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Album review: Taylor Swift

By Tom Gardner Associated Press

Taylor Swift

Fearless

When an unknown teenage artist and an upstart label both come from nowhere to sell well over 3 million albums, the question is: What do you do next? With Taylor Swift’s sophomore album, Fearless, the answer is: You get even better.

There’s still the teen angst of love wanted and love rejected from her self-titled debut, which produced such hits as Tim McGraw, Teardrops on My Guitar and Our Song, but the 18-year-old Swift isn’t in high school any more and there’s more thoughtful maturity in her writing. And some anger.

For the latter, there’s the Joe Jonas breakup song Forever & Always, cut for the album at the last minute and cryptically written in lower case except for the upper-case letters that spell out a high school classroom note code: “IF YOU PLAY THESE GAMES, WE’RE BOTH GOING TO LOSE.”

Swift wrote seven of the 13 tracks on the album and co-wrote the rest. Along with Forever & Always, some are quite personal. On Fifteen — a song with musical overtones reminiscent of Janis Ian’s At Seventeen — she writes of her best high school friend, “Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind and we both cried.”

Her sweet unassuming voice takes on an edge with such songs as Forever & Always and Tell Me Why, as she sings: “I took a chance, I took a shot and you might think I’m bulletproof, but I’m not. You took a swing, I took it hard and down here from the ground I see who you are.”

The album is rich in vocal variety and tempos. The accompaniment ranges from acoustic with a quiet B-3 in the background on Hey Stephen to full strings on Breathe (not the Faith Hill version) or the powerful album closer Change.

But the glory of this CD is Swift’s writing and how it complements her unique style of singing as she pauses unexpectedly mid-phrase just to emphasize the next word.

Her first album, Taylor Swift, has spent most of the past two years in the Top 10 on Billboard’s country chart and produced five gold or platinum singles. Fearless, which already has the huge hit Love Story, appears headed for the same success.