Released: 09/03/2009

Despite the slightly deranged policy of lyrically referencing a Shakespeare play against a video clearly set in a Jane Austen novel, Love Story, the lead single from Taylor Swift’s second album Fearless, is a catchy enough pop song to make one anticipate an amiable album of country-tinged, hummable tunes. However, after listening to the entire sixteen tracks all the way through, one can arrive at only one firm conclusion. Fearless is the musical equivalent of Fearne Cotton: insipid, bland and full of mindless drivel.

One prime example of Taylor’s peerless scrutiny into amorous rivalry amongst teenage girls, comes in You Belong With Me when she complains that; “She wears short skirts; I wear T-Shirts”. However, this choice couplet evidently completely exhausted Taylor’s rhyming capabilities so that when the motif is repeated later in the song it now runs; “She wears high heels; I wear sneakers”.

Elsewhere, when Taylor gets emotional, boy, does she go for it, moaning and whining her way through the entire gamut of meaningless romanticized clichés and tired old inanities as she does it. A particular favourite is when she threatens; “I don’t know why, but with you I’d dance, in a storm in my best dress”. After penning this gem, Taylor must have hardly conceived it to be possible that she’d effortlessly captured turning up materiality for the sake of love so glibly upon the page, then sighed to herself adoringly in the mirror, ‘Wow, Taylor, you’re so friggin’ deep!’

Ultimately, this is just music tailor-made (sorry) for adolescent girls who in five years time will vehemently deny they ever heard of Taylor Swift, let alone bought her CDs. They will secretly burn Fearless on a bonfire in their back-garden along with their first boyfriend’s T-shirt and the hugely embarrassing diary they kept when they were fourteen.

www.taylorswift.com

Patrick Cash