, spoiler alert, she won't be able to do it next time either. Or the time after that, frankly, where she decides to simply cut down on the songs per album, which is a legitimate solution. That's an approach that would have worked wonders on Speak Now, which could do with four or five less songs. Nobody would miss the last four songs or “Dear John” (dear god, Taylor, never make another seven-minute song).

So while Speak Now isn't quite Taylor making a great album for the first time, it's the first signpost that she can and will. And in the meantime she can hold down the charts and sales. It's a vital and irreplaceable step in her discography; when I finally decided to start downloading and listening to her music, it was at the release of Red, but this listen reveals that I really should have started one album sooner. All of us doubters should have started sooner. Fortunately, with Red she's about to finally deliver the album that definitively wins over not just her demographic, but the whole world.