Taylor Swift

When there is a torrential downpour, most people like to stay indoors. Not Taylor Swift. In her new album Speak Now, Swift welcomes the bad weather, daring us to meet her “in the pouring rain.” It is this defiant attitude that provides the underlying tone of her third release—each track is full of fiery lyrics and surprisingly revealing emotions, a stark contrast to her first two albums in which she only croons about the flimsy fantasies of adolescence.

That isn’t to say that Swift has finally emerged as a mature artist. Many of her verses still ring with childish awkwardness. In “Mean,” lines such as “All you’re ever gonna be is mean/Why you gotta be so mean?” remind you of elementary school recess. Or take this verse spoken angrily by Swift at the beginning of “Better Than Revenge,” for example: “Now go stand in the corner and think about what you did.” Coming from a 20-year-old, this playfulness is no longer cute.

Despite some less-than-sophisticated prose, Swift manages to exude a certain grown-up elegance in songs like “Dear John” and “Back to December.” The former is a poignant ballad sung with brutal honesty, and one can only wonder about the jerk (read: John Mayer?) who inspired it. And the latter displays a different kind of emotion: regret. Swift sings “So this is me swallowing my pride/Standing in front of you/Saying I’m sorry for that night,” most likely directed at a heartbroken Taylor Lautner. It’s a new, sincere kind of “Love Story” for TSwift, and it has a certain rawness that sets it apart from past songs.

So if you were expecting fairy-tale romance, kissing in the rain and flying sparks, you won’t be disappointed. Speak Now still has the characteristic charm of the small-town country girl we’ve come to adore, but the wiser musician is no longer an innocent teenager singing dreamily about Tim McGraw.