Taylor Swift releases title track a week before 7th album is released! Here's our thoughts...

Taylor Swift introduced us to her new era a few months ago with the release of Me! featuring Brandon Urie. In the music video she dropped lots of little Easter eggs for us to find about this next chapter and now many of those little hints are starting to come together and make sense! The album's title Lover was written almost as a big flashing neon sign in the middle of the video and today the title track, which is the fourth track we've heard from this record so far was released. If we thought with the release of Reputation that the old Taylor really was dead, well then with Lover she is back from the dead. The song lacks synths and electronic influence and goes closer to Taylor's roots with a simple drum kit beat, a walking bass line and a faint piano sat low in the mix. Vocally Taylor has a wispiness to her voice, it's soft and sweet but not lacking in any power.

So lets move on and look at the actual songwriting of the song, lyrically it is quite simple on first listen, the hook lies in the repetition of "forever and ever" and "my" resolving to the title Lover. But on further analysis Taylor seems to make reference once again to previous era's. In the build up to this next chapter, Swift made reference to her song The Story Of Us one of the lines talks about searching for an empty seat and in Lover Taylor saves her lover a seat at every table - are we reading too much into things or is this one of those clever Taylor Swift references she always throws out to her fans? She perhaps resolves the conundrum of the Christmas tree in the Me! video with her opening line, "We can leave the Christmas lights up till January." But for every question Taylor might answer with this song, it raises ten more... are those vows in the bridge? Do we hear wedding bells in real life?

Perhaps the most important thing to note about Lover is that Taylor sounds happy! Reputation showed us a darker, perhaps an angry and sad side to Taylor (I just wanted to give her a hug and beat up whoever hurt her) but so far three of the four tracks released on Lover have a really positive side to them and none more so than Lover which feels like the most genuinely happy song. People are going to have this as a first dance song, it's full of romance and the simplicity of love and I truly hope Taylor has found that and that this song is where she's at right now!

But it wasn't just a new song us Swifties got yesterday! Oh no, our Queen Taylor announced her track list and there are some interesting points to note! We already knew it was her longest album yet with 18 tracks, the track I'm most looking forward to hearing is track 12 and Taylor's collaboration with the Dixie Chicks. I am a massive fan of their music and wrote about them and Taylor in my dissertation for University so I kind of feel like I know both Swift and the Chicks like the back of my hand! It's going to be great for their career and Taylor really is going right back to her roots with this as the Dixie Chicks were her favourite band growing up and at just 14 years old she did pitch the song Teardrops on my Guitar to the group! This is bound to be as exciting for fans of both artists as it is for Taylor and the Chicks. It was always on the cards from the hint in the Me! video but confirmation made our hearts soar!

Don't forget to buy the new song Lover and pre-order/pre-save the album which comes out next Friday (or be like me and queue outside your local record store on release day, it'd be rude to break tradition now!) I think this will be her most eclectic album to date.