Taylor Swift '08: The Hype, Anticipation & Appreciation Begins Right Here

Fuck a rolling country thread (well, not really), Taylor so clearly needs her own alcove for in-depth discussion.

So Taylor's new album comes out in a few weeks. Probably many of you have even heard it, or heard some of the singles. Being in Australia, I haven't (Taylor has zero profile here) but I hope to correct that soon.

The album cover looks very modern, though it's not clear if that's gonna be a red herring. I've heard a live version of the title track "Fearless" which maintains the first album's vibe (at least in its live form) and Taylor's marvelously direct, factual lyrical approach.

I'm excited. I only hooked onto her first album this year, but it's become a favourite, perhaps the best confessional teen album of this decade, or at least on a par with Breakaway and I Am Me. I love Taylor's lyrics, which don't at all break with country convention but rather find ways to be distinct and surprising and indubitably hers through their use of country convention. I love the hyper-glossy, maximalist arrangements they're housed in, which would reinforce the slightness of a slight song, but b/c Taylor's songs are so strong they're like an endless parade of cherries-on-top.

My main hope for this album is that she doesn't fuck it up, but I could also see her tackling a launch towards the mainstream in a winningly idiosyncratic fashion - for some reason Shakira's Laundry Service pops into my head as an album she'd do well to learn a few lessons from.

I was reminded of how much I love her songwriting recently when I discovered that Fearless, Love Story and Change (that Olympic Song) have all been released so far off the new album. Fearless is by far my favourite, esp. in because of its lyrical specificity, which is always one of the strongest things about Taylor's work. (hands through your hair, absent-mindedly making me want you, dancing in the parking lot, in a storm in her best dress, fearless) Love Story throws in some fairy-tale Romeo/Juliet stuff but is also quite good.

I'm worried that she might fall into the trap of hewing too closely to a formula that admittedly works really FUCKING well. I don't see her fucking it up, though. In my Taylor binge this week, I downloaded the two post-album EPs which are uneven, but Christmases When You Were Mine and I Heart ? are both delightful and point in interesting directions for her (achingly gorgeous christmas songs and bluesy organ-drenched mandolin pop?).

No matter how the rest of the album is, Fearless's breezy anthemic whatever will be gracing my headphones on repeat for a while.

Here's what I wrote about "Love Story" for my Facebook Glamour Pop Group:

My two biggest non-2008 obsessions this year have been Fela Kuti and Taylor Swift. Fela, of course, invented afro-beat. Taylor meanwhile is the latest young star of mainstream country, her 2006 eponymous debut album one of the best pop albums of this decade – certainly as a collection of confessional pop only Ashlee Simpson’s ‘I Am Me’ (and, perhaps, Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Breakaway) comes close.

Those suspicious of mainstream country tend to think that an example of greatness in this arena would require some fundamental undermining, subversion or, at least, transcendence of the style’s modus operandi. Taylor does none of this: her first album is glowing, maximalist studio-perfected country-pop, every inch of the stereo speaker filled with glowing guitars, hokey mandolins, gratuitous violin refrains. Taylor’s voice is just twangy enough to be clearly of its genre without seemed confined by it. Most difficult to pin down is Taylor’s songwriting, which manages to combine the generic with the idiosyncratic in ways that are just endlessly loveable (most famously, her first single “Tim McGraw” is a sweet curse laid on an ex-boyfriend to always think of her when he even thinks of country singer Tim McGraw, let alone hears ‘their song’). Rather than break with tradition, Taylor finds new and interesting ways to say things within that tradition; if you’ve never quite “got” with mainstream country I can’t think of a better gateway drug. Plus, she’s definitely one of the best lyricists in pop right now.

“Love Story”, as you might expect from a forthcoming second album arriving on the back of an ever-expanding public profile, is much more internationalist in feel. Oh, there’s a twangy mandolin throughout, but this is more than matched by the burnished sheen of the almost new wavey guitar and the unexpectedly subtle slow burn of the chorus. The tale of fantastic (in both senses) young love is also much more in line with the expectations of broader pop audiences – whereas Taylor’s first album was filled with the typically country concerns of failed romances, “what does he see in her?” pining, and one of my favourites, “Mary’s Song (Oh My My)” which covers about eighty years of a proudly domestic long term relationship like an ad campaign for life insurance.

Taylor’s capacity for astonishingly on-point specificity is largely jettisoned as she paints more a widescreen, mythological tale of love found, lost and regained, but even if the eventual marriage proposal has an air of broad brush strokes about it (I liked this denouement in “Mary’s Song” just a little more), Taylor finds space to inject the mythic with her own sensibility. “You were Romeo/I was a Scarlet Letter”, she sighs, encapsulating the imagined and then real disapproval of her father and a broader conservative community at her shameful seduction (“Romeo” gets off scot free, of course). It’s rare for pop to find a way to express the intimacy of love while simultaneously painting in the landscape of the outside world, and most songs ultimately plump for one or the other. But Taylor learns as much from ‘Romeo & Juliet’ as you could hope for from an adolescent, and in “Love Story” each world traces the outline of the other, throwing the contours of the other into relief - abandonment is even harder to bear in the face of the whole world's "I told you so..."

In an odd way, I’m reminded of Vanessa Carlton, who at her best combined that earnest literateness with giggly youth and a deadly grip on a good hook – “Love Story” is a companion piece to “White Houses” in my head at least. Taylor is typically funnier or nastier or more voluptuously morose than Vanessa, but the distance is smaller than usual here: “Love Story” sacrifices such shadings for the sake of providing proof that she can deliver an anthem “straight”, without a tear or a chuckle. It’s not all of what I want from her, but it’s as much as I could ask from a wistful, heart-pumping pop song.

"Love Story" is fantastic. I'm hearing it on both country and pop stations out here, which makes for excellent wtf moments when it's followed by an r&b banger. That "say yes" bit is really, as Tim F says, anthemic. I've listened the hell out of the first record this year too, esp. "Tim McGraw".

"Love Story" has really grown on me. I've listened to it about fifteen times in the last two days. The more familiar I become with the lyrics the more they seem really tight and well-structured and thoughtful despite their metaphorical generality. Notice that she never actually repeats the same chorus, everything is tweaked to advance the plot.

I like to how it skews both older and younger than the stuff from her first album. This is partly to do with her vocals (she deliberately sounds a lot less certain of herself than before) but also the song itself, which on the one hand comes across as naive in its fairy tale-ishness, but on the other feels much more high-stakes than any of the relationship-songs on her first album. "I was crying on the staircase/begging you please don't go..." There's a tinge of desperation to all of this that totally gets me. It reminds me in a very wide-angle lens way of "Mr Brightside". It's got that same gut-wrenching fear that the notion of love itself is a cruel lie. Both songs ultimately turn on a blind, unreasoning pledge of fidelity to the idea of romance over the reality of relationships - "a triumph of hope over experience". Only Taylor's pledge is redeemed, which makes it the "safer", more conformist choice, but Taylor is a better songwriter than Brandon Flowers so it balances out.

"Mr Brightside" is a great comparison! Re. "desperation", that sounds totally right. Another feel is nostalgia: the song is a flashback, "when we were both young" (suggesting another Killers link). In that way it's like "Tim McGraw", looking back. That's a little jarring when you recall how old she is, but I can relate: I was tremendously nostalgic at that age for things that hadn't happened yet. The nostalgia is a way of experiencing things, and by framing the songs as flashbacks, she lets on that's she's conscious of this frame.

Another thing that strikes me about "Love Story" is how passive the narrator is: "take me somewhere we can be alone", "I'll be waiting", "Romeo save me". And even when she gets tired of waiting, all that she does is meet her lover. "Tim McGraw" is similar: she wants her lover to remember her. But she can't make the lover do that. But in "Tim McGraw" she at least leaves a letter for her lover; in "Love Story", it's like a dream in which she can't do anything.

"That's a little jarring when you recall how old she is, but I can relate: I was tremendously nostalgic at that age for things that hadn't happened yet. The nostalgia is a way of experiencing things, and by framing the songs as flashbacks, she lets on that's she's conscious of this frame."

This is spot on. I was so "nostalgic" at that age too! And this song tears me up because it's nothing like my own life but it's like I'm accessing a memory in the collective unconscious or something. This is definitely the payload you can get when you grapple successfully with mythic archetypes in pop songs.

"Another thing that strikes me about "Love Story" is how passive the narrator is"

I can't help but wonder if the song implicitly is about unplanned teen pregnancy, if that's the shadow that falls over the second and third verses. Explicitly, the song seems definitely to marry the "love story" to the sense of the young female as powerless social actor: her daddy has told Romeo to "stay away from Juliet", and the only way they can be together is to escape the small town, "you can be the prince and I can be the princess" (in a trailer park presumably).

re. teen pregnancy, that's a reasonable idea. She calls their love "difficult" and "a mess" without exactly saying why. We could read many things into this---a straightforward reading is suggested by the Romeo and Juliet references, a wrong side of the tracks romance, but calling herself a scarlet letter suggests another dimension.

I like the song's ambiguity at the end too: you're led to believe that it all worked out well, but it's left open, even from the much-later-in-time perspective that frames the song.

i just watched her performance of "love story" on the country awards or whatever. homegirl is a ten, but damn that song is Horrible.

finally got around to this album. pop record of the year etc. sort of hilarious that it's called "country," but i couldn't care less about that. she can pull singles off this all through next year.

man, i've got to learn to look for that embed disabling. anyway, it's just the "love story" video.

oops they're all disabled. whatever, everyone's heard the song a thousand times.

haha just caught up to rolling country thread and see chuck complaining about a lack of hooks (!). i like her first album too, but that's just silly. "hey stephen," "you belong with me," "tell me why," "the way i loved you," blah blah blah. i think she might suffer from something -- indecision, maybe, but that's probably a virtue because when she gets more decisive she'll probably get more boring. but anyway it isn't a lack of hooks.

I love "Fifteen," "Hey Stephen," and "Love Story," but there's too many midtempo numbers.

i could do without "breathe," and maybe "you're not sorry" (although that one has a nice chorus), but the midtempo stuff mostly has nice big beefy melodies. (including "change," which probably should have been on that last my chemical romance album.)

what are the odds there's a youtube obama video to "change"? the odds are pretty good:

She should cover the Jon Waite "Change."

"Love Story" is easily my single of the year.

absolutely insipid bullshit IMO

The hooks are just relentless in "Love Story". Hardly 2 seconds go by without another amazing vocal turn - it's diabolical!

absolutely insipid bullshit IMO

But do you like her music?

i have nothing against her, she seems like a nice girl and she's had some nice songs. somewhat charasmatic and, as i mentioned upthread, is dropdead gorgeous. i just think "love story" is just about the most ordinary tune i've heard people praise in a while (well, as far as pop music goes at least). i like the vibe of the song a lot, it's youthful and carefree and i want to smile at it, but the hooks are boring to me and like i said, the lyrics are just beyond horrendous and mundane. it just directly contradicts the attitude of the song to take inspiration from such worn territory (romeo and juliet? really?) and add abs. nothing to it.
again, i don't dislike her, and i've got to listen to the whole album still. just not digging the single, is all. :)

also, i'm 19 years old, and i can tell you guys just haven't heard enough terrible emo music to have perspective on this. i have HS friends who unsurprisingly love this, which seems right considering it reminds me of dashboard confessional.

also, i'm 19 years old, and i can tell you guys just haven't heard enough terrible emo music to have perspective on this. i have HS friends who unsurprisingly love this, which seems right considering it reminds me of dashboard confessional.

I'm 33 and have heard enough terrible emo music. Also, your friends have somewhat...catholic taste for Dashboard Confessional fans.

some of the record sounds emo-pop to me, but i like some emo-pop. especially sung by girls. (i have much more tolerance for chirpy girl-pop than dolorous boy pop. i like the shirelles more than the doors.)(not that there's a shirelles song to be had on this album, but that's a ridiculously high standard.)

I love emo pop (really) and I love this. I'm not sure I like them for the same reason, though. This isn't quite as bombastic as, say, Fall Out Boy. But, that said, this might not be worlds away from Meg + Dia, who I did consider emo pop. So maybe I'm wrong.

I love "Love Story", it's at least top five of the year for me.

Picked up the album last week but haven't listened to it enough to organise my thoughts.

I'm 33 and have heard enough terrible emo music.

I'm 37...what is this 'emo' music you kids are into these days.

lol, "into" is not the word
when i refer to "emo" i'm talking about meaningful-core stuff in the vein of dashboard etc. also, lots of modern pop-punk/hardcore that you see on Warped! tour. obv i know you guys had a very different definition for the term back in the day.

"therapy"

k3vin, I think you'd be surprised about what people on this board are familiar with. I listen to a lot of pop emo/teen punk. Or at least did. This year not so much. But have there been any huge releases this year? Teenage Bottlerocket was good - but that was more pop-punk. New The Academy Is... album. Foxboro Hot Tubs sorta counts. Gym Class Heroes? Rise Against is definitely a Warped band. I think the Taylor Swift album (well, "Love Song," really), is better than all those albums this year.

obv i know you guys had a very different definition for the term back in the day.

It was a strange, disturbing time, as we fought the dinosaurs and conquered Mongolia.

don't forget invented fire and the wheel! don't be so hard on yourselves! ;)

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=56834

Maybe we need an 08 version.

Love it--every bit of it. Love it so much that I'm starting to become immune to it from over-listening--just the way I do with all my favorite records. "The Best Day"--so bittersweet.

She has a Christmas e.p. out too--I heard some samples and it sounds pretty mainstream, but I may break down and get it. Also liking her take on "Umbrella."

that's a rihanna cover? i'd really love to hear that

Took me five seconds to find it on YouTube. I thought the younger generation was the tech savvy one.

okay, i was really wrong about this song. i'm sure this isn't anything everyone else hasnt thought of yet, but i just IMed this to my friend (a taylor swift fan):
"anyway, i changed my mind. i used to think the lyrics were really amateurish and boring, and also the song was typical of "oh im a teenager my problems are so meaningful etc." but what makes it so much immeasurably better than something like dashboard confessional or some other garbage like that is instead of insistence on its own depth and "look at me" earnestness, it's naive and fun and totally okay with being so. it's great."

xpost

Re: Taylor's Christmas EP. Most of it is unnecessary, with the exception of Christmases When You Were Mine, which is another aching, meticulously detailed Taylor song, except about post-break-up Christmases.

FWIW I was ambivalent about "Love Story" the first few times as well. It's an odd thing about pop like this in that, instead of realising that you didn't "get" the song, you just... stop caring about whatever it was that made you suspicious. Or it's like, "yeah, why did I think that was a bad thing again?!?"

This song has definitely grown on me. I liked it enough the first time, but I love it now. I think there are little vocal things she does that I pick up on during further listening. (Like, oh, listen to that trill there, that sounds great to my ears).

Yes. The vocals on this feel simultaneously complete unthought-through and immaculately judged, like the way she scrunches up with compressed excitement when she tremors, "he knelt to the GROUND and pulled out a RING..."

Also, and I can't believe that this is true, but I like the girlie-fantasy lyrical content. It's totally ridiculous and cliched and nonsense, but I feel simultaneously like it's a very true feeling for Swift to be expressing. Like, that this kind of archetypical romance speaks to her. And I really buy it. Which is, I guess, to say that I could see Taylor Swift doing a Ren Fair concept album in about 5 years.

there are little vocal things

i like "this love is difficult/but it's a-RE-eel". also the key change on the very last iteration of the chorus is totally shameless and totally effective.

but enough about "love story." the one i've been wearing out lately is "the way i loved you."

man she loves those crescendoes.

Man, if I wrote "Complicated" I'd be calling my lawyer right now. I'm sure that's been noted elsewhere.

Yesterday on the local top 40 station I heard the "Pop Mix" of "Love Story" (as part of a half-hour mix in which it was bookended by "Say It Right" and something by Ne-Yo). And I was wondering, those of you into this song, which mix are you more into, the mix getting heavy play on country radio, or the mix on pop radio? I think I like the country mix more, mostly because the beats on the pop mix are pretty lame. But I wonder how common this has been, to have both country and pop mixes of a song in heavy rotation on two different kinds of radio stations? Does Carrie Underwood get this treatment?

Spell completely broken for me by her inability to carry a tune live.

i have heard that, but not seen it. going to check out snl tonight for validation. (not that i actually care, tbh.)

She's been off tune-wise on the CMAs that I've seen, but I usually listen to her records so this is no big deal to me.

(not that i actually care, tbh.)

Fair point. And it doesn't detract from the recorded material. Just... breaks the spell, is all.

Actually, on the CMA performances I've seen, the places I've most noticed her losing the tune is when she gets emo, really into the song, voice-cracking, and I end up finding that endearing since the songs are pretty emo to begin with.

CMA isn't quite the same as live ;-)

true!

There's more to life than carrying a tune!

Anyway, I haven't seen the recent performances but I was surprised to see more than one person claiming she can't sing as if (1) this has any relevance to her recorded music and (2) I'm about to trust anyone telling me how good or bad Taylor Swift's voice might without hearing her awesome Live from SoHo EP from iTunes about a year ago. It's really good!

Uh oh.

Re: SNL. :/

yeah, they never clean shit up on "live" records

This is really, really, really bad. And I love Taylor Swift.

i've heard worse on snl. but yeah, she doesn't exactly bring the pipes.

There's more to life than carrying a tune!

I like the stuff she writes in spite of the dire covers. I mean, yeah, she has good taste but she brings nothing to the material and it's a painfully self-conscious exercise (Beyoncé! John Waite! DO YOU SEE?).

didn't watch SNL, and I think I'll stay away; I want to keep my illusions, that's what pop is all about.

"painfully self-conscious exercise" oooh but this is part of what I love about Taylor Swift, those meta song structures she writes, with the "looking back" parts and self-referential elements, these are, I gather, meant to hit you on the head and say, "look at me! isn't this clever!" Painfully self-conscious? I guess it depends on how much pleasure being in on the joke brings you. In true pop fashion that thrill is pretty disposable for me but fortunately the songs continue to hit me at other levels, nostalgia, hooks galore.

re: beyonce

!!!!!!!

i love this album a lot

she's going to write incredible songs for forever

it's remarkable that someone of her age has such touch with her songs, there is such a fine line between poignant and cliche with her subject matter and she basically never falls onto the latter side of the line - i can't even imagine how horrible so many 19 year olds would be at trying to write something as obvious as "love story"

^^^

I think the most remarkable example of this is "Mary's Song". It really should be cringeworthy and instead it's brilliant.

I never did mention how amazing she was live.

I've been going back periodically and nibbling at this, and I have to agree that she's a good songwriter. I think I like the first 3/4 or 2/3 of this album, but then it peters out for me toward the end. The musical style isn't really my kind of thing, and I'm not sure I can enjoy it in very large doses, but there's definitely something good about what she does with it. When I turn up and down the dial and hit one of her songs, it stands out as something exceptional, and I'm a little surprised to find myself staying and listening to it. Maybe the lyrics are more important to me here than they usually are in music and that compensates somewhat for my not being into the musical style so much.

I think she's a great, great songwriter but I NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER want to hear her sing again.

lol i clicked on this thread just now with the explicit hope of seeing perry hate on her vocals, was not disappointed

hahaha

Sorry to be a predictable caricature, particularly in a genre pretty much geared towards a style of vocal production that I'm already prejudiced against, but she's a poor-man's Carrie Underwood; all strangulated tone pushed out from the neck rather than supported from the core, mixed in with atrocious diction, all of which pulls her off pitch to a stunning degree and in a manner that really doesn't do her songs any justice.

it's ok to be predictable when you're right!

I think the most remarkable example of this is "Mary's Song". It really should be cringeworthy and instead it's brilliant.

OTM.

That said, for all of the soaring anthemic choruses and wordy story-telling, my surprise favourite on the new album is the quiet unassuming Hey Stephen. "All those other girls, yeah, they're beautiful, but would they write a song for you," followed by that spontaneous vibrant chuckle is her most winning moment for me.

I underrated Taylor Swift for a while - the middle stretch of the album seemed kind of limp, especially in comparison to Fearless which never loses momentum (Except maybe for You're Not Sorry). That said, "The Outside" "Stay Beautiful" and "A Place in This World" are actually quite charming.

"breathe" is my current obsession off of the album

the nbc special last night was like the greatest thing i've ever seen

I finally got this album, and somehow I'd managed to avoid hearing "You Belong With Me" until now; surely this is a massive single by now? Because good grief it's awesome. There are so many hooks, and she gets me in the details: for instance, the bit where she trills a little like Beyoncé ("I know you better than that"), or the way she talks the line "she's cheer captain" on the lead-in to the second chorus. Absolute gold.

lol i clicked on this thread just now with the explicit hope of seeing perry hate on her vocals, was not disappointed

Ummmm me too

OK. I am on board with Taylor Swift. She's great. Forever and Always is my favorite.

"Forever & Always" is a favourite of mine too. "Were you just kidding..." is a great bait 'n' switch moment.

yeah probably the best album made by a teenage girl in at least the last 20 years? any serious suggestions for something better?

i was going to say 30 but then kate bush would win.

I don't mean this at all in a negative way, but "Forever and Always" would fit well on a Death Cab For Cutie album. At least the verses; the chorus soars more than Death Cab would be able to pull off, I think.

I've only heard "Love Story", which is dreadful, leaden, hackneyed tat. I kind of want to like her though. She seems to be carrying the flame for sappy MOR, one of pop music's most eternally vital of genres.

Love Story is one of the worst songs on the record, with one of the more grating key changes you'll ever hear. The rest of the record is far, far better. She's really talented.

http://www.rap-up.com/2009/08/09/timbaland-wants-to-work-with-taylor-swift/

Timbaland has worked with everyone from Jay-Z to Madonna, but there’s one person he’s yet to check off his list.

The super-producer is eyeing a collaboration with Taylor Swift. “I think the main person I want to get is Taylor Swift,” he told RadarOnline.com. “I love her voice. I just think me and her can do something amazing.”

Timbo reached out to the country singer, but was unsuccessful in his attempt. “Her people said that she was busy. She wanted to do it, but you know, there’s all these people you gotta go through and her people said she was busy… but I’ll make it happen.”

Fans can expect a fusion of hip-hop and country if and when the unlikely pair come together. “It would have a country swing, but just a little bit of me. I know how to do that real good.”

Taylor is no stranger to hip-hop. She recently recorded a rap with T-Pain for the 2009 CMT Music Awards. Timbaland has also dabbled in country music, recording with Keith Urban.

remembering how good bubba sparxxx's deliverance was, also remembering kiley dean

ok, two o'clock in the morning watching Taylor Swift videos with my sister on youtube it all clicked and I'll tell you this much, seventeen year old girls are better at explaining this stuff than u guys

Don't fight it, feel it.

"You Belong With Me" is my jam of this year (or last year or whatever). With hooks like that, who needs explanation?

also has anyone on this thread even pointed out how she manages to wind up wearing evening wear in every video? because this is key imo.

she also brought to my attention the awesomeness that is "Our Song" which I had never heard before

to be fair 90% of the explanation was bringing up the lyrics and us singing along the first time and the second time just watching the videos

"You Belong With Me" is my jam of this year (or last year or whatever). With hooks like that, who needs explanation?

― afternoon "delight" (Euler), Sunday, August 16, 2009 8:07 AM (1 hour ago)

yeah a few 11 year old girls performed this at my summer camp's talent show and i sung along in the audience like a complete dork <3

"Our Song" is amazing, yeah.

This woman is a gift from the gods.

yeah probably the best album made by a teenage girl in at least the last 20 years? any serious suggestions for something better?

The first M2M record?

yeah probably the best album made by a teenage girl in at least the last 20 years? any serious suggestions for something better?

If I'm not mistaken, Ashlee was still 19 when Autobiography came out, but only just, and depending on the day of the week, Fearless might overtake it. But then again Ashlee's albums have gotten progressively less detail-oriented and interesting lyrically, esp. by the third album.

i'm glad "you belong with me" got a chart run, great tune. not many things make me wish i still had a car, but that's a totally windows-down summer cruising song.

I can't stop listening to "You Belong With Me." Single of the summer, single of the fucking year.

where does it rank in your decade top 10, kshighway?

Shit dude, I don't know! I haven't even thought of doing a best-of-the-decade list for singles, but I should! That would be much harder for me to pull off than a list of albums, though. A lot of trying to remember what came out this decade. I watched MTV and listened to the radio obsessively before I started listening to indie rock and reading about music online, and although there have been times when I have stopped listening to chart music for a span of time here and there, I always come back to it. Partially to keep in touch with pop culture, partially because that shit can be pretty amazing.

That being said: How the FUCK was Crazy Town's Butterfly a #1 single in 2001? And fucking Savage Garden in 2000! (Not so surprised about that one, actually.) There is some awful shlock on these Billboard Hot 100 lists. Some great songs too, though.

Never made it to #1, but Petey Pablo's "Raise Up" will always be #1 in my heart. Love the 2000s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-26bRZEedZg

Also, Euler upthread is so so so OTM:

There are so many hooks, and she gets me in the details: for instance, the bit where she trills a little like Beyoncé ("I know you better than that"), or the way she talks the line "she's cheer captain" on the lead-in to the second chorus.

Both the melody and her delivery on the "better than that" line SLAY me.

that shit really can get pretty amazing!

I sense some sarcasm there mister.

me? never

I think you need to listen to WANNA BE A BALLER, which should've come out in 2000 so I could put it on some list:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_089EURkNo

(Revisiting all these old songs I used to love is thrilling. This thread isn't the place for discussing all of them, though.)

I've decided my list of the best singles of the decade would inevitably include mostly mainstream rap songs. Holy shit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9KqFs-pzS4

Looking so innocent, I might believe you if I didn't know.

Still think I'm a sock puppet?

If it'd make y'all feel better, I used to post equally sincere (to y'all, probably naive) shit back in late 2007 under the name "three handclaps":

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/FullTextSearchControllerServlet?terms=three+handclaps&offset=0&searchtype=id&startdate=&enddate=&artefact=threads&idtype=displayname&sortorder=Relevance&boardid=0

Nah, just quoting "You're Not Sorry", great album track!

Among others:

the role of music criticism as a buyer's guide
Taking A Break: Music Burnout / Overload (lol @ overload at age 20)
Quirky Personal Mix Tape Rules
Are Music Blogs Worth Reading Anymore? Which Ones? Why?
2007: How many new records did you hear?

And, of course, a WILCO poll:

Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: Favorite Track

Hahhaa, ah!

why is all of this on the Taylor Swift thread?

I'm not sure. But back on topic: "You Belong With Me" is presently #1 on the US country chart and #2 on the Hot 100. So it's a genuine hit in the US. #52 in the UK, #42 in Ireland. And it's peaked so far at #5 in New Zealand! I mention it just because I wasn't sure if it had broken out. I heard "Love Story" all the time on the radio, both pop and country, back in the USA but I've not heard "You Belong With Me" at all. It looks like it was only released as a single in the US in April, though.

dled her first album yesterday and I can't get enough of the singles that never got airplay over here

Apologies for the veering off into off-topicness yesterday!

In any case, this is definitely a hit over here in the wonderful Boston area of the USA. Our pop station, Kiss 108 FM, plays it all the time, and as such I've had many opportunities to crank the volume and rock out while driving around over the past few weeks.

I tuned into Mix 106 on the way out the door this morning with the specific intention of hearing this song and it was the first song they played.

that is a semi magical story

Fearless: Platinum Edition out this week, apparently, w/ 6 new tracks. Leaked today.

http://ajshadowcat08.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/fearless_platinum.jpg

New song:
Jump Then Fall
Untouchable
Forever & Always (Piano Version)
Come In With the Rain
SuperStar
The Other Side of the Door

Come in With the Rain has been floating around since the first album came out but otherwise, things to be excited about, I think. We'll see.

^__^

k3vin, remember when we used to be indie? haha.

The new songs are good. Obviously derivative of the 'Fearless' work which is why she's plopped it on a re-relase. She didn't need to put a cover on there, though -- even if it vastly improves on the shoddy original.

Oh Taylor, the love affair is over. :/

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tmz.com/media/2009/10/1029_swastika_ex.jpg

Ok, fuck you iTunes. $1.29 for each one of the new songs? I thought the $1.29 was supposed to be for the "hottest hits" not every single new release.

tbf basically every song is in the top 10 right now so they might be on to something

xp What the fuck? There has to be context here?!?!

let's all just chill out for a minute

The guy at the core of the Taylor Swift swastika scandal claims it's possible the singer did not see the Nazi symbol on his chest when he pulled her in for a photo the other night.

The shirt-bearer, AJ English, tells TMZ he didn't know Taylor before Katy Perry's party last weekend -- and he's sorry for dragging her into the chaos.

As for why he had a swastika on his shirt in the first place -- English says it started out as an "X" but was "perverted" as the night went on, adding he's "not a racist" and doesn't support the Nazi agenda.

whatever imo

At least it's not Boyd Rice.

Sorry dude but if you knew it was being "perverted" and continued to wear the shirt in front of tons of paparazzi cameras anyway, you are a irredeemable shitstain and deserve to be shot.

def

you are a irredeemable shitstain and deserve to be shot.

Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Him

Wait a minute, isn't Taylor sort of indie anyway? She's Lisa Loeb on mainstream pop and country radio!

I can't believe Taylor Swift is a nazi sympathizer. That totally blows! Next thing she'll be getting Prussian Blue to open for her.

taylor is like, the antithesis of anything indie dude

i love the way when she says "music she doesn't like" in you belong to me, its totes obv that she means like josh turner or something

I like to imagine it's Les Rallizes Denudes or something.

she's hosting/performing on snl tonight btw

am i alone in being a complete sucker for "the best day"? i know, song for mom, it's such a set-up, but it just seems so right in its details. especially the middle verse, where they go on a shopping trip cuz taylor is all bummed out about her mean friends.

Nah, you're not alone. That's the one on the album that chokes me up every time. But then, I'm a dad. (It's not just for mom! The verse where she's scared on halloween kills!)

In fact, I wrote about it here, over a year ago:

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/rs_sotd/926/song-of-the-day-taylor-swift-the-best-day/

i know, it tugs at my parental strings too. makes me want to hug my kids.

speaking of kids, taylor swift has now joined the short list of people (previously including m.i.a. and green day) who my 5-yr-old requests by name. this morning he asked me to put on a video by "taylor." i said, "taylor?" he nodded emphatically and said, "taylor swift!"

Somebody @ teh gay bar asked me who that was on the (mute) TV playing on SNL. I said it was probably some parody. BUT NO

a little behind the times, no? get with it, gay bar.

I hear she just broke up with the Twilight werewolf, who is also named Taylor.

odds on him being a "the way I loved you" kind of character? (dull and pretty)

http://www.autostraddle.com/why-taylor-swift-offends-little-monsters-feminists-and-weirdos-31525/

So short-sighted. So reductive. So infuriating. Already wrote a rant about this but figured the rest of y'all would want to have at it. Probably a decent jumping point for broader discussion about Taylor, GaGa, female sexuality and music. Among other things.

was wondering when this was gonna show up here

Spell completely broken for me by her inability to carry a tune live.

― butt-rock miyagi (rogermexico.), Saturday, January 10, 2009 8:34 AM (1 year ago)

chronicle of a grammy duet foretold

yes you're so otm about the "everything she had" line - as i ranted to a friend via email this morning, it is THE WRITER who interprets "everything" as "vagina", not taylor swift, who doesn't specify anything.

this so-called feminist backlash is pissing me the fuck off - gonna get on it tomorrow after i've finished racing tomorrow morning's deadline.

i always interpreted that line to mean virginity too

i think it could well include sex, but also...you know, devoting all of your time and thoughts to pining after someone. the way teenage crushes are so disproportionate. which fits in with the way the whole song is about looking back at the silly/naive things we used to do at 15 with wry affection

yeah i agree, obviously it's purposefully ambiguous but i always read the song with sex being the crux of the issue

but like, if you're gonna single out "fifteen" as a song damaging to young girls then i don't know how you could ignore this line

"In your life you'll do things greater than dating the boy of the football team
But I didn't know it at fifteen"

an equal portion of her audience are people older than 15 who can say "yep" but there's also a significant portion to whom that line is meaningful and redemptive for teens who are in the part of there life where something as trivial as a high school romance is life or death (and i don't think i'm exaggerating considering there are like ten teenagers a year who kill themselves over nonsense such as this)

not sure i agree with "wry affection"... song's a tearjerker imo

and like,

Your very first day
Take a deep breath girl
Take a deep breath as you walk through those doors.

the way the song ties up, it's very clearly a "this shit doesn't really matter, focus on the big picture" moral, which like, sure it's not lady gaga bluffin with her muffin or anything but i still think it's a pretty empowering a sentiment for a high school freshman

yeah, wry affection but without any emotional distance, so you're right there with her as she's remembering back. a tough trick to pull off, to say the least, and a good example of how phenomenal her songcraft is without necessarily being showy.

also, "back then i swore i was gonna marry him someday, but i realised some bigger dreams of mine".

and not one of the various feminist attacks on t-swift has bothered to mention yet how she completely deconstructs the whole princess/fairytale myth on "white horse". or how she can do ex-boyfriend-bashing with the best of them on "forever & always" or "picture to burn"!

Here’s the rub: actual freaks make really awesome music. It’s edgy and complicated and it comes from a yearning, desperate, mixed-up place where pain & happiness have existed in equal parts for almost entire lifetimes. It’s not safe or sexless — it’s ugly, hopeful danger.

i really hate this sentiment

You Are The Generation That Bought More Moldy Peaches And You Get What You Deserve

the first sentence is blatantly bollocks
the second sentence could describe taylor swift, pretty much
the third sentence is a wannabe punk cliché zzz

some "real freaks" make great music but most write terrible poetry and pine for the quarterback

i think being a really driven showbiz kid is pretty freaky, tbh.

i'm pretty suspicious of punk cliches AND writers making too much of "real" high school hierarchal tyrranies... i mean, all people in high-stakes pop art are completely abnormal. i think taylor swift and, i dunno, joanna newsom have more in common with each other than they do with any of us, however we might self-identify with either of them

i wish i had access to the exclusive right of feeling dejected, just like all the anti-Taylor Swift writers do

i could spend all day gatekeeping the realm of genuine sadness

i find it hard to get worked up over this kind of stuff tbh, because it isn't legitimate music criticism. and while a large number of her points ARE demonstrably false, as yall have pointed out, cultural commentary and feminist thinking still are obviously important fields - it just doesn't mean a thing to me wrt whether i like the music or not

cultural commentary and feminist thinking still are obviously important fields - it just doesn't mean a thing to me wrt whether i like the music or not

yeah - this doesn't matter wrt whether or not the music is good - it's that the "feminist" thought here is ass-backwards. if you want to deconstruct rigid patriarchal structures that define what women are "allowed" to be, why critique someone by reductively placing her within the aforementioned dichotomy and judging her on that basis?

like, my issue with this isn't that it's bad music criticism - it's that it's bad criticism period. poorly thought through and more about point fingers and claiming the mantle of "true feminism"/condemning the false consciousness of other women than engaging with anything.

I hate it when feminism/queer theory etc are brought in to discussions of music in a really glib manner. I think feminism is or should be relevant to how we judge music but it's a bit of a slap in the face to feminism when it's reduced to being a prop for justifying "why I don't like this chick". In a battle for the Deepness Crown between that kinda argument and Taylor's songwriting, guess who wins??

Off topic but one of the few times I was a bit annoyed at a critique of a review of mine was when a writer complained that I'd suppressed the queerness of Hercules & Love Affair's "Blind" in a 150 word capsule review of the song I'd done.

i also can't believe that article slates taylor for using recurring angel imagery while at the same time holding beyoncé up as a heroine of feminist art - that would be beyoncé of "halo" fame, right

did you respond that it's pretty much impossible to suppress antony hegarty

Alex, as you say 'the idea of a 16 or 18 year old female songwriter with a damn good grasp on structures and techniques of songwriting, with an ear for detail, articulating her own experiences, and having the buck stop with her in pretty much every way – from lyric writing, to set design, to music and melodies, etc. isn’t a bad thing.'

...particularly within the mainstream pop world. in fact its very unusual, and methinks real feminists would be applauding her success? But how could she be successful and be her own woman? RIDICULOUS! She's clearly a mindless tool of power hungry penis-men.

Re "Fifteen", I don't think a song that was explicitly warning people against adolescent sex would a) specifically name the singer's best friend as having gone there and b) include a picture of said friend in the cd booklet.

The song is about as anti-feminist as Buffy the Vampire Slayer is.

Man, my first impression was that 15 was warning people against adolescent sex specifically as an extension of adolescent infatuation.

There isn't anything anti-feminist about that.

haha jordan

good points tim

Having a back and forth on Twitter with a friend, it struck me how much this is sort of like the VW thing. The critique is engaging with a view of Taylor that seems to be very much present within the public at large, but which doesn't necessarily have any basis in the music that she's producing/writing.

So the question is a) where do these public perception of WASPiness/"wholesomeness" come from? are they part of the artists' marketing? is it conscious on their part? if so, is it fair game? b) if not, and people just can't be bothered to engage with the actual works in question, do we just write the public in general off as intellectually lazy/too willing to slot things into predetermined boxes?

Via friend on twitter:

"yeah and that's fair. however it's hard for me to see how swift's image conveys any sort of strength at all like maybe its different in her music but for the most part in her videos her emotional responses come off as very reactionary to the men and women around her, as opposed to carving out her own niche or space. she's just there, reacting, not acting"

thoughts? this is the first critique that's sort of struck home for me - most of her songs DO tend to be in medias res, and driven by her responses to others' actions.

First off, does anyone NOT think of her as wholesome, in terms of her persona? Do some of her fans think she has a slightly twisted dark side of some kind?

btw the answer to question A is yes, yes, and yes.

i lol'd @ "britney spears psychotic vagina"

all this proves is that taylor's image/marketing is a fuck of a lot easier to criticize than her music which is something we covered on the trax poll results thread. the bullshit false dichotomy with gaga is what pisses me off most about this article tho i think this:

This is perhaps her music’s most grating sin: the sex-shaming girl-bashing passed off as outsider insecurity.

MIGHT have a degree of otm

When people write that they want "danger" in music I'm listening to, I giggle at how tough you have to be to press play and hear a song. It's so risky! You're such a badass!

It's like some scrawny nerdy kid talking in gangster slang or like an Italian mobster in their bedroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHDe9QEhdG0

Personally, I adore Taylor and her music, but it's not difficult for me to accept at least half of that article as having some air of truth to it. These bits are certainly accurate:

"Perhaps the only legitimately irritating aspect of Taylor the Human is her continually presenting the experience of being teased in middle school for liking country music as a legit tragic impetus. Taylor Fucking Swift! Put on a Rachel Berry smile and get yer sh*t together, we were all bullied in middle school!"

"The Boy-Crazy Girl-Bashing Virgin"

What I find most annoying about the article is that the writer calls the VMAs and the Grammys "Important Awards." But I also find it troublesome that the writer seems to believe she's empowering women simply by writing the article, i.e. it's not what she's saying, it's that she's saying it and no one else is. E.g.:

"Listen up; if I ever get my life together enough to reproduce other life forms, they will not be joining Taylor Nation – they will be brave, creative, inventive, envelope-pushing little monsters who will find a pretty, skinny white blonde girl in a white peasant shirt strolling through nature-themed screensaver-esque fantasylands singing about how “when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them” not only sappy, but also insulting to their inevitable brilliance."

"Taylor Swift really bothers me. I have a teenage daughter who is enamored of her, and I don't think that's an accurate protrayal of young womanhood. And as a feminist, it just offends me. If she looked like Ida Maria or Bjork, I don't think she would have this popularity. She's popular because she's a model!"

--Jim DeRogatis

uh, i'm pretty sure ida maria's success has a large part to do with her looks

Seriously that's willfully obtuse even for DeRo

One of the things that annoy me most about DeRo is that one of his main criteria for judging popular female artists (Britney, Avril, Pink, etc.) is whether they're good role models. He justifies this by calling himself a feminist, but the fact that he never cares about whether male artists are role models creates a double standard that seems kind of unfeminist to me.

that is otm and EXACTLY what i have been ranting about w/r/t jezebel and co

one thing that bothers me is the idea that urging girls to aim a little higher than "the boy on the football team" -- in sex partners or life -- is supposed to be somehow puritanical or sex-hating. is there really anything wrong with a little big-sister advice to 15-yr-olds saying, you know, it's a big world, don't get ahead of yourself? i don't think there's anything very sex-hating in taylor swift songs as a whole -- i don't know what she and the boy in "tim mcgraw" got up to, but it doesn't sound entirely chaste. there's a lot of teen lust in her songs, it's just also tempered with a bit of skepticism.

i understand her virginal video white-princess image getting on people's nerves, but i think they're not really paying attention to the music.

Yeah, I don't even get the vibe from "Fifteen" that Taylor thinks anything she or her friend were thinking or doing was mistaken. It's more like "this is the shit that goes down when you're fifteen. Try not to let it get to you, but you probably will let it get to you." She knows that you can't really tell 15 year olds anything.

Seeing Taylor live again tomorrow night!

Watch it with your eyes closed so you can judge her only on the music. (Wait, I have that wrong.)

Good god, the ideas in that essay are just so jumbled and unformed and reactionary. Just starting with the idea of the Grammy as an important award. I mean, sure, it's nice to say "Grammy-winning artist" and "acceptance by peers," but in terms of what they have to say about art qua art, the Grammys make the Oscars look like the Whitney Biennial. And the VMA? Come on. (Plus the juxtaposition of thus transitioning her from “harmlessly popular teenage pop fad” into the Legendary context associated with prior winners like John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Lauryn Hill, U2, Outkast, Natalie Cole, Norah Jones and Eric Clapton. with I feel her win represents a sinister endorsement of mediocrity/Wonderbread, that it means Digestible beat Daring and I prefer daring, that I’m irked by her consistent inability to recognize more deserving nominees in her acceptance speeches. Dude, if you don't recognize Norah Jones and Natalie Cole as the very embodiment of mediocrity, digestibility, and non-legendariness, you have lots bigger problems than your Taylor Swift hate.)

Then there's the taking seriously of the cheerleader/nerd girl dichotomy seriously, as if it's not a well-worn, go-to trope going back more than 20 years now. Or the glasses thing, which has been remarked on since well before She's All That. Oh noes, music video director in using shorthand, cliches and easy imagery shocker!!!

And the idea that whoever directed the video might have "ripped off" the chock-full-of-original-ideas of Saving Jane is risible. (Like anybody gives a fuck about Saving Jane, and like they're not a million times more image-managed than Taylor Swift.) A more interesting contrast would be Swift's video with the same-story-but-backwards "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne, in which "punk" Avril steals a boy away from nerdy, glasses-wearing Avril, subjecting her to all sorts of humiliations along the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT5Ez_qxpc0

I don't think the idea that there are more people who attach importance to winning a Grammy than there are people that don't is particularly controversial, or even wrong.

not defending the rest of this because I haven't read it and it appears to suck hardcore but let's have some awareness of what's going on outside of our little bubble, plz

goes without saying but derogatis is garbage, completely clueless as always

I don't disagree with that re: Grammys, Dan, but if the writer is posing as preferring daring, freaky, outsiderness, whatever, then frankly he should be dismissive of the Grammys altogether and shouldn't be making it a part of his argument.

"Listen up; if I ever get my life together enough to reproduce other life forms, they will not be joining Taylor Nation – they will be brave, creative, inventive, envelope-pushing little monsters who will find a pretty, skinny white blonde girl in a white peasant shirt strolling through nature-themed screensaver-esque fantasylands singing about how “when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them” not only sappy, but also insulting to their inevitable brilliance."

This is creepy parenting and self-congratulation in the guise of "empowerment" btw.

What his whole thing seems to come down to is being butthurt that Lady GaGa didn't win the Grammy. Sorry, dude, but Grammys do not work that way.

i understand her virginal video white-princess image getting on people's nerves, but i think they're not really paying attention to the music.

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, February 9, 2010

This is OTM but I'm not sure I can blame people for where they're putting their attention. Which is to say, the video for "Fifteen" does a good job of burnishing the white princess image but really diminishes the song. It's much more affecting on the radio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb-K2tXWK4w

Also she is a lol terrible actress.

I don't disagree with that re: Grammys, Dan, but if the writer is posing as preferring daring, freaky, outsiderness, whatever, then frankly he should be dismissive of the Grammys altogether and shouldn't be making it a part of his argument.

I disagree with that pretty strenuously but can't effectively argue why without reading the article, which I'm afraid will undercut my thesis (namely, rejecting what is in the mainstream is not the same thing as rejecting the concept of the mainstream; the outsider who wants to destroy the system is a very different beast from the outsider who recognizes that his/her outsider status is a factor of circumstance and is looking for an angle to shift things back in his/her direction) and also because life is too short to read some asshole's half-baked theories on Taylor Swift; even if I don't like her at all as a singer, she's obviously a talented songwriter and her music connects with most of the people who hear it. The fact that it isn't for me doesn't make it worthless.

Dan, I agree with that, but pretending that the Grammys don't already embody white-bread-ness seems less like a political position and more like a logical error. How can you want to "destroy the system" under discussion while pretending that Norah Jones winning the Grammys is anything other than an extremely typical expression of that system?

The "system" I mean is Taylor winning the Grammys, not the idea of the Grammys as an important award.

See this is where me refusing to read this article is working against me because I don't know if he is actually positioning/championing himself as Type I rather than Type II and that is what is making you react to my post as if Type II didn't exist or if I didn't do a good job of describing Type II.

I am secretly an advertiser on that site and this is all a ploy dedicated to getting you to click through.

But if anything, I think he's a Type II who thinks he's a Type I and can't figure out why the two are in conflict.

No I think Type II does exist and you described it fine, but the writer is blurring the lines between Type I and Type II - like a revolutionary socialist seeking endorsement from Alan Greenspan for their ideas.

ha ha xpost.

Seeing Taylor live again tomorrow night!

― Tim F, Tuesday, February 9, 2010 10:27 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

jealous!

The author of that Autostraddle piece is a woman, btw.

i think the problem with the whole grammys part of the argument is that pushing gaga as some sort of transgressive outsider is lolworthy garbage by any standard

apparently the transgressive outsider is Adam Lambert?

Sidenote: I could write a whole new essay about what Adam Lambert is bringing to the table right now for male sexuality

lol

what Adam Lambert brings to male sexuality: shrieking on pitch, eyeliner

i just think it's terrible the way taylor is disempowering girls by becoming gigantically successful on her own terms and writing and singing songs about being a girl. WHAT KIND OF ROLE MODEL IS THAT?

yalls reactions seem just as retarded to me tbh

Seeing Taylor live again tomorrow night!

Pleaseeeee get a live review up on Pfork for this one! Would be awesome.

yalls reactions seem just as retarded to me tbh

― plaxico (I know, right?), Tuesday, February 9, 2010 1:56 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^

how can people listen to the horrible arrangements/production on this shit?

(and that is literally all i have to say about taylor swift. aside from wondering why she appears barefoot in every video i've ever seen.)

the arrangements are shit hot you fool, and the production is just on the right side of glossy.

amateurist do you like the production on any commercial country music?

seldom

Maxim: unless you can find something to enjoy in >50% of a particular musical style, don't waste time passing judgment on specific examples of it.

that's probably a good maxim.

"Listen up; if I ever get my life together enough to reproduce other life forms, they will not be joining Taylor Nation – they will be brave, creative, inventive, envelope-pushing little monsters who will find a pretty, skinny white blonde girl in a white peasant shirt strolling through nature-themed screensaver-esque fantasylands singing about how “when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them” not only sappy, but also insulting to their inevitable brilliance."

http://images.quizilla.com/M/MichaelJFoxFan/1048637160_lexPKeaton.jpg

one day ilm is gonna be ashamed of this period

hahaha

do ilm taylor fans think this is accurate? http://boompix.com/viewupdate.php?id=48

not meant to be a troll -- i'm sure i never would have discovered "you belong with me" if it hadn't been on the singles poll. think some coworkers know me a lot better since i've been going around singing "she wears short skirts / i wear t-shirts"

i admit i haven't read through this whole thread yet, so apologies if this is retread.

idk what "accurate" means - it's super reductive for sure. i think some of those themes show up in her music but they're done in an interesting way, and i think the people who would cite that as a reason why she's no good are basically saying there's no value to be had in songs that are ostensibly ABOUT those things, which is dumb

The song is about as anti-feminist as Buffy the Vampire Slayer is.

― Tim F, Monday, February 8, 2010 8:02 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

I reckon that chart is accurate and kinda funny, but it shouldn't be seen as some kinda KO blow (I suspect it's by a fan anyway - who else would sit through all her songs in order to work it out).

Think of those motifs like you might think of the following references in R&B songs:

- being in a club
- dropping by for a booty call
- making love until dawn

etc. etc.

And as with R&B, what marks out Taylor is not the use of particular motifs but the way in which she assembles and redeploys them, the way the songs hang together etc.

Like recently i've become quasi-obsessed with "Hey Stephen", even though it's got one of the most cliched and Taylor-Bingo-Scoring choruses ever ("'Cos I can't help it if you look like an angel / can't help it I wanna kiss you in the rain, so...") - I still feel like it's a really clever, well-constructed, interesting song.

always thought the "i can't help it" innocent shrug of a line was taylor being kinda self-aware about that - i love that song too

yeah, I figure a lot of my problem w/ Taylor is I'm just simply not interested in country or teenpop tropes

It's interesting to hear people reject music based on its lyrical tropes, though (and I mean that without being snide)---I have no interest in clubs or booty calls and while making love is awesome, going on until dawn just sounds tiring and/or drug-induced (which tbh also sounds tiring), and yet I'm interested in contemporary R&B b/c it's full of great *songs*. Ditto for Taylor Swift. If I were to reject music on its lyrical tropes I doubt I could enjoy any non-backpacker hip hop post-Chronic, and that would mean missing out on lots of great songs.

rap's lyrical tropes have changed a lot in the past 18 years and backpacker rap has plenty cliches of its own

sure, but I mean, if I wanted to avoid songs about drug dealing it would reduce the amount of rap I could enjoy by a lot---if that's wrong, let me know, b/c it's something I have to overcome when listening to rap.

right, but that's an ethical issue with a specific trope, not an issue with tropes in general

Right; I'm just saying I'd miss out on a lot of songs I love if I rejected them on their lyrical tropes.

credit or blame for this goes to nerding out on REM records in my earliest musically obsessive years, b/c the lyrics were nonsensical. My friends who grew up on classical say the same thing: they just don't notice lyrics.

I can sympathize more with rejecting contemporary country based on its production (though I don't do that at all).

Oh, I like some contemporary country, I'm just not at all invested in it.

This past year I liked "Need You Now" and "Moustache" and "Welcome to the Future" a lot

"Need You Now" is a jam, it is true. I await a version with Taylor Swift at the next CMAs.

can't really imagine her singing that one (wait weren't we mentioning booty calls as an r&b trope?)

booty calls are also a country lyrical trope! Hell, so are clubs.

but wrt Swift, she's going to be up for an image makeover with album #3 I suspect.

oh totally, she almost has to

she's probably going to have go through an awkward "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" phase

one tricky thing there is that her songwriting is so meta, which deflects attention from "her" as the one being written about. Will she turn into a more confessional songwriter? I hope not b/c I suspect her life is pretty boring, and she doesn't have a wealth of experience to draw on.

What's a confessional songwriter? If she isn't one now, what would you call her songwriting?

By "confessional" songwriting I mean songwriting that's about the songwriter, and moreover "really" about the songwriter: its truthfulness matters. Maybe this is nonstandard usage or there's a better term for what I mean? Swift's songwriting, it seems to me, is more "fantastic", in that it's about imagined happenings. We know that she's had very little happen to her, and so her songs have to be about fantasies---and Swift's meta tricks remind us of this if we forget.

But all fictional scenarios are confessional. I really don't understand the distinction, or why it should matter. When a novelist or songwriter sits down to write, I assume it's all made up.

Don't know if that (the idea that Swift's stories are based on fantasies) is true at all really. For "Love Story" or "You Belong With Me" or "Mary's Song", sure, but "Teardrops On My Guitar"? "Fifteen"? "Picture To Burn"? "The Best Day"?

It was interesting how, in her live concert the other night (which is the second time I've seen her live, but the first time with multimedia) there was a massive amount of emphasis on how she writes songs about actual boys she's gone out with. There was this really corny fake tv special investigation into all of these guys whose lives she's ruined.

e.g. apparently "Hey Stephen" is about the Stephen Liles from Love & Theft (though in that case obv it's a nice song)

My sister turned to me toward the end and said "she must have gone out with a lot of guys already..."

But yours is an attitude toward the text/song that would ignore the text/song's aspiration to truth even if it did matter. In what I'm calling "confessional songwriting", I'm claiming its aspiration to truth does matter, in that it's part of the song's intention: I intend to communicate to you, confessionally, what actually happened.

As a listener/reader I don't typically care about this either.

yeah euler i have no idea the distinction you're trying to draw, or if the former would even be in any way preferable to the latter

xp o ok

But Tim, I take it your sister's reaction is that of course Swift isn't telling the truth. But it mattered enough live to present the songs as if they were true. As I hear Swift, she's writing with a wink, in case we're not as quick as your sister.

No, actually my sister meant it seriously!

Don't know if that (the idea that Swift's stories are based on fantasies) is true at all really. For "Love Story" or "You Belong With Me" or "Mary's Song", sure, but "Teardrops On My Guitar"? "Fifteen"? "Picture To Burn"? "The Best Day"?

But, again, who cares? It doesn't enrich our listening to find out that she really dated a guy named Stephen or cried on her guitar.

It doesn't enrich my listening, but evidently it enriches some listeners (hence the elaborate ruse in the live show Tim describes). Are those listeners listening wrong?

haha ok Tim!

It seems to be commonly accepted that any time she mentions a name in a song it's a real person. She even includes a photo of her and Abigail (from "Fifteen") in the cd booklet for Fearless.

And I think this is actually a massively important part of how a lot of people relate to her, although of course not every listener (and more commonly her teenage-or-younger listeners than adult listeners).

Well, yeah, certainly in the Facebook-Twitter age.

I'm probably the wrong person to talk about this, since even as a kid I found the notion of "relating" to musicians a bit specious. Being gay had something to do with it, I guess.

Yeah, Tim, that's my impression too. And I think it's part of what bothers listeners who don't "get" her: they're unmoved by her stories, and so they conclude there's nothing else to get.

One way to explain the seeming contradiction is to postulate that for a lot of people around Taylor's age and younger yr sense of what is fantasy and what is real life is much more blurred. And this may be partly because yr always projecting yourself into the future, imagining yourself "when I grow up", measuring yourself against the experiences you haven't had in the future (whereas the older you get, the more you tend to measure yourself against the experiences you haven't had in the past) - so what may seem like fantasy is instead processed as "what will/may happen next." Taylor writes in confessional mode about the past and fantastical mode about the future, but the latter is really a forward extrapolation from the former.

Well put! I agree with most of that, except that I doubt that she has much to draw on for confessions from her past. But this says more about my own lack of imagination, since my adolescence was quite uneventful, than anything else.

Well since most of her songs are about thinking a guy is great ("Stay Beautiful", "Fearless", "Hey Stephen"), being pissed at a guy for being a bad boyfriend and/or cheating ("Picture To Burn", "Should've Said No", "Forever & Always", "Tell Me Why", "You're Not Sorry"), and pining after a guy who doesn't notice her ("Teardrops On My Guitar", "Invisible", "You Belong With Me") it doesn't strike me as odd that she'd have a fair amount of experience to draw on.

The lyric I always found startling is when she says the relationship in "Tim McGraw" is from "three summers back".

true---there's not much depth of experience here. She fleshes out the experience she has with enough substance to work well enough. Or more like it, maybe: she has a structure of human relationships down pat, even if she has to instantiate that structure with projected details.

Yes. She's very smart about what are fairly straightforward and commonly-experienced adolescent situations.

as I said, I don't disbelieve that plenty of people genuinely like taylor swift and I do think there are reasons to like her...she makes simple and accessible pop music. I just think there's a difference between a. 'like taylor swift' and b. 'believe that taylor swift created the best piece of music in 2009'. I do think anyone in group b is fronting to some degree or another, and it's pretty apparent in the way some people here talk about her. this thread: Taylor Swift '08: The Hype, Anticipation & Appreciation Begins Right Here is filllllled with people projecting complexity onto her music.

oops wrong thread

nobody asked me, I know, but in response:

I haven't heard Fearless enough to start making grandiose claims about it, but I'm beginning to wonder just from what I have gathered if it isn't *THE* Album about the Adolescent Crisis Between Transcendence and Immanence. I mean, nowadays everybody knows that teenagers are, if not exactly experienced enough, then at least sophisticated enough to know that life essentially sucks, popularity is a stupid game with unfair rules, fairytale romance is a myth, and the object of your heart's desire is kept at a fair distance for a reason, but at the same time, all this knowledge does not keep teenagers from still playing these roles. k-punk described these tendencies with grim terms such as "reflexive hedonism" and "inter-passive nihilism" but surely these concepts transcend mere postmodernism. Teenageers should know better and know they should know better, but they still seem powereless against those compulsions, and I'm wondering if that is why Swift seems to connect so deeply with her audiences...

The stuff I'm looking at are the flagrant contradictions in this album: Love Story vs. White Horse, You Belong With Me vs. Fifteen's "In your life you'll do things greater than dating the boy of the football team
But I didn't know it at fifteen" (apologies to J0rdan), the way the meta stuff, the incessant framing devices and false nostalgia accrue into a sly admission that, for her part, most of her key relationships have been self-penned fictions...though perhaps maybe this is just the stuff of emo, and I really should know better...as I said, I really haven't spent that much time with this album to be able to say anything really insightful...

it was just a thought...

http://allieunplugged.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/new_taylor_swift_remix.jpg

"reflexive hedonism"

http://allieunplugged.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/taylor_swift_new_video_you_belong_to_me1.jpg

"inter-passive nihilism"

http://allieunplugged.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/taylor_swift_new_video_you_belong_to_me3-235x300.jpg

"but surely these concepts transcend mere postmodernism"

http://allieunplugged.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/taylor_swift_new_video_you_belong_to_me4-236x300.jpg

"the way the meta stuff, the incessant framing devices and false nostalgia accrue into a sly admission that, for her part, most of her key relationships have been self-penned fictions"

Rockin' with Taylor Swift (TIME Magazine feature)...

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1985209,00.html

Taylor POX:

Jump Then Fall
You Belong With Me
Our Song
Fearless
Forever and Always
Hey Stephen
Tim McGraw
White Horse
Love Story
Should've Said No

I've grown to love "Today Was a Fairy Tale" through hearing it on the radio so much. It's just a great generic Taylor single. Gorgeously produced, her performance is perfectly judged and the sense of "oh noes she's talking about fairy tales AGAIN" fades a bit the more you listen - the fragile, climbing "time slows down... whenever you're around" pre-chorus and the ecstatic "can you feel the magic in the air - it must have been the way you kissed me!" bits are both awesome.

Yep, love that single. I think "generic" is the key word, though. It doesn't really do anything "new" with her sound/style, kinda runs with the fairy tale thing from "Love Story" and milks its success, but you're right -- the performance is great, and reliably makes my heart swell up each time I hear it.

Taylor Swift Has a Fishy Wish for Her New Home

Since moving into a decked-out Nashville apartment, Taylor Swift has made some significant changes to her home's original floor plan.

"There are rooms where there weren't rooms before, and I have a birdcage in my living room that is people-sized," the country musician, 20, told PEOPLE at Tuesday's BMI Pop Awards in Los Angeles. "Then there's a pond in the living room as well, and I want to get stingrays. I don't want people to think I'm crazy, but wouldn't that be cool?"

Stingrays (which are tropical marine life related to sharks) or no, such an eccentric pad requires an equally eccentric nickname.

"My friends and I have been calling it things like 'The Imaginarium,' because it has all of these crazy whimsical things in it," she says.

Will this fanciful state of mind carry over into her future song writing? So far, she's not saying, but does admit that the songwriting process for her new record, "has been amazing. I've been writing for the last two years. I keep making new lists, which is a good sign to me."

The trick, it appears, is in the editing: "I bump things off when I write something new that I like better," says Swift. "It's really all about honing it down."

she's smart

MINE! Out now, Speak Now released in the fall

'You were in college, working part-time, waiting tables
Left a small town; Never looked back
I was a flight risk with a fear of falling
Wondering why we bother with love if it never lasts.'

This is closer to something like "Mary's Song" than anything off of Fearless - not sure if it's a big step forward or anything, but it's damn good, and miles better than either of the soundtrack numbers she's given us in the interim.

Taylor Swift - Speak Now (Oct 2010) - hype, anticipation &c

Fuck, sorry. Apologies.

You're Not Sorry finally clicked with me. Don't know how I thought this was one of the weaker tracks on the album. Packs a punch, and has v. nice use of space.

Especially that last chorus modification with "there's nothing left to beg for".