Speak Now

Taylor Swift is that rarest of pop phenomenona: a superstar who managed to completely cross over from country to the mainstream. Other singers performed similar moves — notably, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson both became enduring mainstream icons based on their '70s work — but Swift shed her country roots like they were a second skin; it was a necessary molting to reveal she was perhaps the sharpest, savviest, populist singer/songwriter of her generation, one who could harness the zeitgeist...