Content
Background
Lover is the seventh studio album by American singer and songwriter, Taylor Swift. It is the first album Swift owns all the rights to and her first album not released by Big Machine Records. It was released on August 23, 2019 by Republic Records.
The album consists of collaborations with Jack Antonoff who worked with Swift on her two previous albums, 1989 and reputation, along with Louis Bell, Adam King Feeney, and Joel Little. Lyrically the album covers all facets of love, ranging from contentment, infatuation, endearment, lust, and heartache, to political themes such as feminism, equality, and disillusionment. Musically the album ranges from retro-styled pop record, combining dream pop, synth-pop, electropop, and pop rock genres with country, punk, funk, and folk elements, characterized by upbeat arrangements, midtempo rhythms and atmospheric synthesizers. The album also features guest vocals from The Chicks (Previously known as the Dixie Chicks) and Brendon Urie from Panic! At the Disco.
Commercially the album did well, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200, giving Swift her sixth number one album and making Swift the first female artist in history to have six albums sell more than 500,000 copies in a single week.
Four deluxe editions featuring two bonus demos was released exclusively to US Target stores on the same day as the standard version of the album. Each volume of the deluxe edition contained diary entries, along with lyrics to previous songs in Swift’s catalogue. According to Target, the album was its best-selling preorder of all time, breaking Swift’s previous record with her album reputation.
Singles
Five singles were released to promote the album. “ME!” was released as the album’s lead single on April 26, 2019. The song peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100. “You Need to Calm Down was released on June 14, 2019 as the second single from the album. Like its predecessor, it too peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100. “The Archer” was released as a promotional single from the album on July 23, 2019. The title track, “Lover”, was released on August 16, 2019. Unlike the previous two singles, the song only peaked at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100. “The Man” was released as the fourth and final single from the album on January 27, 2020. The song did not do as well as the previous three singles, peaking only as high as twenty-three on the Billboard Hot 100. Four years later at her Eras Tour stop in Pittsburgh, on June 17, 2023, Swift announced that “Cruel Summer” would be the fifth single from the album due to the song rising on the charts because of fans streaming the song. According to Billboard.com, the song is set to be released on June 20, 2023 to contemporary hit radio. The song peaked at number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 back in 2019.
Track listing
| Standard Edition | |||
| Track Title | Writers | Producers | Length |
| 1. “I Forgot That You Existed” | Adam King Feeney, Louis Bell, Taylor Swift | Adam King Feeney, Louis Bell, Taylor Swift | 2:50 |
| 2. “Cruel Summer” | Annie Clark, Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 2:57 |
| 3. “Lover” | Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:40 |
| 4. “The Man” | Joel Litte, Taylor Swift | Joel Litte, Taylor Swift | 3:09 |
| 5. “The Archer” | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:30 |
| 6. “I Think He Knows” | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 2:52 |
| 7. “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” | Joel Litte, Taylor Swift | Joel Litte, Taylor Swift | 3:53 |
| 8. “Paper Rings” | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:41 |
| 9. “Cornelia Street” | Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 4:46 |
| 10. “Death by a Thousand Cuts” | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:18 |
| 11. “London Boy” | Cautious Clay, Jack Antonoff, Sounwave, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Sounwave, Taylor Swift | 3:09 |
| 12. “Soon You’ll Get Better” (featuring The Chicks) | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:21 |
| 13. “False God” | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 3:19 |
| 14. “You Need to Calm Down” | Joel Litte, Taylor Swift | Joel Litte, Taylor Swift | 2:50 |
| 15. “Afterglow” | Adam King Feeney, Louis Bell, Taylor Swift | Adam King Feeney, Louis Bell, Taylor Swift | 3:42 |
| 16. “ME!” (featuring Brendon Urie from Panic! At the Disco) | Brendon Urie, Joel Litte, Taylor Swift | Joel Litte, Taylor Swift | 3:12 |
| 17. “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” | Adam King Feeney, Louis Bell, Taylor Swift | Adam King Feeney, Louis Bell, Taylor Swift | 2:30 |
| 18. “Daylight” | Taylor Swift | Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift | 4:52 |
| Deluxe Edition Bonus Voice Memos | |||
| 19. “I Forgot That You Existed” (Piano/Vocal) | Adam King Feeney, Louis Bell, Taylor Swift | 3:29 | |
| 20. “Lover” (Piano/Vocal) | Taylor Swift | 5:38 |
Notes
- “The Archer” contains an interpolation of the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty”.
- “London Boy” contains a sample of “Cold War” by Cautious Clay and a snippet of James Corden interviewing Idris Elba.
- The album version of “ME!” does not contain the spoken lyrics “Hey, kids, spelling is fun!”
- “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” contains a sample of “Summer in the South” by the Toronto-based Regent Park School of Music.
- On February 5, 2023, a song called “All the Girls You Loved Before” (at the time dubbed by fans as “All the Girls”), that was an outtake from Lover, leaked onto the internet and on March 17, 2023 at midnight to celebrate her Eras Tour, Swift officially released the song to streaming services and three hours later released a compilation EP called The More Lover Chapter that contained the song and four other songs from the Lover album.