#2 Taylor Swift - Red (Big Machine)
Behold the thing that should not be! One of America's most celebrated young singer-songwriters counters three cohesive, wildly successful, Grammy-winning LPs by fixing what wasn't broken; she permits herself to be restitched into a 10-foot-tall pop Frankenstein monster. She goes full Katy Perry on the hilarious "22" (a 22-year-old singing "I'm feeling 22" is funnier than any punch line on 2 Chainz' album, by the way) with some twangy, Friday-night hipsterphobia. Then she turns around and parties with the cool kids over some disjunctive Dirty Projectors harmonies ("…never ever ever "), some Arcade Fire/Florence and the Machine bombast ("Holy Ground"), and a full-on Mazzy Star tribute ("Sad Beautiful Tragic"). She's got devastating dubstep drops already shining the fog machines for summer 2013 remix season ("I Knew You Were Trouble") but is still ostensibly "country" because there's 28 seconds of banjos on "Red." There's pop-game Coldplay ("Treacherous"), rock-game Don Henley ("All Too Well"), and EDM-game Bryan Adams ("Starlight"). The guy from Snow Patrol can't even **** this up. Did we mention you can order this album with a ****ing pizza? C.W.
The Lord stays a critical darling.
