American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift takes us back to her early-2000s era in her eleventh studio album, Blondie, released April 4th, 2024. The album, in Swift’s own words, is unlike anything fans have heard before from her: “In a way, it’s a sort of love letter to who I was, years ago, and who I am today, and all the things I tried to be in-between. It’s more me than anything I’ve ever put out for the world before.”

The album is reminiscent of Swift’s signature country music, but also mixes in elements of bluegrass. Swift explains in her latest interview what Blondie is all about: “There’s this German word — it's on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t remember it — that’s all about feeling like you’re at the end of something. I think I’ve felt that feeling for as long as I can remember. I felt it when I was 18 and I feel it now, like people are going to get tired of me and I won’t be able to write the sort of music I could when I was in my 20s. Women are so often boxed in by this industry, and told what they can and cannot make, and I feel it already starting to happen to me. The world says, ‘Hey, Taylor, you’re 35 and you’re ancient!’ Blondie is my answer to this. It’s fun and flirtatious and also a little angry. It’s my way of telling the world that I’ll write and sing whatever I want.”

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Speak Now is the third studio album by Taylor Swift, released on October 25th 2010. It achieved 1.047 million first week sales and seventeen tracks charted on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the only album in history to spawn so many Hot 100 hits. Entirely self-written, the album was met with critical acclaim, including winning two Grammy Awards for the single Mean, as well as a Grammy nomination for Best Country Album. Its supporting tour, The Speak Now World Tour, had a total of 1.6 million attendance across four continents, and was the highest grossing female and solo tour of 2011.