Lover nods to 2017’s Reputation, but, in spirit, it’s the sequel to the synth-pop glitter of 1989. Produced mostly with ubiquitous pop whisperer Jack Antonoff, it’s full of low-lying synthesizer pulses and reverbed beats that can feel more like scaffolding than full songs. Sometimes it attempts to honor Swift’s entire artistic journey at once: The waltzing “Lover,” full of fiddle and fairytale weddings, harks back to the Old Taylor; “I Think He Knows” is a thumping electro-pop shout-out to Nashville’s Music Row. She uses the word “shade” twice, up from once on Reputation. She’s 29, but she still writes metaphors about prom dresses and homecoming queens. It’s bright and fun and occasionally cloying.
Lover’s emotional peaks and valleys are higher and deeper than reputation, where romance played out under a long shadow of doubt. Opener “I Forgot That You Existed” is a hopscotch rhythm set to a rhyme like you’d leave in your nemesis’ yearbook if you were really being honest—which is to say, it doesn’t sound like she forgot for one second. It comes off as throat-clearing, but it opens a stretch of drama-free delights, like the magnetic pink glow of “Cruel Summer” (“I don’t want to keep secrets just to keep you!”) and the crystal-ball clarity of “The Archer,” with its elegant, Chromatics-esque synthesizer build and self-aware regret: “I cut off my nose just to spite my face/And I hate my reflection for years and years.” The exception is undercooked gender-equality anthem “The Man,” a song that hilariously, unironically points to Leonardo DiCaprio’s playboy image as the height of masculine privilege, and proves that other people shouldn’t write Kesha songs.
