Red is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released on October 22, 2012 through Big Machine Records, as the follow-up to her commercially successful 2010 album Speak Now.[2] It was announced through Swift's live webchat on August 13, 2012, in which she revealed the album title, album cover, as well as answered fan questions. During it she premiered the record's lead single, titled "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", which was released to Google Play and iTunes later that day.[3] It became Swift's first US No. 1 hit. Four promotional singles were released in the month leading up to the album release, all of which debuted inside the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, led by "I Knew You Were Trouble" at No. 3. The deluxe edition of Red features three new songs, two demos and an acoustic version. The album features collaborations with new producers and guest artists such as Max Martin and Ed Sheeran, and sees Swift experimenting with new musical genres.
Background
During the webchat, Swift revealed the meaning behind her album's title:
"All the different emotions that are written about on this album are all pretty much about the kind of tumultuous, crazy, insane, intense, semi-toxic relationships that I’ve experienced in the last two years. All those emotions — spanning from intense love, intense frustration, jealousy, confusion, all of that — in my mind, all those emotions are red. You know, there’s nothing in between. There’s nothing beige about any of those feelings."[3]
Promotion
Singles
The album's lead single, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" was released on August 13 and has since became Swift's first number one single on the US Billboard Hot 100. The song's jump from its debut position No. 72 to No. 1 was the result of a massive digital demand on the song. With 623,000 downloads, the song placed second among all-time best single-week sales singles, behind Flo Rida's 2009 hit "Right Round."
"Begin Again" was released to iTunes on September 25, 2012 as part of a countdown to the album release. It was later announced the track, initially a promotional single, would be serviced to country radio on October 1, 2012 as the second single from the album.[4][5] The song sold 299,000 digital copies in its first week of release and debuted at No. 7 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart dated October 4, 2012.[6]
Promotional singles
During the four weeks preceding the release of Red, one track was released each week digitally on iTunes after a preview of it had been heard on Good Morning America.[7] The first of the four promotional singles is "Begin Again", which was released digitally on iTunes on September 25, 2012.[8] "Red" is the second promotional single off the album,[9] and became available for download on October 2, 2012. "Red" debuted at number 7 on the Hot 100 with sales of 312,000.[10] "I Knew You Were Trouble." is the third promotional single off the album, and became available for download on October 9, 2012. [11] The fourth and final promotional single is "State of Grace", which became available for download on October 16, 2012.[12] Each of them reached No. 1 on iTunes and in the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, with "I Knew You Were Trouble" having the highest peak at No. 3 as Swift's 14th top 10 song. With sales of 416,000 from "I Knew You Were Trouble" Taylor Swift became the first artist in digital history to have two songs that debuted with sales of 400,000 or more copies.[13]
Critical response
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 79/100[14] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Billboard | Favorable[15] |
| The A.V. Club | B+[16] |
| Entertainment Weekly | B+[17] |
| Los Angeles Times |   [18] |
| The Guardian | [19] |
| Rolling Stone |  [20] |
| Slant Magazine | [21] |
| Sputnikmusic | 2/5[22] |
Red received favourable reviews from music critics. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 76 based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[14] Melissa Maerz of Entertainment Weekly gave the album a (B+) and wrote: "(Red) finds her singing about walking directly into traffic, wading into quicksand, and flirting with the kinds of jerks Kanye West might toast to." and closed her review with: "Red might be about flirting with danger."[17] Lewis Corner of Digital Spy gave a positive review on the album and rated it as four-stars-out-of-five and said: "she sounds anything but a broken record - especially when she's on the cusp of global domination."[23] The Guardian reviewer was also very positive on the album, gave it four-stars-out-of-five and wrote: "Red was allegedly inspired by her experience of love and its fast-paced, crazy adventures, how she's had time to open her door to such a parade of lovers good and bad, God only knows."[19] Rolling Stone reviewer Jon Dolan found some influences on the album such as Joni Mitchell and U2, rated it three-and-half-stars out of five and said: "her self-discovery project is one of the best stories in pop. When she's really on, her songs are like tattoos."[20] Billboard gave a very positive review to the album in its track-by-track review, called it "her most interesting full-length to date" and said:"Red puts Swift the artist front and center with big, beefy hooks that transcend her country roots for a genre-spanning record that reaches heights unseen since Shania Twain's Up!."[15] The Daily Telegraph was more critical, rated it as three-stars-out-of-five and wrote: "It's frustrating, then, when Swift reverts back to type. Too many of the songs on this bloated 16-track album revisit the gently strummed verses and characterless choruses of her previous work."[24]
Chart performance
On October 24, 2012 Mtv.com reported that the album will sell an approximate 1 million copies (or more) in it's debut week[25]. If she achieves this plateau Swift will be the first woman in Nielsen SoundScan era (starting from 1991) to have two albums cross the million unit mark in a single week, the first being her 2010's massive successful album Speak Now selling 1.047 million copies in it's first week release. According to Billboard, sources indicate that first-day sales of Red would sell around 500,000 copies including a record-setting 160,000 units on day one shifted at Target, which has an exclusive on the album's deluxe version with six extra tracks[26]. If she breaks this record, then Red would be the biggest-selling album in a debut week in 2012 (currently held byMumford & Sons's Babel which sold 600,000 copies in it's debut week).
If Red sells 1 million (or more) units in the current SoundScan sales week. The album will be the 18th album in the Nielsen era to reach that plateau. So far, only three acts have ever surpassed 1 million units in a sales frame with a pair of albums: Backstreet Boys's Millennium (1999) and Black & Blue (2000), 'N Sync's No Strings Attached (2000) and Celebrity (2001) and Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) and The Eminem Show (2002).
Track listing
| Standard edition | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Producer(s) | Length | ||||||
| 1. | "State of Grace" | Taylor Swift | Nathan Chapman, Swift | 4:55 | ||||||
| 2. | "Red" | Swift | Dann Huff, Chapman, Swift | 3:43 | ||||||
| 3. | "Treacherous" | Swift, Dan Wilson | Wilson | 4:02 | ||||||
| 4. | "I Knew You Were Trouble" | Swift, Max Martin, Shellback | Martin, Shellback | 3:39 | ||||||
| 5. | "All Too Well" | Swift, Liz Rose | Chapman, Swift | 5:29 | ||||||
| 6. | "22" | Swift, Martin, Shellback | Martin, Shellback | 3:52 | ||||||
| 7. | "I Almost Do" | Swift | Chapman, Swift | 4:04 | ||||||
| 8. | "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" | Swift, Martin, Shellback | Martin, Shellback | 3:11 | ||||||
| 9. | "Stay Stay Stay" | Swift | Chapman, Swift | 3:25 | ||||||
| 10. | "The Last Time" (featuring Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol) | Swift, Lightbody, Jacknife Lee | Lee | 4:59 | ||||||
| 11. | "Holy Ground" | Swift | Jeff Bhasker | 3:22 | ||||||
| 12. | "Sad Beautiful Tragic" | Swift | Chapman, Swift | 4:44 | ||||||
| 13. | "The Lucky One" | Swift | Bhasker | 4:00 | ||||||
| 14. | "Everything Has Changed" (featuring Ed Sheeran) | Swift, Sheeran | Butch Walker | 4:05 | ||||||
| 15. | "Starlight" | Swift | Huff, Chapman, Swift | 3:40 | ||||||
| 16. | "Begin Again" | Swift | Huff, Chapman, Swift | 3:57 | ||||||
Total length: | 65:09 | |||||||||
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