Lover, Taylor Swift's seventh album, arrived on Monday (August 26) with its theme right there in the title: 18 songs that are odes to the things she loves most and knows best, from her boyfriend to her mom, the West Village to the West End.

Pitchfork's review notes that the album nods to 2017's Reputation but, in spirit, is the sequel to the synth-pop glitter of 1989. Produced mostly with Jack Antonoff, it is full of low-lying synthesiser pulses and reverbed beats that can feel more like scaffolding than structure.

For the review, Lover is uneven but bright, fun and emotionally honest. Its peaks and valleys are higher and deeper than on Reputation, where romance played out under a long shadow of doubt. The opener, I Forgot That You Existed, sets a hopscotch rhythm to a rhyme aimed at a nemesis.