The country world feigned surprise when, after three albums of Music Row-indebted songcraft, Taylor Swift formally embraced pop on 2012’s u003ciu003eRedu003c/iu003e. But no one should have been shocked: Any 14-year-old capable of persuading her parents to move from suburban Pennsylvania to Nashville for her career clearly has ambition to burn. And the thrill of following Swift’s rise has been watching her execute it flawlessly, largely because her melodic intelligence is equal to that ambition. Her early, youthful love songs heralded 2010's newly self-possessed u003ciu003eSpeak Nowu003c/iu003e—which showed off her scathing wit—and evolved into knowing, ironclad pop fare that held its own against boisterous Max Martin production on u003ciu003e1989u003c/iu003e, her fifth album, titled after her birth year. Throughout, her songwriting has blurred the lines between the public and private, burying enough real-life clues (about, say, scarves and Starbucks) to make clear that only Swift can own her narrative, thank you very much, while still retaining a lyrical elegance. Though 2017's u003ciu003ereputationu003c/iu003e might have been perceived as a gorgeously constructed piece of dramatic theater—its attendant heroes and villains all real-life characters from Swift's public feuds—all that spectacle proved an attention-grabbing cover for her most romantic album to date.