Lover, cont.

She’s always done densely referential stuff but this is another fucking level entirely, within four bars she’ll reference five of her own different songs, separately in phrasing, meter, vocal affect, beat, and instrumental sound, and ALL THE CROSS-REFERENCES ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE AND ADD DEPTH, it’s fucking insane, she’ll have reference chains that bounce across 5 albums and a decade as if she was planning it all along, and then while you’re absorbing that you’ll get to another track and learn you were being set up for an entirely different reference chain the whole time

A bit ago I was like “why is she riffing off Katy Perry 2012” but that’s a definite decision. On one hand Lover “sounds” like 1989 or Reputation in the same way that Red progressed from the country sounds of Fearless or Speak Now, but on the other there is nothing on the album that would be out of place when Red first came out in 2012

Like her duet guests are the Dixie Chicks and the lead of Panic! At the Disco, there are points where she’s referencing Rilo Kiley, CHVRCHES, Annie and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. She uses one of her “I’ll rip off and caricature a rival singer’s style to count coup on her” slots on Lily fucking Allen

After Reputation added “getting drunk” to the Tayswift universe, this album’s vice theme seems to be “gambling”.

It is the most political album she’s ever done yes but of course the endorsing Democrats and You Need To Calm Down videos were a headfake, it’s more “country” in subject matter and style than anything since Red, it directly references Jesus for I believe the only time apart from the 2007 Christmas album

There’s a lot of color imagery with red, blue, and purple (the album’s color scheme, but pastel so it also kinda looks like the trans flag), she is offering herself as the one capable of reuniting the American tribe. There’s an entirely viable reading of the album, from I Forgot That You Existed (if you take that “one magical night” as Election Day) through to Daylight (as the promise of the coming civic peace) as “well gosh, we’ve been going overboard into Too Much Politics and it’s been crap, time to put that behind us”. Though along the way, at several points, if you want to, you can read her as speaking directly to red OR blue tribe and validating them.

We just need to take several seats and then try to restore the peace and control our urges to scream about all the people we hate. Time to be what we love.