taylor swift iridescent smoke bombs thread 2019 - lover

I like the beat/synth and the verses but the chorus is cringey imo.
It's borderline Mika territory !

it's more 'pleasant but fairly forgettable album track' than 'second single'

amazing thread title

why does every new single sound like "send my love to your new lover," was it THAT big of a hit?

those stacked-up notes beginning the chorus are admittedly a very good hook though

I mean it's OK, but does anyone else feel like there's elements of this song that are...y'know...pandering?

It sorta feels like when a huge corporation puts their logo in rainbow colours. Like, great cause, but the fact that you're only doing it now because you're confident enough that it won't tank your stock price does cheapen it somewhat.

you can want who you want
boys and boys and girls and girls

those stacked-up notes beginning the chorus are admittedly a very good hook though

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Friday, June 14, 2019 5:31 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the part i like so much

p4k's Michelle Kim disagrees:

Swift dedicates the second half of the song to prove her allyship to the gay community, which again, deserves some props. But her way of showing alliance is confounding: “Why be mad, when you can be GLAAD,” she sings, upping the LGBTQ-centering media organization, but also parroting a literal Tupperware slogan. And when she says “shade never made anyone less gay,” she adopts slang with queer black origins in an attempt to create a mic-drop moment, but ends up sounding like another corporation proving they’re “down for the cause” during Pride Month. All of this, coupled with a hook that’s mostly vowels, makes for a song that’s somehow bewildering and underwhelming at the same time.

I like this new song (it's so much better than "Me!"). The bridge is kind of a missed opportunity, but you can't have everything.

Maybe the third single will be good.

pretty good but the lyrics are brutal

This song is terrible

This is going to date horribly.

She's been pretty vocal about gay rights ... for the past couple of months. Especially for someone who has avoided politics, afaict. It scans kind of gross to me, like her newfound armchair activism is just part of the marketing roll out for the new album.

she has been speaking directly to her gay fans since at least 2014

She is absolutely not bandwagoning

On Vox the writer stated that Taylor is drawing a false equivalency between "being criticized for being a celebrity" and anti-gay protesters at Pride Parades

I think this equivalency makes an ugly second verse, but it's not, like, a bad comparison. I think it's a misguided equivalency but not a false equivalency. Connecting the motivation behind shit-posters on Twitter and God Hates Fags sign-wavers is... clunky but not wrong, as far as I'm concerned

I think the first verse is pretty effective, this isn't a single I like personally, but it's a single I've liked more than most of her recent singles incl. a couple of 1989 efforts

It is strange to see voices of poptimistic criticism become frustrated with a pop song once the writer becomes self-aware and conspicuously manipulative. The word "pandering" has been thrown around but what mainstream pop music in the past 10 years has not been pandering? It's almost like "we want the pandering to seem accidental instead of intentional" or something

I do wish participation in queer culture by otherwise straight and/or mostly-straight pop artists was more all in, rather than kind of superficially political. Appropriation of queer and qpoc language and tropes can be both egregious AND fabulous (see Madonna's "Vogue")

Except for the "parade" line, I wouldn't have known this alludes to Pride if I hadn't watched the video.

I like Motormouth Swift, so this sounds better than Repuation's first single, and if it gets on the radio I'll like it next to "Bad Guy" and "Old Town Road."

I don't feel pandered to as a queer man because, after all, a Pride parade is superficial performativity anyway.

As someone who is neither gay nor a fan, the first I noticed her being more politically vocal was recently, during the 2018 Tennessee election. She's since said or posted one or two other things, which is why it felt like part of her marketing ramp-up (esp. coming after relative social media silence). It's good to hear she's apparently been more vocal for a while, though it's not for me to say if she's been loud enough.

I'm neither gay nor a Swift fan in particular but I can think of some fairly obvious reasons that equating/comparing tweets against an extremely famous pop star with anti-LGBT sentiment could be seen as off-putting

i'm gay and i like her work and i can't say i give a shit

There were a lot of “issues” songs in the 80s that were no doubt otm but sound pretty lame now

and I never even went to Sun City!

Dear Mr. Jesus!

I don’t find this song problematic so much as clunky is all

I don't necessarily find it problematic, but it certainly is clunky, which is itself I suppose problematic. It just felt cynical and shallow to me is all.

"and control your urges to scream about all the people you hate / 'cause shade never made anybody less gay" is actually p sharp commentary on twitter pride discourse this year

i'm fine with "gay rights!" - taylor swift but i do think the sudden intensity of her allyship and the awkward lyrics in "you need to calm down" are pretty comical. but that aspect of taylor's been there for a long time - the weird tension in her public persona of being simultaneously deeply confessional and absurdly calculated.

I don’t find this song problematic so much as clunky is all

otm and also applies 100% to all her other songs

the weird tension in her public persona of being simultaneously deeply confessional and absurdly calculated

What tension? It's not a binary. How isn't a confessional mode also calculated? To whom are you confessing and why?

Ya if anything the two are synonymous. I’ve said on other threads that you’re making a decision when you decide to write a song that references your public biography... it is presented as “confessional” but it is inherently manipulative. Not necessarily a bad thing! but that’s what it is

It's every bit as strategic as what love interest you are appearing in public with and when, but there are degrees of subtlety to it that enhance or detract from the confessional effect. Maybe a la Dylan it will be revealed down the line that the entire curated Taylor Swift persona has been one long game put on.

The confessional affect, you mean. It's a pose too.

Yeah, both effect and affect.

But I think the downside of doing that too much - or I guess more accurately too *well* - is that, whether you technically are or not, you start to seem like a product. And a generic one at that. "Me" sounds especially like a jingle, and the awkward sloganeering of this one similarly sounds like, well, slogans. "Why be mad when you could be GLAAD" sounds like a particularly clunky bit of ad copy.

i don't disagree with alfred and fgti

i guess what i'm trying to say is that the calculatedness comes through so strongly at times with her that it can feel awkward and it's also at odds with a more typical sort of 'authentic confessional singer-songwriter' positioning and even a lot of of pop star personas these days which try to do their best to seem like 'authentic' and 'real' people etc. (i agree everything is a pose of course and she's moved away from 'singer-songwriter' for a while too etc.) and that feels a bit weird.

not really much of a criticism, the awkward part of her calculatedness is usually endearing enough (and could that itself be a pose? sure) but i agree with josh that it hasn't really worked out on the latest single's lyrics

It's like her trademark Award Show Face: there's a reason why it became sort of a mocked meme, because whether or not she was actually modest or surprised or whatever, she was unable to convey that "authenticity" in a convincing manner.

I do wish participation in queer culture by otherwise straight and/or mostly-straight pop artists was more all in, rather than kind of superficially political. Appropriation of queer and qpoc language and tropes can be both egregious AND fabulous (see Madonna's "Vogue")

This is an interesting comment to me; I was recently reflecting on how “Vogue”-era Madonna largely (AFAIK; I was around but not plugged into this angle) escaped accusations of “cashing in”
on a culture she didn’t actually belong to, etc. I guess the key, for an artist doing this, is to sufficiently establish your “cred” first?

It reminded me of Bowie's 1975 R&B move, but with a biographical grounding: Madonna had already been a visible ally to gays and had spoken often about the many close friends who died from AIDS.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that the calculatedness comes through so strongly at times with her that it can feel awkward and it's also at odds with a more typical sort of 'authentic confessional singer-songwriter' positioning and even a lot of of pop star personas these days which try to do their best to seem like 'authentic' and 'real' people etc. (i agree everything is a pose of course and she's moved away from 'singer-songwriter' for a while too etc.) and that feels a bit weird.

My takeaway from what I retained of Swift's last album and these current singles is that the most interesting, "new" thing that her work is dealing with is a pop star struggling with pressures of public opinion.. The closest analogue to me n terms of content is the post-molestation allegations MJ work-- "Scream", i.e.-- but in Swift's case, the pressure she's described as feeling is the product of online harassment for being [whatever she is] and [whatever she is not], not real legal battles. (The only real actual shitty thing I can recall off-hand in her public biography, which might itself even be hearsay, was her expressed frustration at being mentioned in Kanye's "Famous", followed by Kim providing evidence that Taylor had verbally signed off on the verse that mentioned her. Aside from this? music that doesn't land? a reaction shot where she appears inauthentic? She's had so many recent glowing public moments as well, her testimony in that civil trial w the groping DJ, i.e.)

What I think is kind of interesting about this aspect of her songwriting is that it likely has a great deal of resonance with her fanbase who themselves have experienced bullying, online or otherwise, that may appear incidental, but has had intense internal psychological consequences. We look at the evidence of Taylor overstating harm, and identify it as such, but also feel commonality with it in the ways we as listeners have, say, allowed some offhand online comment to destroy our day/week/month... and that to me is interesting, I guess, or at least the most interesting thing about this music

You are somebody that I don't know
But you're takin' shots at me like it's Patrón
And I'm just like, damn, it's 7 AM
Say it in the street, that's a knock-out
But you say it in a Tweet, that's a cop-out
And I'm just like, "Hey, are you okay?"

I mean. I hear this and think "her feelings are extremely hurt because somebody tweeted something at her and it kept her up all night and so she wrote this deflecting verse that awkwardly deploys vague-AAVEisms as signifiers for resilience and indifference." It's "Shake It Off", but clunkier, which suggests it's coming from an even more distressed place

Are the songs made with Max Martin again? I've read a lot about his process, and certainly clunky lyrics are a big part of it.

Sounds like The Knife's Heartbeats. Surprised no one's mentioned it. Good though, it's fun which is more than you can say about the last album. Very 'back half of the album'ish tho yeah.

Are the songs made with Max Martin again? I've read a lot about his process, and certainly clunky lyrics are a big part of it.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, June 15, 2019 1:23 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this and "Me" were both Joel Little

(also max martin is very rarely a lyricist)

Maybe just Swedish hit makers in general? I remember reading something, maybe it is in the Seabrook book, about how many of the songs he's worked on contain really awkward lyrics and phrases, because he was more about the rhythm and sound of the words than the meaning.

Cf.: https://time.com/3088143/ariana-grande-break-free-lyrics/

Oh that is so interesting

I've had a private fantasy that Max Martin knowingly writes (or influences decisions toward) awkward lyrical choices on the part of artists he produces as a nod to his Swedish pop roots-- ABBA's own unusual choices of adjectives and unusual weighting. I can't imagine that Swift herself wrote "Say you'll remember me / standing in a NICE dress"-- the choice of "nice" is a weak adjective to describe "dress", the vowel-consonant salad of "nice dress" is ugly, and placing "nice" on the downbeat is awkward. At first I was disappointed with that line as it showed the seams of Who Wrote What on that song, but now I just think of it as Max pouring one out for Ace Of Base

i didn't know the song until now b/c i avoided listening to this album (thanks "me!"). it's good but i couldn't help but think of parts of other, better songs of hers? like idk i couldn't help but think of the bridge from "out of the woods" for instance. but yeah i guess it's been a fan fav for a while, i had heard mentions of it here n there for years

was mystified as to how it wasn't a single then

You mean a planned 'song of the summer' single for 2020 not happening? Hm, wonder why.

I’ve never connected with a TS song
Is it too late?

xp Eh, it was released in Aug. 2019 (and actually charted, in the Top 40, as an album track).

i think i’ve had the opposite reaction to dyl insofar as i hear “cruel summer” on the radio alongside “anti hero” and “karma” and think, so nice of them to show us what it would be like if those songs were good

oh and i guess this is the song whose writers were added to the olivia rodrigo "deja vu" credits due to a vague similarity in one line

"Cruel Summer," one her best singles, finally hits #1.

The bananarama cover?

Otm

nah, that's "Robert De Niro's Waiting"

The stylistic variety of this album is very refreshing... in that respect, it's rivaled maybe only by Red in her catalog(?)

I think the album has also improved with time, or at least feels like less of a "mixed bag" than it did originally. If you take out "Me!" and maybe one or two other tracks of your choice ("The Man," "London Boys," "Calm Down" – depending on taste), it's actually quite strong. The remaining tracks may not have the highs of other albums (although "False God" comes close), and some of the production touches may be questionable, but the whole thing has a lightness and sense of "fun" that makes it stand out for me.

It's hilarious to me that she premiered the "Me!" video at the '19 NFL Draft.

bad:
you need to calm down
me!

embarrassing but ultimately hilarious:
london boy
the man

i don’t like this song but ppl have made the case for it to me and im like “ok fine”:
miss americana

mediocre but they work in album sequence:
i forgot that you existed
it’s nice to have a friend

the rest:
great, some of her best work

the day this leaked was one of the happiest days of my life. i was on a week-long beach vacation and trying to sneak away from my friends to listen to this file-by-file on dropbox or something

the sequencing sucks and is insane but that goes without saying

(my worst take is that "you need to calm down" is good as hell)

literally my worst take! song SUCKS

I like “London Boys” but I couldn’t rationally “defend it” to a hater.

When i hear london boy all i can think is “i love a london boy, he’s a goy…”

the opening line of “you need to calm down” is hilarious

I also really like “me” and twee Taylor in general (shrugs)

I love “paper rings”

Lover is uneven but also her last “fun” record. She should make another one.

I will never, ever get enough of "Cruel Summer," my theme song for the long COVID summer of '20.

bad:
you need to calm down
me!

embarrassing but ultimately hilarious:
london boy
the man

i don’t like this song but ppl have made the case for it to me and im like “ok fine”:
miss americana

mediocre but they work in album sequence:
i forgot that you existed
it’s nice to have a friend

the rest:
great, some of her best work

lover is definitely an album that seems better in retrospect to me given that she actually articulates a vision for pop music production that goes beyond largely anonymous synth pop. i wouldn’t say it’s exactly a coherent vision, or even necessarily an exciting vision, but at least there are some *ideas* here about what taylor swift pop music could sound like

one does have to wonder if she deeply disliked the process of recording like a normal pop star — trying out diff producers — bcuz she has clearly opted out of that dynamic ever since. or maybe the pandemic just thrust her into this little insular creative bubble