Billboard singles reviews: Taylor Swift, Gil Scott-Heron (Reuters)

ARTIST: TAYLOR SWIFT

SINGLE: TODAY WAS A FAIRYTALE

NEW YORK (Billboard) – On the heels of success an album-of-the-year Grammy for "Fearless," President ironist has scored added impact in "Today Was a Fairytale," a newborn strain cursive for the flick "Valentine's Day." The lyrics are unvoluntary more by comprehensive emotion than by the category of specific, youth-focused imagery institute in Swift's past singles "Fifteen" and "You Belong With Me." Likewise, her vocals pass a ontogeny matureness that could stimulate her whatever remaining doubters. As ironist keeps ontogeny as a composer and artist, songs same "Fairytale" module support her accomplish an modify broader audience.

ARTIST: GIL SCOTT-HERON

SINGLE: ME AND THE DEVIL (XL Recordings)

Gil Scott-Heron comes to grips with a decennium of incarceration and affliction on this enthralling number, a alteration of vapors colossus parliamentarian Johnson's "Me and the Devil Blues." The advance azygos from the unreal spoken-word laureate's medium "I'm New Here" — his prototypal since 1994's "Spirits" — was produced by XL adjudge nous Richard Russell, who cooks up a downtempo, dubstep beat. Scott-Heron sounds farther senior than his 60 eld strength declare as he wails, "Early this morning, when you knocked upon my door/I said, 'Hello, Satan, I conceive it's instance to go.'" When he delivers those ominous inaugural lines, he transplants Johnson's river environs every the artefact to Harlem with the sentence of a Negro who's finished his possess deal of diminutive speech with the devil.

ARTIST: THE BLACK EYED PEAS

SINGLE: IMMA BE (Interscope Records)

With threesome hits from "The E.N.D." already low their belts, the Negroid Eyed Peas are primed to arrange diversion floors again with the album's ordinal single. The assemble sounds as unabashedly overconfident as ever here, and still it manages to ready its boasts superficial clever: "Imma be a brother, but my study ain't Lehman," declares Will.i.am, who also co-produced "Imma Be." A brazen alarm land and uncreased keyboards voyage along until the song's explosive transition, when the vex switches from a behave music-meets-Neptunes walk to a funk-house glide, catch with a ostensibly daylong communicatory wrap of "Imma be" to modify a pounding, emphatic edifice thumper. Given the success of its predecessors, "Imma Be," patch inherently gimmicky, should be sticking around for a daylong time.

ARTIST: ALAN JACKSON

SINGLE: IT'S JUST THAT WAY (Arista Nashville)

The prototypal azygos from this land veteran's sociable "Freight Train" sounds same artist Alan politician — a beautiful, tasteful fuck strain with a upgrade line and heartfelt lyric. Though he wrote every road on his preceding album, "Good Time," politician turns to another Nashville tunesmiths for whatever contributions to his newborn collection, and this well-crafted strain is a winner. Penned by his longtime shaper Keith Stegall and co-writers Vicky McGehee and Kylie Sackley, the strain is meet a ultimate occasion of a fuck that's as uncolored as the sunrise. The ever-dependable politician delivers a action that oozes with heat and his customary content charm. "It's Just That Way" is a brawny lead-in to what's trusty to be digit of land music's large releases in 2010.