Red
| Taylor Swift
Red
Red (stylized as RED) is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released on October 22, 2012, by Big Machine Records, as the follow-up to her third studio album, Speak Now. The album title was inspired by the "semi-toxic relationships" that Swift experienced during the process of conceiving this album, with Swift describing the emotions she felt as "red emotions" due to their intense and tumultuous nature. Red touches on Swift's signature themes of love and heartbreak, however, from a more mature perspective while exploring other themes such as fame and the pressure of being in the limelight. The album features collaborations with producers and guest artists such as Gary Lightbody of the band Snow Patrol and Ed Sheeran, and is noted for Swift's experimentation with new musical genres. Swift completed The Red Tour in support of the album on June 12, 2014; the tour became the highest-grossing tour of all time by a country artist, grossing over $150 million. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Billboard
Her first adult pop album.
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NPR
A Canonical Coming-Of-Age Album
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Spin
One of the Best Pop Albums of Our Time
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The A.V. Club
The next step toward putting those awkward teenage years behind her.
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We Got This Covered
The album will likely produce a handful of singles appealing to a mass audience.
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Consequence of Sound
Swift’s new sounds and energies rarely if ever fall flat
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Hollywood Reporter
A stylistic tour de force.
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Slant Magazine
Ultimately too uneven to be a truly great pop album.
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Entertainment Weekly
Shows how savvy Swift is
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Sputnik Music
Swift is a full-fledged pop artist now and can no longer be claimed by the dark world of country music, no matter what CMT would have you believe.
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All Music
Barely winks at country, and it's a better album for it.
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American Songwriter
Makes it official that Swift is the leading pop romantic of her generation.
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Spin
Whatever it is, this music is full of adult pleasures.
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The Guardian
Swift seems to know just the right phrase to pull you inside her break-up narratives.
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LA Times
The versatility is the album’s most striking characteristic.
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Drowned in Sound
Firmly grounded at the crossroads between innocence and experience.
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BBC
She’s a quick-witted lyricist with a sharp eye, and... a true romantic.
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Boston Globe
Pursues pop hits — and more mature songwriting
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Rolling Stone
A geyser of willful eclecticism that’s only tangentially related to Nashville.
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Pop Matters
More varied in its offerings, but also more disjointed than her previous work
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Slant Magazine
Focuses on her uncanny gift for writing pop hooks.
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The Telegraph
Her journey into the world of adult pop.
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Sputnik Music
Naivety, innocence, and romanticism turn into plain childishness.
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Taste of Country
Doesn't provide much to quiet the haters who will forever accuse her of being "too pop."
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Treblezine
Highlights her metamorphosis from Country caterpillar to bad-ass butterfly.
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Vulture
A born storyteller
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Pop Crush
A mixed bag of emotions and sounds.
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Christian Science Monitor
An overall letdown.
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Time
Danceable, Dreamy—and Mature
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Newsday
Mastery of a broader range of musical tools and styles
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Muxic Beats
An attempt to retain her teeny bopper followers and generate more adult fans at the same time.
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Kidzworld
Offering a whole new set of emotionally charged make-up and break up songs and shift from country into pure pop.
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Nathan Jolly Press
Experimenting her way through sixteen tracks of conflicting genres with nary an errant moment throughout.
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Mic Network
The album that made me appreciate Swift as an artist.
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Digital Spy
Country's it girl teams up with pop's biggest producers for her best record yet.
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The Jesuit Post
One of the greatest breakup albums of all time.
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NY Daily News
Manage to draw the ear more by their cheaply manipulative hooks than thanks to any admirably sure melodies.
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NY Times
Genuine.
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The Crimson
Gets Even More Poppy But Keeps Passionate Narratives
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Ask Missa
Delivers on many levels.
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Seeds
The guitar riffs are catchy, rhythms uncomplicated, and most every song sounds more or less the same.
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Express
There are still country touches and great storytelling lyrics.
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Chicago Tribune
Brims with optimism and heightened emotion that help create pop with real significance.
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Neon Tommy
Lacks the raw, burning emotion she promised.
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The Guardian
. . . it's clear that Red is another chapter in one of the finest fantasies pop music has ever constructed.
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SLANT
If Red is ultimately too uneven to be a truly great pop album, its highlights are career-best work for Swift.
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Muxic Beats
To cap this Red by Taylor Swift album review, everyone may agree that the CD was carefully and meticulously produced. To the country recording artist’s loyal followers, the tracks here might sound deeper in terms of lyrics and more diverse in terms of the genres covered.
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Saving Country Music
The first thing you need to know about this album is that it is not country, period. This is not an opinion. There’s no need to spurn a debate about what the term “country” means or not. This is fact. And for this infraction, which is the mother of all infractions, it deserves two guns down, 0 of 5 stars, and disqualification for even being considered as a legitimate work for review. . . . it would be wrong to not recognize that the good on this album outweighs the bad.
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We Got This Covered
. . . Red archives some of Swift’s hardest-hitting melodies and lyrics to date, sandwiched in between grin-inducing numbers, . . . . . . . Taylor Swift knows what she’s doing with Red. She sticks to what she’s done best in the past, with songs like 22, while experimenting and trying new things.
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Digital Spy
Country's it girl teams up with pop's biggest producers for her best record yet.
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npr
Taylor Swift Leaps Into Pop With 'Red' Red is, with 16 songs, not a perfect album.
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Mic
The whole album seems to have a narrative swirling around the subject of boys, relationships and exes — the story of a girl who has grown up but is still making mistakes, in some cases willingly but overall appreciative of the never ending learning curve that is life. Steven Holt Oct 24, 2012
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EW.com
Red might be about flirting with danger, but who’s risking more here: Swift, or the guy whose baby photos are now public domain? For him, it’s not such a fair trade. He walks away with a scarf. And she gets the rights to the memory.
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Idolator
Red packs a handful of polished pop songs . . . . I’ve been saying for years that Taylor Swift is the best songwriter of her generation, and Red does nothing to dissuade me.
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What Culture
Red will prove to be a brilliant multi-genre effort from Swift, and in the end, it doesn't matter if you call it Country, Pop, or some crazy mix of every genre known to man. Taylor Swift is a great artist making great music.
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Commonsense Media
"Hit-making machine" is a phrase that's often been used to describe Taylor Swift, and with this record, she adds at least a dozen more to her repertoire. While there's nothing especially groundbreaking about Swift's songs, which feature simple melodies and arrangements, she puts them together in such a way as to have mass appeal.
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Music OMH
Swift’s American fans have a noted knack of sending each of her album tracks soaring into the Billboard chart, which perhaps explains why this album is overlong and lacks flow. . . . . Nonetheless, it shows an artist who continues to gain in confidence and ability and excitingly suggests that Taylor Swift’s best work is yet to come. In the meantime, this is just fine.
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Contact Music
Let's get it clear from the outset, Taylor Swift's fourth studio album Red is about as steeped in the Nashville sound as Beethoven's fifth symphony, . . . . For all their manufactured gloss, it's actually the tracks that flirt with commercial pop and EDM that come across best over the 65 minutes.
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Nashville Scene
Red may not succeed as an exorcism for Swift’s vanquished lovers, but as a rangy pop record, deliriously fun at times and haltingly introspective at others, it’s awfully good.
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INQUIRER.NET
“RED” is not only for the hardcore fans of Taylor Swift but anyone else who wants to listen to a well put- together album full of visible emotion backed by well-written lyrics. But this one is worth purchasing only if you are into love-laced ditties and really, really sentimental stuff.
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Ultimate Guitar
Overall, I was quite pleased with this album. It does begin to drag a little bit at the end, but at 65 minutes long, I don't blame her. There were enough highlights and quite impressive moments to keep me interested.
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DAILY REPUBLIC
Taylor Swift’s ‘Red’ is mediocre. But while “Red” contains its share of winners, many of the songs lack the colorfulness and vitality the album title suggests, leading to an overall letdown.
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GLAMOUR
. . . Red is an age-appropriate album, a to-be-expected wise-beyond-her-years collection of love stories ripe with emotional detail.
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Seattle pi
Overall, Red is more delightfully electro-pop than anything Swift has ever put out before (and that includes 2010's Speak Now). With its vibrant blend of heartache and happiness, for me it's her best work to date. And that's no game.
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CHERWELL
Few surprises here, but an elegantly slick album which shows young Ms. Swift going from strength to strength.
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Mic
Country Princess Goes Pop With New Album and Sound. I am not willing to say that this album is her best yet, or that you should go out and buy it ASAP. But she has some great songs to dance to, get over guys to. - Jane Napier Oct 22, 2012
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Montreal Gazette
Taylor Swift’s much-anticipated fourth album comes off, essentially, as a roman-without-clef of her various highly-publicized flings over the past while. Too much of the disc’s excessive running time of 66 minutes is given to dime-a-dozen ballads . . . .
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Rubicon Online
No radical change came from Red but Swift has continued her slow transformation into a mature, well-respected singer.
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Las Vegas Weekly
There’s essentially nothing country about Taylor Swift’s fourth album, Red. It’s a big, sweeping pop record, with Swift’s songwriting augmented by pop architects like Max Martin, Dan Wilson and Butch Walker.
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POP CRUSH
Overall, the album is a mixed bag of emotions and sounds. Yes, there a few twangy country ballads and there are lots of upbeat pop numbers.
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POPSPOKEN
All in all, “Red” is another triumph for Taylor Swift. She’s successfully attempted to try different fields of musicality, and it’s definitely worked in her favor.
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DAILY NEWS
The songs, while catchy, manage to draw the ear more by their cheaply manipulative hooks than thanks to any admirably sure melodies.
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THe Orange County Register
It needs some pruning, but Red is a clear leap forward, an album worthier of awards than its predecessors and an indication that its cover girl is shedding skin, uncovering new facets behind the lipstick and letting go of her innocence.
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The National Arts & Culture
Collaborators feature nicely on the new album, but Taylor Swift's songwriting is as strong as ever.
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Taste Of Country
It's tempting to compare her fourth album to Faith Hill's 2002 album 'Cry,' but Swift's poppiest album is still rooted in great songwriting.
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Southwest Shadow
Taylor Swift’s new album, Red, is a spunky, energetic, and relatable mix that will leave listeners smiling and asking for more.
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The Press Of Atlantic city
. . . while "Red" contains its share of winners, many of the songs lack the colorfulness and vitality the album title suggests, leading to an overall letdown.
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Busterz Magazine
Taylor Swift is an extremely talented songwriter and managed to find the perfect balance in "Red".
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The Star
Red is as chockablock with winning tunes and relatably girlish kiss-offs to the boys who got away as Swift’s previous recordings.
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Robert Christgau
Swift hits the mark less often than Merritt--65 or 70 percent, I'd say. But one could argue that the verisimilitude requirement forces her to aim higher. I like the feisty ones, as I generally do. But "Begin Again" and especially "Stay Stay Stay" stay happy and hit just as hard. That's hard.
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Pitchfork
8/12/2019. If Red holds together at all as it rockets through hybrid genres, it’s in the attentive way Swift dwells on memory and loss and the effect of time on both.
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Write The World
. . . Red is ultimately a food for thought masterpiece that serves as a celebration and examination of everything that makes Swift’s music exciting. Instead of playing it safe, Taylor stretches her horizons, sights pinned on forming an epic genre-shifting career paragon.
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St. Luke's Sentinel
RED shows a growing maturity in Swift’s lyrics and musical style.
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FM 107.1
Red is an evocative album full of vibrant moments. The electric energy of the pounding title-track, with color-driven lyrics bringing out vivid imagery, just reminds listeners that Taylor is one of the most talented young songwriters in any genre. Red comes wrapped up in a flurry of emotion, but just like the color, it’s bursting with life.
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UPROXX
“Red” says as much about her estimable abilities as a musical sponge as it does about how her generation of music fans casually disregards genres and embraces any song that speaks to them, regardless of the format some Clear Channel programmer has tried to pigeonhole it into.
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BIG FROG 104
However, there is nothing country about this CD. And there's nothing new either. Oh the lyrics and the melody are different but the songs are all the same. All 16 cuts on the album are about love. Falling in love, falling out of love, dreaming about love, its love, love, love.
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VULTURE
11/10/2017. “Red,” with its high-school-poetry, colors-as-emotions premise, mythologizes itself and feels everything at once, without a hint of the regret that peppers so much of the rest of the album.
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MTV News
In short, this is her album, on her terms. Her songwriting has grown by leaps and bounds, . . . . Red may be the beginning of her golden age, but really, it only sets the stage for things to come. And I'm willing to bet we'll be amazed by what's next.
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Taylor Swift Switzerland
And that's why her "RED" is her best album, because it's the album where she most effectively lays bare her emotional life in all its messy complexity.
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Citadel
“Red”without a doubt delivers one of the best albums of the year with a whopping 16 tracks on the regular edition. Each of these tracks can stand alone and offer something different from the rest of the songs on the album. The album overall is a mixed bag of emotions and sounds, but is jumbled in just the right way.
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PIPE DREAM
. . . “Red” is an invitation from Swift to experience the raw emotion behind everyday events with a song to suit every mood. Swift is nearly a scientist of human nature and wraps up all common thoughts, feelings and memories into a neat little bundle played for all the world to enjoy.
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Why Pop Music Sucks Today
Her new album, Red, released this past week, is not a bad album. However, I'd have to get a significant amount of money from someone to call it a "great" album. The songs are nothing interesting, nothing new. Not one song makes me say "Wow, that is creative/interesting/new/fresh/compelling/inspiring/etc".
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That's It LA
All-in-all, the album is a mash-up of pop and country with some folk sounds (think Suzanne Vega) thrown in. It’s won a spot in our rotation and I promise, I won’t even skip through the CD to the songs I really like, because, for the most part, it’s a pretty good crossover showing for a country girl.
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Glad I Crashed The Wedding
After initially praising the singer’s more grown-up direction, by the time you hear“all love ever does is break and burn and end” in ‘Begin Again’ it will all became too much and you will be secretly craving tales of bleachers and enchanted love stories again.
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Cromosoma
'Red' is a good album, which Taylor Swift fans will love and that will overload the not-so-followers. Maybe a somewhat shorter version would have served more.
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Plugged In
If anyone is more in love with love than Taylor Swift, I'm hard-pressed to think of who that might be. Thus, looking at the big picture on Red, it's hard to dodge the conclusion that for Swift, love is the only thing that really matters.
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