Taylor Swift is a country musician who is normally lumped in with the other ‘girl teen pop stars’ such as Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, or Justin Bieber.

She should not be. For one thing, she is incredibly talented singer/songwriter. While Miley Cyrus and the like make shallow club music designed for the lowest common denominator, Swift writes music because she wants to write music, and that really comes across in her debut self-titled album.

Released in 2006, Taylor Swift was noticed by music critics as being very, very good, and it was a big commercial success. Does it still hold up?

Taylor Swift (2006) track by track review

Track 1: Tim McGraw

Released as the lead single from the album in June 2006, the song depicts a teenage couple listing the things that they will remember each other by as they leave each other, one of them being Tim McGraw‘s music. It follows a fairly standard country music structure, and the lyrics are good. I do like the allegory of Tim McGraw, serving as a metaphor and a homage. Swift confessed that she is a big McGraw fan, and she wrote this song during her freshman year in high school, supposedly about how she knew her and her boyfriend were going to break up once he went to college. The melody is great, and very reminiscent of Strawberry Wine. In fact, I like this song just as much as Strawberry Wine, and I see that as a big compliment. It’s a very sweet, heart-warming ballad about facing reality, but being okay with it. Tim McGraw was a good choice for lead/debut single.

Track 2: Picture To Burn

Picture To Burn, in my opinion, is the best song on the album. It was released as the album’s fourth single in January 2008. It involves a story about a girl basically saying ‘screw you’ to an ex-boyfriend, and burning all the photographs she has of him. The production is perfect, and Swift’s fantastic vocals really shine through as the undeniably likeable lyrics really compliment her extremely confident performance. This was the first song by Taylor Swift that really grabbed me, and I like it just as much now as then. It’s a great song from a great artist. Give it a listen.

Track 3: Teardrops On My Guitar

Released as the album’s second single, Teardrops On My Guitar is a ballad about a girl being in love with a boy named Drew, yet he only notices her as a friend. As she names the person by name, this probably happened to her in real life. The lyrics are fantastic. Part of it is frustration that the person she loves doesn’t see her in the same way, and even has another girl he is actually in love with. Yes, she’s upset, but she doesn’t feel resentment for Drew or his girlfriend. In fact, she’s accepted that that’s what he wants, and he’s happy.

It’s extraordinarily mature for a girl who, when this album was released, was 16!  The music is very nice, and not too loud, and very sweet sounding. It’s a love song made how love songs should be made. In fact, it’s the most country-ish song on the album. It’s about what traditional country was always about: misery, grief, frustration, and finally acceptance. It might be a bit gooey for some people, but it’s still a great song.

Track 4: A Place In This World

Yes, that’s right. A Taylor Swift song that isn’t a love song! Shock horror! What it’s about instead is trying to find a purpose. Here’s some lyrics from the first verse:

I don’t know what I want, so don’t ask me,
Cause I’m still trying to figure it out,
Don’t know what’s down this road, I’m just walking,
Trying to see through the rain coming down.

For a country song, a genre saturated with metaphors and allegories, it’s remarkably literal and straightforward. She wants to find a place, but is kind of stuck. But she still pushes on. It’s a good message, but for me it’s not her best song. Her vocals don’t really shine out anywhere, and the production is a bit too light for my taste. There isn’t all that much happening here that we haven’t seen before. It’s not a bad song by any means, it’s just a bit derivative.

Track 5: Cold as You

Cold as You is the first song on the album I actually didn’t like. Why? Well, it’s just so darn average. There is nothing that stands out about it. It’s perfectly inoffensive, but there’s no real heart to it. It feels like filler. The vocals? Okay. The lyrics? Acceptable. The production? It’s alright. Everything is just kind of mediocre. There’s nothing much else to say. It’s passable.

Track 6: The Outside

Another love song. Surprise! Okay, I’m being too harsh. Is it good? Well, yes, actually. The melody is catchy, the production and music is very good, the lyrics are well-written, and it’s nice. In a time where most pop music music is so dark and grim, a simply sweet, kind, nice song is actually a welcome change. It’s actually quite funny when you listen to the quite happy sounding tune, but it’s not a particularly happy song. It’s about being distant, and wondering what the hell you can do better. Still, it sounds happy, and it never fails to put a smile on my face.

Track 7: Tied Together With A Smile

I don’t fully get this song. My interpretation of the lyrics are that a girl thinks that she isn’t pretty and nobody likes her – she lacks confidence. She gives all her attention to this one guy who completely ignores her. And that’s kind of it. I feel kind of empty while listening to it. It’s from the point of view of a friend trying to comfort her, but then the last lines of the song are:

Goodbye, baby
With a smile, baby, baby

What am I supposed to make of that? It just feels kind of, well, depressing. It’s a very well-written song, as country music normally does make you feel depressed and empty. The track itself  is very good. The steel guitar and violin does a really good job in provoking that emotional reaction that the song was clearly designed to make you feel. It’s a good song, just not a happy one. You have been warned.

Track 8: Stay Beautiful

This is probably the most ‘pop’ song on the album. It doesn’t have particularly inspired lyrics, but it has nice music, and a very catchy chorus. It’s standard love song affair. It’s okay, but not great. It does the job.

Track 9: Should’ve Said No

Okay, I know this song, lyrically, isn’t that great. There is hardly any originality in it, and Swift’s vocals are the most thin they’ve been on the album so far. But my god, it’s just so awesome. The subject matter is similar to that of Picture To Burn. She’s basically rejecting an ex who is asking for forgiveness after he cheated on her. The production is great, and sounds strangely epic. It’s the most rock-influenced song on the album, and is really catchy. I mean really catchy. You will find yourself humming this song for weeks after hearing it. The instruments are very good, especially the fiddle, which really works. I guess you could call it a guilty pleasure. Yeah, it’s unoriginal, but I can listen to it 10 times back to back and still enjoy it. Doesn’t that mean something?

10. Mary’s Song (Oh My My My)

This is a great song. Some may view it as cheesy, and it probably is, but can’t I enjoy a big, cheesy, happy song every now and then? Hell, why do we continue to like cheesy 80s John Hughes movies? Because they’re heart-warming and happy. We know that it’s cheesy and half the stuff happens is really far-fetched and life isn’t really that simple, but it gives us a break from the problems of real life and just fills us with hope for an hour and a half. This is like that compressed into 3 and a half minutes. It’s a story about a couple of childhood sweethearts growing up, falling in love, getting married, and growing old together. Who can’t say ‘awwwwww’ to something like that? It’s just so blissfully happy. It’s like the opposite of what country music is perceived to be, which is songs about misery, drinking, and depression. And that can make for some really good songs. But don’t underestimate the power of cheesy love stories.

Track 11: Our Song

Taylor Swift’s first real breakthrough achievement. Why? Because with this song she became the youngest artist to have Country Top 100 number 1 that she wrote herself with no co-writer. She wrote it in her Freshman year of high-school for a talent show, and it was only a last minute decision to even include it on the album. I bet she’s happy she did now. Not only because it was very successful, but because it’s a really good song. In fact, it’s a fantastic song. Lyrically, it describes a young couple who don’t have a song, so they use real life events to replace one. This is supposedly a true story, and this was written as the ‘song’. It’s an up-tempo track mainly driven by the superbly played banjo, with a brilliant fiddle solo in the middle. It’s a joy to behold, and, along with Picture To Burn, is the best song on the album. It’s catchy, it’s fun, and it’s very well-written. Considering she was probably about 13 when she wrote this, it’s a tremendous achievement.

Verdict

Taylor Swift is a really great artist, and this is a very good album. In a world where people with pretty much no musical talent are being incredibly successful with crap songs like ‘The Climb’, ‘Boom Boom Pow’, and ‘Low’ (seriously, what the hell?), Swift’s talent, of which she has in bucket loads, is a welcome break to the tons of Miley Cyrus clones that the charts are currently saturated with. The album is a great first effort, although there’s no denying that Fearless and Speak Now are slightly better. But, then again, she was 16! I mean, Jesus Christ give the girl some credit! While it drags slightly in the middle, and a few of the non-single songs could be classed as filler, the stuff that’s good is really good, and there isn’t a single overtly ‘bad’ song on the album, at worst they’re average. For a debut album, it’s excellent.

Final Verdict:

James Haves