Taylor Swift - Lover
Critic Score
Based on 27 reviews
2019 Ratings: #481 / 805
Year End Rank: #31
User Score
2019 Rank: #656
Liked by 490 people
Sign In to rate and review

CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Albumism

Lover celebrates one of today’s most prominent pop figures in all of her glory and signals that there are even greater things to come from her in the future.

91
A.V. Club

For all of its rich production and lyrical complications, Lover has a simple premise: embrace gratitude and listen to the insights that emerge after a perspective recalibration. As always, Lover is an album Swift made for her fans. But it also feels like a record she made for herself, unburdened by external expectations and her own past.

83
Entertainment Weekly

Lover runs long, and despite a strong front half the album sags a bit in the midsection by design — a shame, since a sense of experimentation ebbs and flows throughout.

80
Evening Standard

Though twee at times, it’s a much more likeable collection than the defensive Reputation.

80
The Independent

Swift’s seventh album feels like a partial resurrection of the Swift of old: moony romance and earnest earworms abound.

80
The Telegraph

Instead of trying to be all things to all audiences, it plays to the strengths of a witty songwriter in love, eager to tell anyone who will listen exactly how she feels.

80
Rolling Stone

Lover is, fittingly, evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But nevertheless it feels like an epiphany: free and unhurried, governed by no one concept or outlook, it represents Swift at her most liberated, enjoying a bit of the freedom she won for her cohort.

80
Exclaim!

Her songwriting is as careful, detailed and impressive as ever, she's nestled into a perfect pop niche, and it seems like being totally in love has let her head drift off into the clouds a bit. The best part: Lover lets fans wander off into the daydream with her.

80
The Young Folks

The 18 tracks on Lover oftentimes slide together like a lot of beautiful puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together perfectly.

80
The Arts Desk
Stripped of pop theatrics, β€œLover” trades in what Swift does best: hyper-specific details made universal enough for every first dance, delivered with enough earnestness to rehabilitate a word pulled straight from the headlines of a tabloid magazine.
80
NME

It succeeds in spite of its clunkier moments because Swift’s melodies are frequently dazzling and her loved-up lyrics are ultimately quite touching.

80
AllMusic

More than either 1989 or Reputation, Lover seems fully realized and mature: Swift is embracing all aspects of her personality, from the hopeful dreamer to the coolly controlled craftsman, resulting in a record that's simultaneously familiar and surprising.

80
The Irish Times

This a stronger offering than Reputation, with Swift returning to the place that suits her best: writing personal songs that create an entire world designed for two.

75
Consequence of Sound

Even though Lover’s production and visual marketing are the brightest of Swift’s career, the content of its songs show the songwriter at some of her darkest moments.

71
Pitchfork

On her seventh album, Taylor Swift is a little wiser and a lot more in love. Though uneven, Lover is a bright, fun album with great emotional honesty.

70
Spectrum Culture

Lover is definitive, a cornucopia worth combing through to find some of her best, some of her worst and a lot of her most interesting songs.

70
Slant Magazine

Lover lacks a unified sonic aesthetic, ostensibly from trying to be something to everyone—the surest tell that it’s as much reaction as it is creation.

70
Clash

Ultimately, the album’s highlights are those songs where the voice and sentiment we hear is truly her own, the enthralling, stirring, emotion- manipulating voice that’s threaded its way through every album since her 2006 debut, not the voice that leans too close to what the pop music machine demands.

70
No Ripcord

Lover is a plethora of things: a Taylor Swift genre sampler, an argument that Jack Antonoff is her best collaborator, a continuation of her problem with lead singles, and a collection of great synthpop songs, but the best part of it is that Taylor seems like she’s never been better.

70
PopMatters

Ultimately, Lover is overstuffed and meandering, but serves as a positive reprieve from her past struggles in the public eye, and represents an artist at the peak of her creativity, power, and—one hopes—continued romantic bliss.

70
musicOMH

While it never quite hits the musical heights of 1989 or Red, Lover feels like a necessary recalibration after Reputation. It’s an album that screams out for an editor, but when it hits the right notes, it demonstrates just why Taylor Swift is one of the biggest pop stars in the world.

66
Sputnikmusic

On an album this long, there is equal room for good and bad, and you’re always equidistant from either one no matter what track you’ve reached.

60
The Guardian

As it is, Lover offers plenty of evidence that Swift is just a better songwriter than any of her competitors in the upper echelons of pop, but its something-for-everyone approach feels like consolidation, not progress, designed to keep Swift as one of the world’s biggest stars without provoking the kind of backlash that led her to start evoking the end of days in her diary.

60
The Needle Drop

If Lover were about five tracks shorter, it'd probably be Taylor Swift's best album yet.

60
The Observer

Lover is a kitsch-leaning festival of humour, pastels, butterflies and the desire not to be defined by negatives. It is, in large parts, a hoot.

58
Paste

Throughout the album, Swift essentially lists the things she loves: her mother, her boyfriend and, let’s face it, love itself. While these are all heartwarming sentiments, they amount to a statement lacking any profound meaning, backed by music that struggles to make a lasting impression.

10
The 405
We could give this album any number of ratings. 1/10 feels just as appropriate as 5/10. Ultimately, none of it matters.
Kanye
85

After the disaster of an era that Reputation was, Taylor regrouped and set out to create the anthesis of it. This is Taylor in her most genuine form, gone is the dark gloomy trap and in it's place we get goofy, cute love songs that are so gushing they are borderline corny. Yet they never venture into that territory (with the exception of You Need to Calm Down), it just comes off as so endearing and adorable.

Taylor is so unapologetically herself on Lover, but she is definitely not back to her ... read more

Mol
0

Bloated. Boring. Generic. That's all the time I'm going to waste here.

KaitoNkmra
71

Lover is a much-needed release from the overdone, “trying too hard to be a bad bitch” style, and blatantly confusing album that Reputation was. It’s lighter, fresher, undoubtedly romantic, and even poppier than her albums before it, for better and for worse.

Taylor seems to be way more self-aware of her songwriting here. It marks the consistent return of strong, emotional tracks that allows listeners to connect with her fantastic vocal performances and the lyrics she sings ... read more

_Lumael
10

only i need to calm down

LeL
70

it has some of her worst songs? yes. it has a little too much mid tracks? yes. But I still think the high points on this album are some of her best work.

71

favs:
Cruel Summer
I Think He Knows
Soon You'll Get Better
It's Nice To Have A Friend

Purchasing Lover from Amazon helps support Album of the Year. Or consider a donation?
Become a Donor
Donor badge, no ads + more benefits.
Advertisement
Sign in to comment
1w
1w
4w
1mo
1mo


Added on: June 13, 2019