Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a tight end playing in the Super Bowl -- The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift, April 19

i'd take taylor over patti smith. as a songwriter. easily. but she is nice to be nice to her elders.

"I like the line about Destin, a shit spring break town"

my god i love Destin, but yes, good description

i think this is my favorite taylor swift record and i will get mad if ppl treat the “anthology” version as the real album

Wow, ivy. After two listens to the original album the incessant midtempo-ness of the thing is tiring me.

i'm just treating the second half as a separate album that is just a frustratingly underwhelming folklore retread

but i love that burst at the end of the chorus in "the black dog"

I want something to POP. "But Daddy I Love Him" is a moment, I guess.

my biggest problem with the regular album is that it doesn't spent more time in gorgeous synth ballad blue nile tribute mode

the regular album is definitely my favourite - there's no real duds, it has some of her very best songs on it, the production generally works. it could still use an editor as it doesn't need to be an hour but eh that's nothing compared to the sort of issues most of her albums have

no idea why "fortnight" is the single though. it's good but it's hard to see it being much of a hit, it's rather sleepy

Wow, ivy

what, is this not the real midnights? a full album of insomnia-driven spirals about people you’ve lost and still long for or wish you would’ve told the truth to when you were still talking? i guess “florida!!!” is the only “fast” track but i appreciate the sleepy amniotic shuffle, a body turning over in bed again and again. the melodies are gorgeous and i think there’s a ton of internal variation in its half-asleep whispers too… is “guilty as sin?” not her sexiest song? is “but daddy i love him” not like a giant wedding cake of songwriting? is “i can do it with a broken heart” not actually completely manic and simultaneously in denial of and in acceptance of it? i feel like everyone is tired and has cloth in their ears which i understand, taylor swift is exhausting, i guess she was due for significant blowback from a bunch of ppl who form their opinions on someone’s work based on how tired they are, but the moment i heard this i noticed how it moved and shifted in a way none of her previous pop albums have. it is not REALLY my favorite swift album because i am way too sentimental about red and evermore but its 16 tracks long and the songs are full of gorgeous melodies and impossibly none of them are embarrassing. a triumph, imo

The second disc is much better imo

im sorry that post really reads like i didn’t get enough sleep

i feel like everyone is tired and has cloth in their ears which i understand, taylor swift is exhausting, i guess she was due for significant blowback from a bunch of ppl who form their opinions on someone’s work based on how tired they are

OK this is not me.

And it IS the real Midnights.

i like this. wait where does the regular album end the YT i am listening to has 31 tracks. i like daddy and florida and who's afraid and tortured poets. those are the best.

first 16 are the regular album, 17-31 are "the anthology"

The bass drop in "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me" made me lol in a good way.

she could make the best punk rock album with a punk rock band. she's so good at pissed.

The ones she wrote herself are the punkiest!

okay so it ends with "clara bow". got it. haven't gotten there yet.

i do really hate that she released EVERY SONG from these sessions to goose streaming numbers. i have a headache

Well at least fans don’t have to track down four versions of the CD to hear the bonus tracks

i think the underwhelming reaction from a lot of places is because people want her to either make massive pop hits (which this doesn't really have) or return to country/folk singer-songwriter stuff (which the regular album doesn't do much of) and instead most of the regular album is in midtempo synthpop mode which doesn't do much for people who don't adore the blue nile

would have been cool if the 2nd album was just songs about really detailed football offensive schemes. "Sweep Pass". "Flea Flicker".

she really made an album just for me lol

I adore the Blue Nile

I don't know what I want from her.

The Prophecy is my favorite I think

you could remix the hell out of "i can do it with a broken heart" a la pet shop boys.

But it’s a bit Sufjan I guess

yeah where IS Neil Tennant?

i can hear tennant singing "i can do it with a broken heart" deadpan

It does have a midtempo plod, I understand those complaints and it's one of my issues with Midnights. I don't know why it works for me here better except that Tim F is otm about it feeling "roomier." The prior stuff it most recalls for me is the latter half of 1989 -- "Wildest Dreams," "This Love." I like her gauzy sweeping synth mode I guess.

Ann Powers’ article piqued my interest far more than the album it’s about— prob won’t listen, I’m on a Swift-free listening diet these days—

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/19/1245630721/taylor-swift-tortured-poets-department-review

Interesting points, I’ve always felt as if Swift’s autofictive bent made for ugly listening, having Powers reframe it as necessarily dangerous has me reexamining my own discomfort

I joked to myself last night while reading this “has any Taylor Swift album passed the Bechdel Test”

Curious as to other people’s takes on the (as always) very good article, gonna read it again in the daylight

My main problem with the disc 1 stuff is that (much like on Midnights and Lover) most songs have parts that sound like they were cribbed from earlier Taylor songs.

i like this album a lot. could you cut 3 or 4 songs and make it better/tighter? of course. you always could. 16 songs will always be too many songs for one album. but if you make something perfect then you offend God. so, best to keep it a little lumpy.

okay, almost on to the extra stuff.

I can say that Powers' upcoming Joni book is awesome btw

as a sound lover who doesn't care what or who her songs are about - something american critics should think about (but they never do) is that a large portion of her audience around the world from south america to turkey to india to china does not speak or understand English - i have to say that the sounds she makes are really captivating and enjoyable in a full body way.

I renounced the Perfect Album as ideal a couple years ago and suddenly my outlook improved.

This is good:

Listening to Tortured Poets, I often thought of "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance," a song that Sinéad O'Connor recorded when she was in her young prime, not yet banished from the mainstream for her insistence on speaking politically. Like Swift's best work, its lyrics are very specific — allegedly about a former manager and lover — yet her directness and conviction expand their reach. In 1990, that a woman in her mid-twenties would address a belittling man in this way felt startling and new. Taylor Swift came to prominence in a culture already changing to make room for such testimonies, if not — still — fully able to honor them. She has made it more possible for them to be heard. "I talk and you won't listen to me," O'Connor wailed. "I know your answer already." Swift doesn't have to worry about whether people will listen. But she knows that this could change. That's why she is writing it all down.

Powers’ piece would be entirely literary analysis, if not for the single paragraph where she talks about music.

On Tortured Poets she's less strategic than usual. She lets the details fall the way they would in a confession session among besties, not trying to change them from painful memories into points of connection. She's just sharing. Swift bares every crack in her broken heart as a way of challenging power structures, of arguing that emotional work that men can sidestep is still expected from women who seem to own the world.

i thought this was good, aligns with my earlier post about not really being able to involve myself in her angrier songs this time around, because the room isn’t being made for me, it’s for her

oh my god lol no way

y’all..😭 there are so many wrong things about this pic.twitter.com/NW8hPDlDNP

— 𖤐 𝗖𝗛𝗥𝗜𝗦 𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗘 𖤐 (@ghostijn) April 19, 2024

yeah, these extra songs are something else entirely. i'm four songs in and i kinda forgot that i was listening to something. its mood music. i'll try and focus.

she should’ve kept that one in the vault

xp

Lmaooooo the accompanying photo

God I am going to have to listen to this. Keeping abreast of Beyoncé’s music feels like delicious food that keeps getting delivered. Keeping abreast of Taylor’s music feels like a babysitter screaming at me that I have to eat an entire banana every morning, including the black spots

The Beyoncé album has seven or eight songs I've kept but they're really fucking good songs and I haven't stopped listening to them or not gotten a thrill when they come up on my phone.

With her and Taylor Swift to pick one album as a favorite if you're already a fan is as impossible as calling Dirty Mind your favorite Prince instead of Parade or Controversy, or calling Madonna your fave Madonna over Like a Prayer or Erotica or Ray of Light. They're all such different albums, offering discrete aural and lyrical experiences. To name one means you're choosing one phase. I miss the Beyoncé of B'Day and 4 but I'm delighted with Lemonade and Renaissance. Same with Taylor Swift. Speak Now ruled for a long time, but now I revel in Red and couldn't stop blasting Evermore that COVID summer.

It’s akin to my old crack about how you should have hundreds of ‘best band of all time’ in your brain and they change per your whim. The Cure album I have listened to the most is Faith but my fave album by them always shifts.

i really hate that she called this "a double album" bc as a single album it is very focused and excellent and as a double album it is a terrible endless listening experience (imo)

agree. She should have released the second half under a different name a week later.

i agree. "so high school" could have been on that first disc though. wonder why she didn't put it in with that stuff.

scott, are your kids Swifties?