Hola!!!! Amigos!!!!! I am back!!!!! Lover, Taylor Swift’s seventh album, has arrived — as of midnight Aug. 23.
Featuring 18 tracks — Swift’s longest album to date — with singles “Me!”, “You Need to Calm Down” and “Lover,” it’s a pop tour de force that, as she has shared in promotional interviews, is her most romantic work yet — and potentially her personal favorite. “There are so many ways in which this album feels like a new beginning,” she told Vogue in a September cover profile. “This album is really a love letter to love, in all of its maddening, passionate, exciting, enchanting, horrific, tragic, wonderful glory.” Working with a heavy-hitter lineup of songwriters and producers, including Jack Antonoff and Joel Little, with assists from the likes of Annie Clark (better known as St. Vincent), Cautious Clay and Frank Dukes, Swift even features the Dixie Chicks.
Swift has long had a playful relationship with fan theories about her work and the messages she hides; she openly admits to lurking on Tumblr and has been known to engage with fans and their ideas online. For that reason, Swift scholars analyze every song and every lyric in an effort to open the window into Swift’s world just a little wider for the rest of us. As an artist, she’s sure to take liberties as she crafts her narratives and tells the stories she sees fit to share; fans and critics should be wary about drawing conclusions about her personal intentions. But the universe she has built over a decade-plus career is rich with its own legends. That’s why she’s consistently one of our most potent pop stars, after all.
With that in mind, here’s our breakdown of every Lover song, from the early singles “Me!,” “You Need to Calm Down” and “Lover” to the rest of the highly-anticipated project.