Taylor Swift is a kid again on 'Lover,' a big, messy embrace of a new album

What does it sound like when Taylor Swift – who has spent most of the past decade striving to redefine her sound, achieve pop supremacy and control her public narrative – has nothing left to prove?

The result is “Lover,” Swift’s highly anticipated seventh studio album, a sprawling 18-track effort that’s less focused and more openhearted than anything she’s released since “Red,” the album’s closest predecessor in its noncommittal approach to genre and its songwriting focus.

After a tumultuous few years of tabloid headlines, record label dramas and other personal challenges that played out on the public stage, the joyfully unfocused and unburdened songs on “Lover” establish the end of that turbulent era of the artist’s life and the beginning of a new period of calm.

“Lover” arrives on the cusp of Swift’s 30th birthday in December and follows two previous releases (“1989” and “Reputation”) united by their quest to establish her maturity. Instead, the throughline of her sometimes-scattered new album is how openly Swift revels in her youth.

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It’s difficult to deny “Lover” will have a strong presence at the Grammys next year. It's the kind of album that's destined to woo voters with its mix of flashy singles, buoyant pop confections and personal, meditative compositions, like the album’s dreamy, Mazzy Star-channeling title track or “Soon You’ll Get Better,” her twangy tearjerker of a Dixie Chicks collaboration about the sorrows of a sick loved one.

But this album is certainly not “1989,” Swift’s previous album of the year-winning release, which had a dialed-in tracklist of modern pop heavily featuring the productions of Max Martin and Shellback, the Swedish mega-producers whose songs sound laboratory-manufactured in their steely perfection. Nor is it “Reputation,” an underrated entry in Swift’s discography that nevertheless had a chilling, ivory tower quality that stripped away more of the warmth that hooked Swift fans in the first place.

“Lover” does things differently or, perhaps, just does more in general. Swift jokes in her liner notes that “the album is a love letter to love itself – all the captivating, spellbinding, maddening, devastating red, blue, gray, golden aspects of it (that’s why there are so many songs).” For Swift devotees, an overlong album will just mean more to love, more Easter eggs to discover and additional elements of Swift’s life to dig into.

Fans will swoon over Swift’s revelations in “Daylight,” the album’s closing track, that “I once believed love would be burning red / But it’s golden like daylight,” a callback to her blazing romantic visions on her “Red” album. Listeners can practically play a game tracking how many times the color blue is invoked on the album, which, as fans know, is Swift’s preferred device of referencing her boyfriend Joe Alwyn and his aforementioned-colored eyes.

For fans bloodthirsty for Swift’s famously pointed treatments of her enemies, which have anchored many of her past releases, “Lover” spends less time on Swift’s exes and nemeses than previous albums. She seemingly washes her hands clean of the Kanye West drama in the breezy opening track “I Forgot That You Existed,” and vaguely references her fight to be taken seriously as an elite woman in music on “The Man,” her version of Beyoncé’s “If I Were A Boy,” that focuses on her public perception rather than matters of the heart.

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And while the album still features moments of heartbreak – the roller coaster affair of the Annie Clark-co-written “Cruel Summer,” the aftermath of a breakup on “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” the gloomy high school metaphors of “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” – Swift is clearly having more fun on “Lover” than we’ve seen in ages. Beyond the almost worryingly-cheerful lead single “Me!” and its brash-lite followup “You Need to Calm Down,” Swift reaches “Stay, Stay, Stay” levels of goofiness on the similarly-adorable “Paper Rings” and her kooky ode to Alwyn’s mother country, “London Boy.”

Martin and Shellback have a collective zero production credits on the new album, with Jack Antonoff handling the majority of the album’s co-writing and producing duties.As zany as his impulses may sometimes play out on her music, an Antonoff-heavy album will always result in music with more personality. Considering both artists’ affinity for a killer bridge, “Lover” features some of the very best heart racing sonic climaxes of her career. It may be a stretch to say he’s Swift’s production soulmate, but for this lighthearted period in her career, he’s a fitting match.

And yet, in case this hasn’t been made clear already, the album is long. By Swift’s telling, it’s because she has so many stories to tell. A more cynical listener may relegate “Lover” to the heap of supersized rap and pop releases released over the past few years, stuffed with filler, that have dominated streaming and inflated artists’ sales numbers. Whether listeners accept “Lover” as the big, messy embrace of an album that Swift intended or view its lengthy tracklist as a shrewd business play accompanied by an artificially-mushy storyline likely will depend on their view of the artist herself, a dichotomy that has followed Swift for years.

From her early days bonding with fans on Twitter to her spat with Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta earlier this summer (in which she claimed she wasn’t treated fairly in their discussion of the sales of her masters), the question has always been asked by fans and critics alike, of how genuine she actually is. That’s for listeners to decide for themselves. Considering Swift's status as one of pop's biggest names for over a decade, much of the public has already made up their minds, and "Lover" isn't the kind of album to challenge those opinions.

As for what Swift thinks of other people's perceptions, however, “Lover” makes her feelings clear: She’s never cared less, and perhaps, as a result, has never been happier.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Taylor Swift's new album 'Lover' is a big, messy, lovable embrace