Just streamed some of this on Youtube, I wasn't a fan.  Having said that, I am a huge country fan and have a lot of time for the young female pop side of things.  Indestructible Machine by Lydia Loveless is infinitely superior to what I've heard of Red - I'd say it's the best country album by a young artist in five years.  Even bad Miranda Lambert (imo this isn't an example of bad Lambert - written by Welch and Rawlings) gives it a Honky Tonk sawdust floor kicking too.

I'm just completing my second run through of this Taylor Swift thang. If anything it's even duller on repeated listening.

I'd sooner go for the anal bleaching package

g.man

OK. I'm here.

I will do a bit of Taylor Swift listening. I'll PM Oli for an invite.

Ok, I'm listening now and every track sounds like it should be the climax of a teen movie where everything is resolved and a band is playing prom and everyone is having a thoroughly clean time.

Youtube comments though are proving insightful:

THIS SONG IS PROBABLY NOT ABOUT HARRY STYLES SO STOP THINKING EVERYONE OR EVERYTHING IS ABOUT ONE DIRECTION BECAUSE ITS NOT.

Utter dirge on first listen. Perhaps it's a grower. 

I know it's pop but I really can't stand songs where it's pretty easy to guess what the next line will be. Lyrics-by-number writing. Have to agree that Sad Beautiful Tragic was the best effort on there and there was a real Mazzy Star-lite quality to it. 

Will give it another listen tomorrow, but just seems really bland. 

Kudos though to making Ed Sheeran appear even more bland than I already thought he was.

She can't get someone else to write a good pop song for her? Better singers than her have used some.

Also, Missy Higgins had a first album with songs written when she was 17. And they kick ass and take names.

Also, why do I have to buy winAR or whatever it is. And why isn't Swift putting her shit on rdio and making my life easy.

Buy Winrar? Are you nuts?

Kow wrote:

Buy Winrar? Are you nuts?

No, that's why I didn't buy it. I don't know wtf it even does. where do I get a dodge one?

Well I use 7-zip, but yeah.

Of course there are going to be exceptions. Point missed I think chaps.

Im not mentally ill im Gloriously pop

Just the other evening I picked up an album of a hip-hop artiste, and noted my joy it was a plus sixty minute compilation of his tracks. When I realised that Ms. Swift's album was also sixty whole minutes I did not note the same joy. So as you can see I come with this from some prejudice. However you are wrong, I spent several months on Spotify a few years ago having a range of ensembles interrupted by adverts for her debut album. Let's say it wasn't my cup of tea then and I don't expect it to be now. Fortunately I did not note when track one ended and track two started. I think this is due to an apparent over excited use of auto tune at the end of each line. I did note the drums in the opening track were so familiar I was non surprised.

The fourth track I Knew You Were Trouble is certainly a single, boasting a hook questionably layered over the chorus and built from nothing but poorly manipulated sinewaves and agressive low pass filters which made me want to shit kittens and punch bricks. And I am not even a third of the way through. I look at the album artwork and think nice lips then my brain tests the consistency of this thought and I correct myself, 'nice photoshop'. All Too Well mentions the album title, red. Far too much. If I was the target the audience I think I would be screaming 'red' along with Taylor on this track, which is not the title track but features the title in it. Ironically the lyric, "We got lost in translation, ma'be I asked for too much, but ma'be this thing was a masterpiece'til you tore it all up.". This tune is five minutes and twenty nine seconds long, and Taylor "remembers it all too well". Missy, it's not a master piece and I wish it was torn up.

The preceding eleven minutes are tortuous then the melodies switch to a CBBC like theme with the tune Stay Stay Stay. I want to smack my head against the desk but I am on a mission to find something of an achievement her endeavours and then she starts rhyming, battle rap this is not. Enter Gary Lightbody in a following duet. Orchestral, yes, fat drums; please. I am now playing with the EQ, reducing the 1K channel and it's lefty neighbours into their minuses in an attempt to quash the vocals however the autotune has done its damage across all frequencies. There is no hope for me. Twenty three minutes left to endure, including an Ed Sheeran track. I've not heard, to my knowledge at least any Ed Sheeran so I am looking forward to Everything Has Changed; this does not live up to the hype, neither the song title or recent rumblings of Ed Sheeran both are inadequate.

The final track plays Begin Again, and I consider the fair trial I was gonna give Swift et al. My initial thoughts were to give this album a whirl, write these notes. Give her past albums a whirl and then replay Red. I'm abandoning this idea, as even if it was something I still wanted to do I'd castigate her even more for straying from a formula she was expert at, she doesn't deserve that. I am sure there must be one or two tunes in her collection that would win me over. Certainly from her more Country music days. Or even something she may have done with Def Leppard. It's clear to me though this album is a switch from the esteemed country days of her musical career and she is attempting to crack the pop and rock market so maybe it was just dumb to allow her producer from the age of 14 be responsible for half of this album? At least she's always been part of the creative process through out her career which is a metric tonne more involvement than a lot of performers who go up and down the charts in this day and age.

A bean for her active role, a bean for drafting other producers and minus half a bean for the poor attempt to change genres.

Total 1.5 beans out of 5.

I'm going to listen to something good now.

Next level trolling from Brooks on this one. Props.