搬運自：微信公眾號【評論搬一堆】（在原文基礎(chǔ)上添加了英語原文與排版調(diào)整）

翻譯：Lynn Liu / Kerra Zhao / Ryan-Chopin

校對：Ryan-Chopin

推送：Lynn Liu

On her seventh album, Taylor Swift is a little wiser and a lot more in love. Though uneven,?Lover?is a bright, fun album with great emotional honesty.

在Taylor的第七張專輯中，她變得更加睿智，也更加沉浸于甜美的愛情。雖然《Lover》不夠平穩(wěn)，但是這也算是一張積極又不失趣味的專輯，且蘊含著動人的坦誠。

The theme of?Taylor Swift’s?Lover?is right there in the title. These 18 songs are odes to the things she loves most and knows best: her boyfriend and her mom, the West Village and the West End, and, always and forever on a Taylor Swift album, being in love. It’s an exuberant celebration of the challenges of maintaining a relationship through seasons and across continents, of telling the truth and saying sorry. Swift has always mined her personal life for opaque fables of love and retribution; she memorializes a romance’s fleeting details, wraps them in bows, and ferries them to an audience eager to receive her gifts. She writes about a life that’s strengthened, not broken, by heartbreak.?Lover?is the suggestion that the right person, the right song, might lift heartbreak from your life, too. The concept is, as she claims early on, both “overdramatic and true.”

Taylor Swift新?！禠over》的主題在專輯名中就已顯而易見。這18首歌是對她最喜歡、最熟悉之事的頌歌:她的男友和她的媽媽，曼哈頓西村和倫敦西區(qū)，以及Taylor Swift專輯中永遠都必不可缺的元素——戀愛進行時。這是一個充滿活力的慶典，它慶祝著保持一段長久跨國戀所面臨的挑戰(zhàn)，也慶祝著說出真相、說出抱歉所面臨的挑戰(zhàn)。Swift總是在她的個人生活中挖掘愛情和報復(fù)的不透明寓言;她追憶一段愛情中轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝的細節(jié)，用蝴蝶結(jié)把它們包起來，然后把它們送給渴望收到禮物的觀眾。她所描寫的生活，是一種因心碎而變得更加堅強的生活，而不是一種心碎讓你悲痛欲絕的生活。《Lover》正是這樣一種暗示：對的人，對的歌，也許能讓你的生活不再悲傷。正如她早些時候所宣稱的那樣，這個概念“既夸張又真實”。

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》是在回應(yīng)2017年發(fā)行的《Reputation》，但從本質(zhì)上講，它是合成流行樂專輯《1989》的續(xù)集。它主要由金牌流行音樂制作人Jack Antonoff制作，它充滿了低沉的合成器脈沖和混響節(jié)拍，這張專輯感覺更像是個腳手架，而不是完整的歌曲。有時它急切地試圖去紀念Swift的整個藝術(shù)道路:華爾茲節(jié)奏的“Lover”，充滿小提琴聲，滿是童話般婚禮的氛圍，讓人想起“Old Taylor（曾經(jīng)的Taylor）”;“I Think He Knows”是一首節(jié)奏感極強的電子流行樂，這首歌能與納什維爾音樂街上的音樂相媲美。她兩次使用“shade”這個詞，第一次是在《Reputation》中使用。她今年29歲了，但她仍然用隱喻來描述出舞會禮服和返校舞會女王。專輯鮮明有趣，卻偶爾也令人生厭。

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.

《Lover》蘊含情感高峰和低谷，它比《Reputation》更高、更深沉，愛情在長期的懷疑陰影下上演。開場曲“I Forgot That You Existed”中跳房子游戲的節(jié)奏貫穿始終，好比如果你夠誠實的話，你就會在你的死對頭的紀念冊里留下印記——也就是說，聽起來她一點也沒有忘記。這首歌很快就結(jié)束了，就像清嗓子一樣，但它呈現(xiàn)了一連串絲毫不戲精的愉悅感受，例如引人注目且充滿粉色光芒般的“Cruel Summer”(“I don’t want to keep secrets just to keep you!（我不想為了留住你而保守秘密！）”)，還有水晶球般透明的“The Archer”,它自帶優(yōu)雅,充滿色彩明確的合成器結(jié)構(gòu)和自我意識的遺憾，“I cut off my nose just to spite my face/And I hate my reflection for years and years.（搬起石頭來砸自己的腳，我痛恨著過去我一舉一動的倒影，年復(fù)一年）”。“The Man” 是專輯中唯一的例外，它略欠火候，是一首關(guān)于性別平等的頌歌，這首歌幽默而不帶諷刺地指出，Leonardo DiCaprio的花花公子形象是男性特權(quán)的巔峰，也證明了其他人若想模仿Kesha寫歌，也不能感同身受。

Is it the prickly cotton-candy production or the lyrical detail or the vocal echo or just the event album-ness of it all that keeps?Lover?in the foreground, song after song? With the possible exception of the steel drums on music-box oddball “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” the album never claims any new ground; some of its best moments are unavoidably familiar.?Rihanna?or?Robyn?might intend their new music to sound entirely fresh; Swift, our most conventional pop star, builds atop what has worked already. And with Antonoff behind so much of the sound of pop music in the latter half of the decade, the bold, ’80s-inspired style isn’t inherently more interesting or varied than any other. “I Think He Knows” sounds like?Carly Rae Jepsen; “The Archer”?sounds like?Lorde’s “Supercut”; “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince,” actually a Joel Little joint, sounds like Lana Del Rey’s?Born to Die.

是黏膩的棉花糖般的制作風格，是細膩的抒情，是歌聲的回響，抑或僅僅是發(fā)專輯這件事——是否是這些讓《Lover》里的歌曲一首接一首地成為萬眾矚目的焦點？可能除了“It’s nice to have a friend ”采用了大量音樂盒中鋼鼓和音樂球的元素，這張專輯并沒有開辟其他新的領(lǐng)域；對于《Lover》里一些最動人的時刻，聽眾們會感到熟悉，這是不可避免的。像Rihanna或Robyn，她們可能希望自己的新歌能給人獨一無二的新鮮感；而Swift，我們最老派的流行巨星，她已經(jīng)獲得了絕對意義上的成功。參與《Lover》多首歌曲制作的美國男歌手、樂手Antonoff，在過去的五年間為流行音樂做出了巨大的貢獻，這種大膽而受80年代音樂啟發(fā)的風格本身并不比其他風格更有趣或更多樣化。比如“I Think He Knows”聽起來像是Carly Rae Jepsen的歌；“The Archer”又有Lorde的歌曲“Supercut”的影子；“Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince”事實上是Taylor與Joel Little共同創(chuàng)作的，聽起來有些像Lana Del Ray的“Born to Die”。

Swift and her collaborators try some real doozies: Pop-punk marriage proposal “Paper Rings” has a key change borrowed from the Shangri-Las and more than a little acoustic guitar in the mix. It’s cute, and then exhausting. The perky, England-themed “London Boy” begins sweetly—“I saw the dimples first and then I heard the accent”—but devolves into a parade of rugby and high tea and “I fancy you”s, a love song as predictable as one of Mary-Kate and Ashley’s direct-to-video European adventures. She samples Idris Elba joking about taking James Corden on a?scooter ride, apropos of nothing?except that he says “London.” I can only imagine what it sounds like to a Brit.

Swift和她的合作者們也做出了一些絕妙的嘗試：比如流行朋克求婚曲“Paper Rings”采樣了the Shangri-Las樂隊音樂的一個音調(diào)轉(zhuǎn)變，并加入了一些原聲吉他音，可愛之余讓人聽得精疲力竭。另一首以英國為主題的活潑曲目“London Boy”以一句甜蜜的——“I saw the dimples first and then I heard the accent（他的酒窩在眼前綻放，獨特的腔調(diào)在耳邊響起）”為主歌開頭，接著視線一轉(zhuǎn)，Taylor又唱到橄欖球比賽和下午茶的游行，以及“I fancy you（我的愛為你蕩漾）”，這首情歌就像Mary-Kate和Ashley的音像版歐洲冒險一樣，是一首可以順著歌詞往下猜想的情歌。她采樣了Idris Elba的歌，開著玩笑說要帶James Corden去騎摩托車，恰好還說著在“倫敦”。我能想象英國人會對此作何感想。

“London Boy” is relentlessly upbeat, but the next mood swing will knock you sideways: It’s “Soon You’ll Get Better,” a heartrending ballad about Swift’s mother’s ongoing cancer battle, with background harmonies by the Dixie Chicks. Three minutes later, her tender testimony of new faith is outshined by the terrific “False God,” a moody sophistipop meditation on transatlantic romance where worship (“Religion’s in your lips… the altar is my hips”) sounds more like a metaphor for…. oral sex? On a Taylor Swift album? Am I losing my mind? Then “You Need to Calm Down” crashes in to remind us that she also considers making nice with?Katy Perry?to be a form of activism.

“London Boy”是一首極其樂觀的歌曲，但轉(zhuǎn)換到下一首的情緒也會間接觸動你的內(nèi)心：這是一首關(guān)于Swift母親正在與癌癥作斗爭的傷感民謠“Soon you 'll Get Better”，背景音樂是Dixie Chicks的和聲。三分鐘后，她對新信仰的柔情見證又被出色的“False God”所散發(fā)的光芒蓋過，這是對這段跨越大西洋的浪漫兩性關(guān)系的一種情緒化的詭辯式冥想，而在這首歌中(“Religion’s in your lips… the alter is my hips/信仰就在你的唇間，而我的臀部就是為你做的改變”)，所謂的崇拜聽起來更像一種隱喻...是口交嗎?還出現(xiàn)在了Taylor Swift的專輯里?我沒瘋吧?下一首歌“You Need to Calm Down”突然出現(xiàn)，提醒了我們，她也認為與Katy Perry搞好關(guān)系會是一種行動主義的作為。

Because Swift is Better when she’s learning than when she’s trying to teach us a lesson,?Lover’s garish lead singles contribute to the strain. I’ve thought about “ME!” every day for four months; it still sounds like a musical number taken out of context, just unearned celebratory fanfare without plot or character development, so dead-eyed it’s spooky. But she’s Better when she gives herself real space to think, as on “Cornelia Street,” a lovely, understated tribute to memory and nostalgia with the power to make one rarefied block of Manhattan feel universal.

因為Swift在學(xué)習上要比在試圖給我們上一課這方面做得更好，所以《Lover》的花哨首單更會加重這種壓力。這四個月以來我每天都想著“ME!”，它聽起來仍然像是一首沒有前后文的充數(shù)曲，沒有情節(jié)又沒角色發(fā)展，一次不相稱的慶典式吹擂，歌曲無神也詭異。但若是她給自己一個真正的思考空間時，她的狀態(tài)會更好，就像在“Cornelia Street”中的那樣，這是對過往記憶和懷舊的一種可愛而低調(diào)的致敬，一種能讓曼哈頓的一個不起眼的街區(qū)變火的力量。

Like?Red?or?Speak Now,?Lover?is a sprawling scrapbook of invisible personal bookmarks, an escapist fantasy about a real-life celebrity boyfriend, a shrewd self-mythology disguised as a benevolent offering. It’s probably five bad songs away from being Better than?1989. It’s also a little wiser and more emotionally honest. “I once believed love would be black and white… I once believed love would be burning red/But it’s golden,” she sings on dreamy pastel closer “Daylight,” replacing the fiery passion of?Red?with a gentler, more mature understanding of true love as a good idea you don’t want to stop having. Heartbreak can strengthen you; love sustains you. If only all of?Lover?had the same heart.

《Lover》就像《Red》或《Speak Now》一樣，是一本龐大的剪貼簿，里面隱藏著私人情愫，這是關(guān)于與現(xiàn)實生活中的名人男友逃避現(xiàn)實的幻想，是一個偽裝成傾情獻禮的精明自我神話。但有五首爛歌讓它與《1989》拉開了檔次。但這專也編排更明智，內(nèi)容更誠實。“I once believed love would be black and white… I once believed love would be burning red/But it’s golden,（我曾一度相信愛非黑即白...我也曾相信愛正如那熾熱的紅色/但實際上，愛閃著金光）”，她在夢幻的柔情結(jié)尾曲目“Daylight”中這樣唱道，也是在她更深刻地明白了真愛就是一件你不想失去的物品后，她成熟而嫻靜地褪去了《Red》里對愛情那熾烈的激情。心碎能促使你堅強，而真愛能給予你長久的陪伴與支持。但愿天下有情人（《Lover》）都有一顆同樣的真心。