Speak Now ~ Taylor Swift

Deluxe two CD edition including eight bonus tracks. 2010 release, the third album from the Country/Pop superstar. Speak Now is the follow-up to her multi-million-selling 2008 album, Fearless. The 21-year-old singer/songwriter wrote the entire album on her own and co-produced with longtime collaborator Nathan Chapman, who worked with her on Fearless and her 2006 self-titled debut. Features the single 'Mine'.

Hi, I'm Taylor. I've been alive for 20 years now, and I finally have my own kitchen. I'm very excited about this, and generally excited by anything else that falls into the "cute" or "cozy" categories. I learned to play guitar when I was twelve fro m this guy named Ronnie who came over to fix my parents' computer. I like quilts. But that's probably because I'm always freezing cold. I LOVE Nashville. That's where I live, when I'm lucky enough to be there. I love the town so much, I sometimes feel like I should just roll the windows down in my car (nicknamed the Toyoat. Because it's a Toyota) and scream "I LOVE THIS TOWN" loudly out the windows. That wouldn't be weird, right? Every time I try and wink at someone, I mess it up and end up scaring people. My lucky number always has been and always will be 13. It pops up in front of me in the most obvious and undeniable ways, but only when something good is about to happen. I'm a Sagittarius. I think that means I'm always looking for something new. It also means I have a Christmas-themed birthday party every year. I love bright colors and things that make reality seem more whimsical than it is. I have a collection of ribbons and headbands, and I love them all the same. I over-think and over-plan and over-organize. I've been like this since I was a baby, before I was gigantically tall and over-talkative.


These days, I've been trying to classify my thoughts into two categories: "Things I can change," and "Things I can't." It seems to help me sort through what to really stress about. But there I go again, over-planning and over-organizing my over-thinking! I write songs about my adventures and misadventures, most of which concern love. Love is a tricky business. But if it wasn't, I wouldn't be so enthralled with it. Lately I've come to a wonderful realization that makes me even more fascinated by it: I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to love. No one does! There's no pattern to it, except that it happens to all of us, of course. I can't plan for it. I can't predict how it'll end up. Because love is unpredictable and it's frustrating and it's tragic and it's beautiful. And even though there's no way to feel like I'm an expert at it, it's worth writing songs about -- more than anything else I've ever experienced in my life.

I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another. It's been going on for quite some time now, without me knowing it. I've found that growing up can mean a lot of things. For me, it doesn't mean I should become somebody completely new and stop loving the things I used to love. It means I've just added more things to my list. Like for example, I'm still beyond obsessed with the winter season and I still start putting up strings of lights in September. I still love sparkles and grocery shopping and really old cats that are only nice to you half the time. I still love writing in my journal and wearing dresses all the time and staring at chandeliers. But some new things I've fallen in love with -- mismatched everything. Mismatched chairs, mismatched colors, mismatched personalities. I love spraying perfumes I used to wear when I was in high school. It brings me back to the days of trying to get a close parking spot at school, trying to get noticed by soccer players, and trying to figure out how to avoid doing or saying anything uncool, and wishing every minute of every day that one day maybe I'd get a chance to win a Grammy. Or something crazy and out of reach like that. ;) I love old buildings with the paint chipping off the walls and my dad's stories about college. I love the freedom of living alone, but I also love things that make me feel seven again. Back then naivety was the norm and skepticism was a foreign language, and I just think every once in a while you need fries and a chocolate milkshake and your mom. I love picking up a cookbook and closing my eyes and opening it to a random page, then attempting to make that recipe. I've loved my fans from the very first day, but they've said things and done things recently that make me feel like they're my friends -- more now than ever before. I'll never go a day without thinking about our memories together.

For the last two years, I've been writing and recording an album called Speak Now. I only have the option of writing about things that happen in my life, so thankfully a LOT has happened in my life in the last two years. I know I don't always say the right thing at the right time or speak up when I should, but I write it all down. I get my guitar and a pen and all of a sudden, I have a chance to say exactly what I meant to say in real life. Some of the things I wrote about are things everyone saw me go through. Some of the things I wrote about are things nobody ever knew about. I'm beyond excited for you to hear these stories and confessions.

I think it's important that you know that I will never change. But I'll never stay the same either. Must be a Sagittarius thing.

I'm pretty stoked that you read this whole thing. I commend you for that. This was ridiculously long, and you probably have other stuff you could've done in the last four minutes. So to you, or anyone else who has spent four minutes on me in some way-- listening to just one song, or watching one of my videos….Thank you. I love you like I love sparkles and having the last word. And that's real love.

--Taylor

O Holy Night (CD/DVD) / Jackie Evancho

Jackie Evancho is a 10-year-old soprano prodigy whose performances on "America's Got Talent" won the hearts of millions and brought her into the national spotlight.




Her new CD/DVD set, O Holy Night, features the Christmas favorites “O Holy Night” and “Silent Night” plus the beautiful classics “Pie Jesu” and “Panis Angelicus” – both of which Jackie performed on "America’s Got Talent."



The DVD features Jackie’s performances from "America’s Got Talent" including the audition tape that landed Jackie her spot on AGT. It also includes an interview with Jackie filmed the week following the show’s finale.

DVD Track Listing:


1. Panis Angelicus (Youtube Audition)

2. O Mio Babbino Caro

3. Time To Say Goodbye

4. Pie Jesu

5. Ave Maria

6. An Interview With Jackie

Track Listing


Silent Night

Panis Angelicus

Oh Holy Night

Pie Jesu

The Gift ~ Susan Boyle

The evolving pop narrative throws up its own unique touchstones. In the last 18 months pop’s own story has turned at some riveting right-angles. It has been a particularly special time.
There is only one defining star of this time-frame for whom it is absolutely impossible to piece the clues together that led to such momentous success. Step forward, Susan Boyle. Susan is a shy, devout Christian with an incredible voice from a tiny Scottish estate. Yes, Susan was a brand new figure ready for her cultural close-up. Even at the age of almost 50.
‘I’m a lot busier than I used to be,’ says Ms Boyle, understating wildly, I’ve met a lot of new people and been fortunate enough to meet some of my idols. When my childhood idol Donny Osmond talked to me as his equal, well, that was a very humbling experience.’ She mentions her broadcast duet with West End and Broadway totem Elaine Paige as another highlight. ‘Just incredible. Singing with her on my TV special was so exciting because I’d always sung along to her records at home. To suddenly find yourself on stage with someone like that was really something. My day-to-day life is so full now.’
The statistics surrounding Susan Boyle are an edifying testament to how one very ordinary woman scaled the realms of the extraordinary, without the usual trappings of pop excess. After becoming an internet sensation on the back of three minutes’ worth of airtime on primetime TV, her performance on Britain’s Got Talent has culminated in over 500million Youtube hits for Susan. If the two watchwords of the 21st century have been ‘reality’ and ‘celebrity’, Susan Boyle had accidentally located a brand new point on the graph where they intersected. One of Britain’s forgotten characters had rarely, if ever, been so memorable.
Her debut album I Dreamed A Dream cut a hotline into the international palette with the speed of a Tokyo freight train. It switched from being the most pre-ordered album in Amazon’s global history to become the fastest selling global debut of all time in weeks. For a woman that almost defines the word ‘parochial’, something about Boyle’s voice and character touched a rare international nerve. Number 1 credits clocked up in 21 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, South Africa, Greece, Belgium, Germany and Mexico. She remains unadorned by the stats. ‘Money means nothing to me,’ she says, ‘My manager is always asking me if I want to know my chart positions and how much I’ve sold but I’m not interested in that. Everybody knows that money doesn’t make you happy.’ For the record, Susan Boyle’s album is now touching towards 10 million worldwide sales.
For her own sake, Ms Boyle has had to make herself ambivalent to the incredible number-crunching her talent has resulted in. ‘When I get on the bus to go to Livingstone, sometimes I have to go back home again,’ she says, ‘I get recognised in the streets these days which seems quite strange to me. Most people are very nice. I get an awful lot of compliments on my album and I never quite know what to say to people.’
If the fiscal benefits of this incredible tale of modern fame hold little allure, the difference it has made to Susan Boyle’s life does. ‘I’m so much more fulfilled now. My life is a richer experience. I still take everything one day at a time. Every day was the same before and now every day brings something new and exciting.’
It is, of course, this humility that touches so many of her ardent followers and fans. When Susan Boyle first appeared it seemed like, for one brief moment, vanity itself collapsed. As that ancient old maxim – ‘Never judge a book by its cover’ – clanked around the globe with speedy viral intensity, it was as if the world was about to offer its first unspoken apology for prizing beauty above all else. Perhaps it would temporarily forget its grotesquely accentuated new heights of judgement. Or perhaps Susan Boyle was just a fleeting icon by which a microscope was shone on our more fickle presumptions. Whatever history gifts the Susan Boyle story in the long term, it is time once again to prove that there is more to this incredible woman than being the symbol for a moment of international reflection. She will do it in the exact same way she entered our consciousness in the first place. With the raw combination of strength and fragility, beauty and solitude that is her singing voice.
Her second album has a seasonal flavour. The Gift was crafted as the perfect Christmas album. It saw her return to Steve Mac’s Rockstone studios, the seat of her crafting I Dreamed A Dream. ‘Steve is fan-bloody-fantastic’ she says, of her new musical anchor. ‘I wasn’t as apprehensive or frightened as I was first time because I knew what I could do and Steve always brings out the best in everyone he works with.’ She thinks about this for a moment. ‘I was still a wee bit nervous, so it was good that I was going back to a place I felt comfortable in.’
Recording a Christmas album was another dream to be ticked off the list for Susan. ‘I feel like it’s become too commercialised over the years. This is a way of expressing my faith, which is the backbone of my existence. Christmas should be about people coming together. Before all my brothers and sisters moved out I remember Christmas always being a very busy time in Blackburn. It revolved around midnight mass. We’d all put on our best clothes to go to Our Lady of Lourdes church and then the presents would follow afterwards. There wasn’t a lot of money around. My mum and dad were so hardworking but there were a lot of us!So Christmas was never about the material things.’ Ironically, the Boyle family grew up on Yule Terrace.
The Gift opens with her heart-stopping rendition of Lou Reed’s Perfect Day. ‘I remembered the original song and how touching it was. There’ve been some absolutely fantastic versions since so I wanted to do that beautiful melody justice. For a singer this song is a gift. And of course there have been so many perfect days since I first entered Britain’s Got Talent it felt like a really appropriate song to sing.’
Other highlights for Susan herself on the album are her delightful renditions of the traditional hymn Away In A Manger (‘It’s the first Christmas carol that I ever learnt to sing’) and the less obvious choice, a cover of Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over. ‘It was the lyric that really touched me in this one. I’ve been living my dream and I don’t want it to be over. I’ve had the best year of my life and I just want it to continue.’
Because Susan Boyle has experienced such a huge turnaround in her own life, she felt compelled to extend the hand of good fortune with her new album. ‘I feel like I’ve been given the most amazing gift in the last year and I really wanted to pass that on to someone else.’ She began a worldwide ‘Susan-Search’ on Youtube, in which unknown singers were encouraged to send in videos of themselves singing. It is Youtube’s most popular competition ever and at its peak saw a new entry uploaded every six minutes. A little of that Susan magic goes a long way.
The winner, Amber Sassi, was chosen from the thousands of entries. A 33 year old single mother of three and paramedic from Brewerton, Upstate New York, was Susan’s personal choice. ‘Amber’s been struggling to bring up her family,’ says Susan, ‘I wanted so much to give her the opportunity for people to see what she can do. Me and my team watched every video and Amber’s voice struck a chord in me. She’s got a lovely voice and I love its warmth. It’s a beautiful voice and she’s a lovely person.’
In some ways, Ms Boyle’s story is just the same as any woman with a voice in any choir up and down the UK. In her home town of Blackburn, she was schooled in singing in churches and choral societies. A shy young woman with some learning difficulties, being hidden in the blanket of a collective singing arrangement offered her comfort. So in one other, crucial way, her story is entirely her own. The most unlikely chorister in the sea of voices stepped out of line and put her head above the parapet to be noticed. For Susan Boyle, though she would never deign to say so much herself, this was an act of personal heroism, the like of which she had never contemplated before.
For this is still Susan Boyle’s tale. The fearlessness to dream about something other than the lot life has handed you. The chance to escape. The pivotal role of music as a conduit to go to another place, sometimes lodged at the outer recesses of your imagination, and to allow that new place to blossom. Yes, this is Susan Boyle’s tale. It is why it continues to connect with so many unsuspecting people across the world.
‘I used to say that I was on the outside of life looking in,’ she says. ‘And now I feel like I am on the inside, actually living it.’

BIOGRAPHY BY: Paul Flynn - leading writer on popular culture for prestigious magazines including i-D, Love and Grazia.