It's fair to say I've been slightly distracted the past week or so. A big birthday with all the associated hullaballoo, which doesn't always sit easily with a shy extrovert such as myself. Anyway, I feel a bit more positive now - much like my 40th and 30th before, you realise that very little changes as the clock strikes twelve. I've been lucky enough to be able to do some amazing things over the past thirty years and - Covid permitting - I don't feel like my 50s will be that different. We'll see.

Taylor, of course, has all this ahead of her. Speak Now is from 2010, which by my reckoning means she'd have been 20 when this was released, and makes her 31 now. She's crammed a lot into that time. When I was her age I was living it up at Borders HQ, freebies and parties, trips to the Angel, lunch from the Chinese place, haircuts from Mr Toppers. Fun times.

This album sounds very polished to me, and (just as I may have peaked), I wonder whether Taylor reached "peak polish" at some point, beyond which she descended more into acoustic, scratchy tunes, albeit still with an incredible range of hooks.

The Story of Us is described as "pop punk" and I suppose there is something of the Avril Lavigne about it. She is not going to be headlining the 100 Club anytime soon though one suspects. Astonishingly, it appears that big Gary Lightbody out of the Snow Patrols is on the next one up. Now that I want to hear.