I've had the same relationship with Taylor Swift that probably a lot of people have had, from back when she debuted in 2006 and I found her insufferable, to the era of "Mine" and "Eyes Open" where I had to begrudgingly admit that she was improving, to Red, which I found to be a horribly bloated album that nevertheless had several fantastic pop songs, to finally 1989, which is a strong contender for not just Pop Album Event of 2014 but Best Album of 2014, period. Taylor Swift right now is going through her "imperial phase", which is a phrase coined by Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys to describe periods where an artist is, in his own words, "critic-proof". That is, everything they do comes off incredibly well and the contemporary critical response to their music doesn't even matter. 1989 got great reviews, but not rave reviews, but that didn't matter even slightly, because 1989 is going to be remembered as a peak of Taylor Swift, if not the peak. So it's fair to go back through her back catalogue and see how she developed into the kind of artist who could have such a huge impact on even people who are not in her demographic.
Listening to her first album compared with her later stuff, what she comes out of the gate with is not necessarily even a strength of hers; the album has great production that allows all the choruses to hit with the proper amount of oomph, and this goes a great way towards covering up how the songs are mostly at similar tempos and have similar dynamics. It's samey, sure, but entirely pleasant. The best thing about the music on this album is, actually, from the accompanying violin lines in many of the songs. I'm going to guess that these are primarily the work of her co-songwriters or the studio musicians, since on her later albums when she starts writing more of her own stuff, these kinds of fills and countermelodies are entirely abandoned - it's just not the kind of thing Swift puts into her songs. In the interest of absolute fairness, though, she's a great singer from the get-go, which is undeniably a strength of Swift and not attributable to anyone else.
The major fault of the album, what it really needs, is a sense of lyricism; almost all these songs have lyrics that are too broad and vague to be meaningfully differentiated, which is especially a problem when, as I said before, they all fall into the category of "slightly-above-midtempo pop love song". In the future Swift really develops a knack for deft characterization, which is absolutely vital for an artist whose songs are unfailingly about interpersonal relationships; I would argue the first time this shows is in "Mine" on Speak Now when she tosses off the lyric "you made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter", which is a line that fleshes out at least three characters in rapid fashion while still seeming tossed-off and spontaneous in the way that great pop spectacle is.
The most fascinating thing is that she does try that on this album, but not through characterization, but rather through tactile, carefully-selected details about a setting. The first example is the opener, "Tim McGraw", where she evokes a relationship that's ended but where the two characters remember each other through their mutual love of the titular singer. It's not a complete way forward, since it lingers on this detail rather than developing the characters as Swift would rather do later, but it's an assured first step for Swift that's helped by having one of the best choruses on the album. The other example is... not so successful. "Our Song" was the big crossover hit from the album, but while its upbeatness is a nice respite from the tenderness of the rest of Taylor Swift, it tries to pack far too many details about its two characters' relationship into the chorus, and ends up feeling crowded and messy as a result. Certainly the hurricane of quirks and events that Swift rattles off pales in comparison to the sheer efficiency of "you made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter", but equally, that's in the future. There are things in need of development here, and develop them she certainly will. In the meantime, this album is perfectly pleasant. The actual sound is great, and it'd be great to get drunk and sing along to. It's just the first step, yeah, but it's Taylor Swift's first step, and that counts for a lot.
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