My Own Little World

From my first listen of "Shake It Off," I could tell that Taylor Swift's newest album 1989 was going to be a must listen. This was a huge turn musically for her, going from a country-pop vibe to a slightly more experimental mainstream pop sound. As I heard more new tracks, I realized that this was a bigger turn than I thought it would be, intriguing me even more into Swift's new album. It was going to be either great or very bad, with not much room in between. Thankfully, 1989 's musical turn is a fantastic genre change for Swift. Diving into the deep end instead of wading into new territory was a little bit of a gamble, but it pays off. The overall vibe is very 1980's synthpop, which I personally loved. Not many artists could pull off this style and keep it relevant and listenable all at the same time, so Swift doing this is quite an accomplishment. Songs like "Style," "Out of the Woods," and "All You Had to Do Was Stay" exe...

First of all, before I start this review, I want to commend Chris and his team for continuing to make great Sunday morning worship music for the masses. Truly, I do. It is hard to write this many songs and keep them worshipful without being entirely flippant in a church service. So, Mr. Tomlin, I thank you, as a fellow worship leader, for giving all this music to be at the church's disposal. However, I'm not reviewing a collection of songs for a worship service. I'm reviewing an album. That is the unfortunate consequence of being an avid music fan: as much as you want to like something, you sometimes just can't. Chris has a tendency to write music that doesn't always work in a studio recording, and that trend sadly continues on Love Ran Red . As a whole, the album fails to ever truly capture my full attention for very long. There are many good moments, but they fail to make a good album on the whole. Thankfully, these good moments aren't hard to come by ...