It would be an understatement to say that Taylor Swift is popular. The twenty-two-year-old country-pop singer recently released her fourth album, entitled Red, a tribute to the rollercoaster of emotions she has experienced in her recent relationships. Swift’s larger-than-life musical career and cultural presence will only continue to grow after the explosive release of Red, which sold 1.208 million copies in a single week. According to Nielsen SoundScan, a sales monitoring system, the only other album to accomplish this feat was Eminem’s album The Eminem Show, which sold 1.322 million copies in a single week in 2002.
Swift’s musical accomplishments within the last few weeks have not stopped at record sales. In a recently published article, Billboard.com noted that Red has made Swift the “second-largest sales frame for a female artist,” breaking Britney Spears’s record of 1.319 million copies of Oops!…I Did It Again in 2000. iTunes alone sold about 465,000 copies of Red, while Target sold about 396,000. During its release, Red was also advertised in other big-box stores and at Papa John’s Pizza, where a costumer could get the CD and buy a large, one-topping pizza for a total of $22. Swift’s face was even pictured on the top of the box, bringing her image out of the pizza place and to wherever the costumer went after buying it.
In true Taylor Swift fashion, the album features sixteen songs about love and lost love. Swift sings about entering a refreshing and promising relationship in “Begin Again,” while reaching some closure with a relationship that had gone sour in the popular, anthem-like track “We Are Never Getting Back Together.” Although she does not explicitly say, Swift summarizes her past two years’ worth of relationships in the song “Red,” where she sings that: “Losing him was blue like I’d never known / Missing him was dark grey all alone / Forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you’ve never met / But loving him was red / Loving him was red.”
Unlike her first two albums, Taylor Swift and Fearless, Swift has fully created a pop album with hints of other styles, even though iTunes categorizes Red as a country album. To many Taylor Swift fans, this transition might be worrisome since her musical identity originally took root in Nashville, Tennessee with guitars and banjos, not with synthesizers and mixers. Songs like “22,” “State of Grace” and “I Knew You Were Trouble” combine pop with some dubstep-esque sounds. Even if Swift seems to have strayed from traditional country melodies and riffs, she undoubtedly has explored multiple genres.
In addition, Red introduces Swift in a new, and perhaps more mature, light. The album cover seems to suggest that she has developed musically and personally since her sophomore album days of fantasizing about dating football players and experiencing Romeo-and-Juliet-like adventures in the woods. Instead of a “fun and light” album cover, Swift has chosen bolder colors and shadows to evoke a sense of mystery for Red. This new image might help her further her career since she now has more freedom to explore different musical styles. For now, Swift has announced a Red tour that will visit forty-five cities in 2013.
The “Taylor Swift brand,” which combines four chart-topping albums, two perfumes, the popularity of the number thirteen and many other “Swift-y” things, will most likely live well past Red, in addition to helping further propel Swift in pop culture. In fact, with the mega success of Red, Swift has the right to be in the mindset of her song “22” where she sings about how “Everything will be alright if we just keep dancing like we’re 22, 22.” This celebration, of course, will happen along with all of her other “red” emotions.
