The Swiftening – Pt 6: “Speak Now”

(The Swiftening Series: 1. folklore | 2. Lover | 3. reputation | 4. 1989 | 5. Red | 6. Speak Now | 7. Fearless | 8. Taylor Swift)

So, fess up. How come everyone was hiding this album from me?

In my immersion in the world of Taylor over these past few months, I’ve come to notice which albums are the most beloved. 1989 and Red in particular are spoken of with the highest of praise from stans. Fearless recently received its “Taylor’s Version” remake, to fan acclaim and love. So, when I was travelling backward into Swift’s early albums, I really thought Speak Now was going to be a write-off. Fine, still, I’m sure, but it’s just not loved out loud in quite the same way as the albums around it.

I put on this album for the first time while I was working on some other stuff, you know, just to give it an initial listen-though. Generally when I hear an album for the first time there are hits and misses. Sometimes songs gel with me immediately, and other times I need to hear a song a few times before I really form an opinion on it. You know, normal stuff. It always takes a few listens to get really acquainted with an album.

Speak Now? Immediate connection. I have a hard time explaining it exactly. My only explanation is the timing, I think. This album came out in 2010. At that time, I was 12 years old, old enough to be cognizant of music but young enough that I’m not sure my awkward aversion to Swift had really developed. A lot of these songs have nostalgia connected to them, as unaware as I may have been of this fact initially. But it’s not fully nostalgia, either. There’s a certain youthfulness here I really found myself connecting to. This is the first album I’ve listened to with a Taylor Swift who is younger than me, so I found her performances in this album really endearing. When I can, I try and seek out any visual media connected to the album for these reviews, and Speak Now has an entire collection of live performances up on YouTube that helped me understand the tone of this era even more. The Speak Now tour is theatrical, with a lot of what I would call Theater Kid Energy. Swift is a youthful 21 but looks far younger thanks to her styling (and also the fashion trends of the 2010s, honestly).

In some ways, I’m often put in an awkward position with how I’ve chosen to write these reviews. I decided to go backward because it was the way I was naturally travelling through Swift’s discography, but it sometimes makes it hard to trace the evolution of her style and skill. Sometimes, though, it brings a new appreciation for the old stuff. When I’ve seen where the music goes, it’s kind of fun to discover the source, the first moment when her career evolved. Speak Now really felt like the latter – in this album I found a Swift so extremely different from the Swift today, but so much of what she has become has its roots here.

The album’s tone is set in its first track, “Mine.” If I could pick a word for the album, it would be “theatrical.” Country music has always been a genre interested in telling stories, but the slight division from her classic genre (part of the slow progression toward pop that would culminate in 1989) adds this twist of Broadway-esque sentiment I can’t help but love. Certainly the country twang is there, but this song, as well as much of the album, takes a glitzier, fairytale take on the genre. I love a lot of the writing in this song, particularly the line “you made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter,” which is a line with such great rhythm… makes for a perfect hook. I think this song is also interesting because it isn’t explicitly autobiographical, though it seems Swift took some inspiration from multiple places in her life in writing the song. She was so well-known at the time (and a bit reviled) for constantly writing about actual exes, so it’s interesting to see a song early in her career that broke that trend.

“Sparks Fly” and “Long Live” have a similar vibe to “Mine,” sweeping ballads with a youthful energy, a slight twang, and a sprinkle of glitter. I point out their similarities mainly because I don’t have many other thoughts about these songs that I haven’t already expressed, not to demean them. This album is nothing if not solid in its theming and quality. I think this is why it grips the listener immediately. This is a collection of songs that reminds me a lot of 1989 with its consistently solid hooks. Perhaps the artistic experimentation of other albums isn’t as present, but this is a solid set of performances you’ll probably get stuck in your head more than once.

The slightly more acoustic “Speak Now” gives the album its name, and I wanted to call it out because I find its sound really interesting. I didn’t notice this until I watched the live performance of it, but it has a vintage, 1950s swing to it. This is communicated in the performance with Swift performing in front of two backup dancers, in their swingy little A-line dresses, giving a lot of vintage girl group energy. The song itself feels a lot like that too, it’s a pleading song from the singer to her ex-boyfriend not to marry his cruel fiancé. Speaking of that, I want to briefly discuss another aspect of this album that really dates it – the casual, cool-girl misogyny.

Now, I grew up in the late 2000s and early 2010s and so I can say from experience that feminism was not a “cool” concept for a lot of my youth. It was generally accepted that women had gotten all the rights they needed, so if you still identified as a feminist, you must be a shrill man-hater or something. At the same time, though, a lot of entertainment industries were full to the gills with double standards, so a lot of the women musicians I looked up to at the time had to sort of pretend that they weren’t subject to any of that. They had to play the role of the cool, unaffected girl, willing to pretend that the genders were, in fact, treated equally (even when they demonstrably weren’t). It was also very in-vogue to differentiate yourself from the, and there’s no kinder way to say this, whores who care about things like their appearance, men, and, god forbid, sex. Think “Misery Business” by Paramore.

A lot of these songs took the role of bitter rants against the women who stole (or are threatening to steal) the men they love. This isn’t as bad in “Speak Now” as it is in the next song I will discuss, but it’s still an element here. The fiancé is frilly and ridiculous, cruel to her bridesmaids. Certainly she makes for a worthy villain of the story, but I do find it interesting how often the story describes her outfit or her appearance rather than her behavior. It kind of points to how important image was in the depiction of women acting badly.

Anyway, you knew it was coming. Let’s talk about “Better than Revenge.”

Let me make myself perfectly clear here. “Better than Revenge” is an absolute banger. I brought up “Misery Business” earlier for a reason, because I also adore that song. (And it’s very clear that it inspired “Better than Revenge”… Swift was going through her emo/pop punk phase in this era and I appreciate it.) “Better than Revenge” has a rock n’ roll energy, a catchy hook, and that fun angry ex energy that always makes for a great song. I can’t wait to hear Swift’s updated version of it, too, it’s begging for a remake with her stronger vocal talents. But the elephant in the room is, of course, in the chorus, where Swift remarks that “she’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.” Yes, you heard that right, we’ve got some slut-shaming! Yes, it was a different time, and yes, it’s just one line, but I have to point it out nonetheless. This is an immature Swift writing immature songs during an immature time, but it adds a sour note to an otherwise great song. I do think it’s interesting how focused this song is on the rival for her love’s affections, and not the man himself. She even refers to her ex as a “toy” in the chorus – it’s very obvious that he is not the real emotional core of the song. Food for thought.

Anyway, let me move on to the next obviously emo/pop punk-inspired song in this album. “Haunted” is Swift’s send-up of Evanescence. Do I have proof? No. But I feel in my heart and soul. And come on, dramatic funeral bell? Ghostly/supernatural imagery? Sad subject matter? Melodramatic strings? Tell me Swift wasn’t thinking of Miss Amy Lee when she penned this one. Maybe that’s why this album struck a chord with me. Even if I don’t feel so much nostalgia for the songs themselves, they have the DNA of music I loved when I was younger. I don’t have that personal connection to Swift’s country influences, but the early 2000s rock n’ roll women she was paying homage to in this album is close to my heart.

The other fun song I love is “Mean.” Written in response to critic Bob Lefsetz’s assertion that Swift “can’t sing” (which she references specifically in the song), it’s a cute little country number. This is the kind of song well-suited with a country sound, because it positions itself as a song about the underdog one day dreaming of living in a big city. It makes sense for such a humble, grounded character.

What is especially fun about this song is how strangely prescient it is. Swift did go on to “live in a big ol’ city” and unlike what Lefsetz argued, her career was not even close to over at this point. This song is also an early prototype for a lot of “anti-hater” Swift songs later in her career, a trend I’m… generally mixed on. But hey, fun to see where it comes from.

Not every song in this album works for me on the level of some of these songs, granted. As interesting as I find its subject matter, “Innocent” is just a little too formless for my tastes. It’s narratively intriguing to see Swift extend an ill-fated olive branch to Kanye West, but it hasn’t aged particularly well. And as much as I appreciate the theatrical vibes of the rest of the album, “Never Grow Up” is just a bit too saccharine for my tastes. I am empathetic to the idea of a song about the bittersweet feeling of growing up, but when it’s this vague and cliché, it doesn’t hit as hard.

Regardless, the emotional climax of this album is definitely “Enchanted.” I’ve known this song for years, but only recently have I come to appreciate how powerfully written it is. It starts quiet and subtle, gentle and shy. It works well for a song about a first meeting between two people – Swift starts out uncertain. The chorus comes in like a cannon shot, then, bursts into the chorus. You get the feeling you’re hearing the contrast between Swift’s exterior – shy and quiet – versus what’s going on in her mind – teeming with emotions over this new person they’ve met. It seems to be a sentimental, happy song right up until after the bridge, when the song quiets again as Swift sings “Please don’t be in love with someone else / Please don’t have somebody waiting on you.” It’s this great moment of uncertainty, centering the insecurity Swift feels about this new connection. I have nothing but great things to say about this song, it’s fantastic storytelling, creating an intriguing narrative about a tiny, seemingly insignificant moment. It’s inspiring stuff.

I want to close out this review with the song that surprised me the most. I think it’s pretty clear that most of this album worked really well for me on a pretty shallow level. Nostalgia and catchy hooks is all you need to convince me that an album is a banger, but maybe without a lot of artistic merit. Then “Dear John” comes around.

If you know anything about Taylor Swift, you probably know that she dated John Mayer at one point. I definitely knew that before I really started to learn about her and her career. What you maybe didn’t know was the exact specifics of that relationship. Swift was 19 when she dated Mayer… who was 32 years old. If that didn’t strike a cold fear in your heart, I don’t know what will. 19 is a teenager. 32 is a grown-up adult. Sure, it was a legal relationship (barely), but I am shocked that anyone looked at that relationship and thought “Yeah, that should be fine.” But I guess enough people did that 12-year-old Gillian, at the time, really only got messages about how melodramatic she was being over the breakup.

I’ve talked about the horrible treatment Swift has gotten over the years from media in this review series before, but “Dear John” is where it really sank in how core this mistreatment has been to Swift’s career. Swift wrote a song where she specifically points out the unhealthy power dynamic of her relationship with Mayer – “Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?” – yet she overall concludes that it was her fault – “I should’ve known.” Swift was 19 when she wrote this song and it hurts to know that this is how she felt about everything. She has this impressive maturity on the situation, capable not only of seeing Mayer’s mistreatment of her but also holding onto the knowledge that she will come out the other end better for it. And yet, you see her blaming herself for a relationship she ostensibly had no power in. The conflict between the naivete and the maturity in the song is so poignant that I truly have a hard time believing she didn’t realize it (though, I feel she probably didn’t, at least not at the time).

It feels like the first step Swift took toward the painfully raw songs she would write about herself and her relationships in the future, for better or for worse. This is a core, powerful moment of her career, and I feel pretty blessed to have gotten to write about it for a bit.

Next time, we listen to some ethically-sourced Taylor Swift.

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