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Taylor Swift's Fearless and Britney Spears' Circus

by J. Edward Keyes

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Published: Nov 25, 2008

Never mind where she was born or what the awards say — Taylor Swift is about as country as eight-lane freeways or Toots & the Maytals. On Fearless, her generally engaging, frequently stunning second record, she handily dispenses with even the vaguest signifiers of the genre. There's a couple of mandolins and a half-hearted banjo, but this is pop music through and through, expertly rendered songs that rely on big, glistening guitars and Swift's honey-on-a-tree-branch vocals. Swift's debut turned heads because of her age — 17 at the time. Fearless trades that novelty factor for exceptional pop songwriting; "Love Story" plays like an update of Dire Straits' "Romeo & Juliet" — or, more accurately, the Indigo Girls version of the same. "You Belong With Me" finds Swift adopting the role of the cut-up, coaxing a boy into ditching his stuck-up girlfriend over winking lap steel. Most arresting about Fearless is its ability to transform the world-weary listener into a gawky, trembling adolescent. The chorus of freshman-year flashback (and best song of 2008) "Fifteen" goes, "When you're 15 and somebody tells you they love you, you're gonna believe it," but you could easily make that age 25, 35 or 45. A friend recently confessed to me that she has trouble listening to the record because it felt so vulnerable. "It's not that I want her to be OK," she clarified. "It's that I want me to be OK."

Taylor Swift Fearless (Big Machine)

Britney Spears Circus (Jive)

Plenty of people have the same wish for Britney Spears. Onetime Madonna heir apparent, Spears spent most of this decade mercilessly pilloried by the useless paparazzi. Her 2007 album Blackout was a triumph because it often felt like a direct sonic reflection of her gradual loss of humanity. Spears takes a shaky step back toward the land of the living on Circus, a record that swaps its predecessors' icy allure for slightly more conventional dance-pop. Nothing here matches the dizzy allure of "Toxic" or deconstructionist disco of "Piece of Me," but she still manages a few moments of genuine Lite Brite Dadaism. Halfway through the album she develops a naughty pun, but fumbles the execution: "Love me, hate me, say what you want about me/ but all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy." Now there's the Britney we know and love.

(j_keyes@citypaper.net)

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