A Listening Guide to Lover , Based on Your 9 Favorite Taylor Swift Songs
Today, Taylor Swift released Lover, her highly-anticipated seventh album. While we’ve heard the album’s fifth track, The Archer, along with singles Lover, ME!, and You Need to Calm Down, there are now 14 brand-new songs to listen to and decode—for reference, Swift’s last album, Reputation, was comprised of 15 songs total.
Lover signifies a return to Swift’s Red era of devastatingly emotional ballads, with 1989’s pop-y flair and glimpses of Reputation’s razor-sharp wit. The sheer volume of new music is enough to make even seasoned Swifties’s heads spin, so Vogue.com compiled a listening guide for each track. Below, find which Lover tracks you should listen to, based on your past favorites from TSwift.
If you loved “Wildest Dreams” (1989), “Treacherous” (Red), and “Dress” (Reputation), listen to “False God” and “I Think He Knows.”
As she’s moved away from her country image—and her teenage years—Swift has usually dedicated one track per album to exploring the sensuality and intimacy of her grown-up relationships. With Lover, Swift blessed us with two: “False God” offers soulful lyrics filled with not-so-subtle metaphors set to a jazzy beat. “I Think He Knows” offers more of the percussion-forward pop sound that Swift has treated us to in a few other tracks off of Lover, like “You Need to Calm Down” and “ME!”
If you loved “All Too Well” (Red) and “Last Kiss” (Speak Now), listen to “Cornelia Street.”
It’s no secret that Swift has spent the better part of the past three years swept up in the bliss of her relationship with actor Joe Alwyn. These days, fans of her heartfelt odes to a devastating love lost might be hard-pressed to find a song that hits in quite the same way. The lyrics of “Cornelia Street” are filled with the same mix of nostalgia for streets crossed together, turning seasons, and relationship highs that make the lows hurt that much more. Look no farther than Swift’s breathy refrain of, “I hope I never lose you, I hope it never ends. I’d never walk Cornelia street again, that’s the kind of heartbreak time could never end.”
If you loved “Getaway Car” (Reputation) and “Blank Space” (1989), listen to “Daylight.”
Since her 1989 album, Swift has made a tradition of reflecting on relationships—romantic and platonic—that ended messily, and often in the public eye. “Daylight” seems to continue the trend of dressing up a bit of self-reflection, this time set against the Lover album’s trend toward synth-heavy instrumentals. You’ll find yourself listening to it a few times over and speculating about whose “Many lines I’ve crossed, unforgiven,” Swift refers to in the opening verse.
If you loved “You Belong With Me” (Fearless) and “I’m Only Me When I’m With You” (Taylor Swift), listen to “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” and “It’s Nice to Have a Friend.”
Do you ever find yourself nostalgic for the singer’s country-pop crossover roots and her sweet ballads to teenage love? Then “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” and “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” are for you. With the former, Swift brings over a decade of adult perspective—and possibly even a bit of criticism of her late-aughts fixation with the idealism of small-town, USA—to its lyrics. Gems like “American glory faded before me, now I’m feeling hopeless, ripped up my prom dress running through rose thrones,” punctuate its catchy chorus. In “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” Swift muses on the sentimentality of falling in love with someone she’s gotten to know first as a friend and confidante (Alwyn, perhaps?).
Originally Appeared on Vogue
