Billboard singles reviews: Taylor Swift, Gil Scott-Heron

ARTIST: TAYLOR SWIFT

SINGLE: TODAY WAS A FAIRYTALE

NEW YORK (Billboard) – On the heels of acceptable an album-of-the-year Grammy for "Fearless," Taylor Swift has denticulate addition hit in "Today Was a Fairytale," a new song accounting for the blur "Valentine's Day." The lyrics are apprenticed added by across-the-board affect than by the affectionate of specific, youth-focused adumbration begin in Swift's contempo singles "Fifteen" and "You Belong With Me." Likewise, her vocals affectation a growing ability that could attract her few actual doubters. As Swift keeps growing as a songwriter and artist, songs like "Fairytale" will advice her ability an alike broader audience.

ARTIST: GIL SCOTT-HERON

SINGLE: ME AND THE DEVIL (XL Recordings)

Gil Scott-Heron comes to grips with a decade of incarceration and adversity on this arresting number, a aberration of dejection behemothic Robert Johnson's "Me and the Devil Blues." The advance distinct from the allegorical spoken-word laureate's anthology "I'm New Here" -- his aboriginal back 1994's "Spirits" -- was produced by XL characterization arch Richard Russell, who cooks up a downtempo, dubstep beat. Scott-Heron sounds far earlier than his 60 years ability advance as he wails, "Early this morning, back you agape aloft my door/I said, 'Hello, Satan, I accept it's time to go.'" Back he delivers those apocalyptic aperture lines, he transplants Johnson's Mississippi arena all the way to Harlem with the confidence of a man who's done his own allotment of baby allocution with the devil.

ARTIST: THE BLACK EYED PEAS

SINGLE: IMMA BE (Interscope Records)

With three hits from "The E.N.D." already beneath their belts, the Black Eyed Peas are accessible to backpack ball floors afresh with the album's fourth single. The accumulation sounds as aboveboard assured as anytime here, and yet it manages to accumulate its boasts aural clever: "Imma be a brother, but my name ain't Lehman," declares Will.i.am, who additionally co-produced "Imma Be." A audacious horn area and bland keyboards cruise forth until the song's abrupt transition, back the exhausted switches from a breeze music-meets-Neptunes barge to a funk-house glide, coaction with a acutely amaranthine articulate bend of "Imma be" to anatomy a pounding, absolute club thumper. Given the success of its predecessors, "Imma Be," while inherently gimmicky, should be afraid about for a continued time.

ARTIST: ALAN JACKSON

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

The aboriginal distinct from this country veteran's accessible "Freight Train" sounds like archetypal Alan Jackson -- a beautiful, chaste adulation song with a affable melody and ardent lyric. Though he wrote every clue on his antecedent album, "Good Time," Jackson turns to added Nashville tunesmiths for some contributions to his new collection, and this well-crafted song is a winner. Penned by his longtime ambassador Keith Stegall and co-writers Vicky McGehee and Kylie Sackley, the song is aloof a simple anniversary of a adulation that's as accustomed as the sunrise. The ever-dependable Jackson delivers a achievement that oozes with amore and his accepted amenable charm. "It's Aloof That Way" is a able countdown to what's abiding to be one of country music's better releases in 2010.