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 think I'll have to listen to this while high, it just seemed very samey to me earlier today and I switched it off after six songs. Aesthetically nice, unmemorable songs though

The orchestra is all the LCO people conducted by Robert Ames! Top drawer. I am going to listen to this tonight.

First six songs sounded good off an edible before bed late-night last night. Very "The Captain of Her Heart."

First listen, I like it more than Midnights -- I think the division of production and songwriting responsibilities helps break up the "plodding" tempos that have plagued these last two albums. I didn't pay much attention to Disc 2 but my favorite tracks were "But Daddy I Love Him" (Wow!), "Guilt as Sin", and "Clara Bow."

Some thoughts on the below comments:

Lots of Puth heads here?
― Never fight uphill 'o me, boys! (President Keyes), Friday, April 19, 2024 6:49 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

But “Daddy I Love Him” is great
― Never fight uphill 'o me, boys! (President Keyes), Friday, April 19, 2024 7:13 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

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.
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, April 19, 2024 9:31 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

“so high school” is really dope, taylor’s avril lavigne album would be killer
― ivy., Friday, April 19, 2024 9:44 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Zoladz in NY Times
There is a sonic uniformity to much of “The Tortured Poets Department,” however — gauzy backdrops, gently thumping synths, drum machine rhythms that lock Swift into a clipped, chirping staccato — that suggests their partnership has become too comfortable and risks growing stale.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/arts/music/taylor-swift-album-tortured-poets-department-review.html
― curmudgeon, Friday, April 19, 2024 10:35 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

All that chat about the Blue Nile reference a lot today but the truth is it actually SOUNDS a lot like Hats in certain ways out of the gate. (Also, so far, this is an ultimate 'iron fist/velvet glove' experience in terms of lyrics-vs-music.)

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, April 18, 2024 11:10 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

so far i don't think it sounds like blue nile at all. way more slower tempo future islands or alvvays indie friendly 2000s synth/new wave bands like that.

aka bands I never really felt anything for so I will stick with my judgment. :-D (The first song in particular really gives me said vibes, but it is also the case that if they hadn't been directly invoked in the lyrics, would I have been listening for that approach as much? Not sure!)

I like to think Paul Buchanan and co have woken up today in a much better financial position than yesterday.

this album just sounds like a taylor swift album to me. it doesn't make me think of anyone else. it did make me go listen to faith hill though. everyone should listen to Cry. such a cool album!
oh wait taylor does make me think of Lana every once in a while. she can't help it. she's a fangirl. its her homage.

Uh “Florida!” Is terrible

― Never fight uphill 'o me, boys! (President Keyes), Friday, April 19, 2024 5:13 AM (ten hours ago)

Gotta +1 this... the songs before it just sort of wash over me, but when I hit this it's like "oof"

Not sure I can think of a TS lyric worse than –

Little did you know your home's really only
A town you're just a guest in
So you work your life away just to pay
For a time-share down in Destin

...and she repeats it!

(I'm giving it another spin, b/c I don't want to not like it – and the album doesn't actively repel me the way Midnights did – but I think it's just lacking any of the things that I generally like about Taylor Swift songs/albums.)

that lyric is bad?

So you work your life away just to pay
For a tube of Desitin

everyone compares everything to the blue nile now and I also don't usually hear it. I steadfastly did not hear it in the 1975 outside of one track but that didn't keep everyone from comparing everything they did to the blue nile. I feel like this is a reflexive music critic thing, no offense to music critics here that I consider friends.

i think people should leave the blue nile alone. they are special!

i've been a blue nile fan since 1983 and i never hear people who sound like them. they are "just" a synth-pop band but they are unique. god, when i think of the boring shit i've heard that was compared to talk talk...ugh. there oughta be a law.

Ned Raggett at 5:22 19 Apr 24

aka bands I never really felt anything for so I will stick with my judgment. :-D (The first song in particular really gives me said vibes, but it is also the case that if they hadn't been directly invoked in the lyrics, would I have been listening for that approach as much? Not sure


to be clear I couldnt care less about Future Islands or Alvvays, but it sounds way more like that than Blue Nile

except the Future Islands Letterman performance that was a fun moment

this is the end of the NYT review. i still think perfection isn't the goal. i'm fine with a little extra messiness. feels more real.

"Sylvia Plath once called poetry “a tyrannical discipline,” because the poet must “go so far and so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit. The sharpest moments of “The Tortured Poets Department” would be even more piercing in the absence of excess, but instead the clutter lingers, while Swift holds an unlit match."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/arts/music/taylor-swift-album-tortured-poets-department-review.html

xp Not sure I hear Alvvays, but maybe I don't know the songs you mean.

The Guardian review mentioned College's "A Real Hero."

except the Future Islands Letterman performance that was a fun moment

that guy always looks like he has to take a poop while singing. strong Chris Martin vibes.

i'm not well versed on new pop but the LDR, name dropping in a sardonic voice is not what i want from taylor

i love you, it's ruining my life

I often get the feeling that Swift wants to make certain kinds of records, maybe ones that sound like LDR or boygenius or the National or Blue Nile, but cannot because she’s Taylor Swift and her notebooks are full of Taylor Swift lyrics.

It’s like 1980s Elvis Costello trying to make an ambient pop album with David Sylvain and showing up with a bunch of lyrics like Everyday I Write the Book.

not feeling this at all :/

It’s like 1980s Elvis Costello trying to make an ambient pop album with David Sylvain and showing up with a bunch of lyrics like Everyday I Write the Book.

like Duncan Shiek, who said his debut album was supposed to be like Secrets of the Beehive. Ok man, I know you have good taste but that missed the mark entirely if that's what you were shooting for

“You’re not Dylan Thomas/ I’m not Patti Smith / this ain’t the Chelsea Hotel” these are true statements

Never mind what I said above about the blue Nile, I just heard Guilty as Sin.

I'd probably keep like three tracks from this and don't mind if I never hear the rest again. It's not at all bad, but just feels like small variations on things she's already done. She really needs to work with new producers

Listening now to the bonus tracks for the first time, totally separate from the main album, which itself I have yet to relisten to. The bonus tracks easily works as a standalone album; there's a virtue in simply splitting the listens that way.

It's not at all bad, but just feels like small variations on things she's already done. She really needs to work with new producers

In some ways, this feels like the ur-Taylor Swift album, or a parody of a Taylor Swift album: songs that are mostly about her exes, with lyrics that are simultaneously pointed and allusive, produced by Antonoff *and* Dessner, with familiar Swiftian melodies and chord changes.

Some artists on top of the world use that opportunity to branch out and do something unexpected, knowing that fans will follow, but she's already strategically reinvented herself a couple of times already. Instead, I feel like she's using the opportunity to indulge her existing tendencies and obsessions, having been assured there's a very large market for the phenomenon of Taylor Swift that transcends current pop trends.

i think all the "the _____" songs are really strong, and, since they're the bonus tracks on the various vinyl editions, kinda feel they form a little decoder EP on their own

A guy I know who’s a big Swiftie sez he wishes she’d work with other folks at this point; but guesses that since she had all this personal stuff to get off her chest, she went back to her most trusted collaborators one more time.

(which I thought was sort of an interestingly charitable way of framing it)

this album has been painted by its detractors as an indifferent haze and in particular with critics it feels like they're reacting to midnights one album too late, just imo!!! the only way i can explain why it feels like i'm listening to a different album from everyone else. although in response to jaymc's suggestion that this is the ur-Taylor Swift album, i assume the eras tour put her in a nostalgic mood, because when i listen to it i feel like i get every kind of taylor. as a result of that some ppl may/do feel like it's a tired echo of things she's done before, and better. but to me it is fascinating to see her approach pop-country idioms like "but daddy i love him" at this point in her life, or to hear a reputation-ish track like "who's afraid of little old me" that partially charts her fear of descending into spinsterhood after successive and very public romantic failures. they're extensions of and commentary on her past in a way that feels really richly annotated to me, e.g. "the manuscript" which seems to deal with the same subject matter as "dear john" but from the distance of adulthood, returning to this story and feeling a dull ache of recognition when you reread it, and also recognizing the ways it still splinters into your present life

this is also her most depressed project imo. there's just something different in the tone like some black mold crept into it

I will definitely say that ending the main album with "Clara Bow" and the bonus tracks with "The Manuscript" is a really strong one-two. The first is a meditation on fame and perception that suddenly gets explicitly, searingly meta in the very final lines, the second is a depiction of an arc where you get a sense that a pattern is being followed and something has to be inevitably let go. I'm not going to say there's a one to one connection between the two songs (or any of the others and their direct complements) but it's quite something, and they function as absolute songs of ending.

I listened to 3/4s of the first disc and gave up. Somebody should give Antonoff six months off to R&D some new tricks. The production feels like a serving tray, Swift's lyrics feel unedited. I like that Paste said this was Rupi Kaur and not Sylvia Plath and I agree with that. It does feel like the ur-Taylor album, in a kind of "NYC as defined in My Dinner With Andre" fashion, that the conventions and methods are so clearly defined that any deviations, although desired, feel unwelcome when they arrive; we are both inmates and wardens, here. I got the sensation that I was listening to some people doing Sudoku puzzles rather than making music and I gave up on it

this album has been painted by its detractors as an indifferent haze and in particular with critics it feels like they're reacting to midnights one album too late, just imo!!!

Yeah that's how I break it down to an extent. All I can say is that the songs here — most of them anyway — have already sunk in for me more than most of Midnights did. Several of them do sound like bits and pieces of other Taylor Swift songs, sure, because she has her shticks and tics and gimmicks and shorthands. But overall I find it an enjoyable listen, and for every cringey line there's one that hits. (Still have not messed with the bonus album, I want to just listen to the main one for a bit.)

All that said, I would be as happy as anyone for this to be her last Antonoff record.

paste also accused her of appropriating poetry which has always been aligned with climate justice, it is a completely unserious review, come on

https://notebook.substack.com/p/is-that-a-bad-thing-to-say-in-a-song

this is pretty good, lands largely where i'm at with the album and my closer readings of it

one of these days tho i'll write the definitive piece on this album that doesn't mention her exes at all (i won't)

The production feels like a serving tray, Swift's lyrics feel unedited.

In addition to this, the melodies just aren’t there (for me, anyway). There’s not a single melody that grabs me or makes me want to listen to the song again. It’s very difficult for me to square with her years of output. How is this the same songwriter?

not even "but daddy i love him"? idgi

i think everyone is ready to be tired of her and that's ok

Yeah given my big problem with the album is how similar it is to previous things she's done, I think I'm just tired of her. she's had an enormous amount of output in the last five years

also really tickled by dave moore's observations on taylor swift as a rapper: https://theotherdave.substack.com/p/how-you-get-the-world-reflections-654

Taylor Swift seems to come up with lyrics like a rapper might, in disconnected bits of inspired wordplay or the perfect one-line evocation of an idea, which is then sometimes backfilled with other words to make it scan or, just as frequently, left stranded with other one-liners like a confetti of fortune cookie slips. This style is immediately noticeable on Poets, where those one-liners have never been sharper (even if they’re perhaps “sharp” in the way someone elbowing you in the ribs is sharp). Meanwhile the songs qua songs have never cohered less.

But I don’t mind this time. The album reminds me of the deluge of mid-aughts Lil Wayne mixtapes; I was totally unsurprised that she immediately dropped an additional album’s worth of material two hours after midnight of the album’s release. (She’s figured out how to make money on her mixtapes: replace unauthorized samples with wallpaper.) Swift isn’t a preternatural genius of wordplay like Wayne is, but she has been pushing the limits of her rhyme schemes for a decade to incorporate hip-hop’s expansive use of assonance, accommodating endless slant rhymes. My friend Isabel points out a representative chain in “So High School”: bottles, Aristotle, full throttle, Grand Theft Auto, scout’s honor, got her.1 My favorite audacious move is on “Clara Bow,” where out of the literally thousands of rhyming possibilities with “oh” she decides instead to use “remarkable.”

Every Taylor Swift line is another bathroom tile, mirror shard, or empty wine bottle in a sprawling Magic Garden blown up to the absurd proportions of the city-within-a-soundstage of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche New York. (On-lookers feel trapped on the set, but this has never bothered me. You can leave!) On this album, some of her mirror’s edges stick out a bit more than usual—you wouldn’t want your kids to climb on them. There’s more “fuck,” sure, but also more blood. My favorite line so far is in “So Long, London” when she invents the tag line to a gruesome spaghetti western of a breakup: “Two graves. One gun.”

I've pitched Swift albums (I haven't reviewed her yet for a major publication), but the last couple days have reminded me: is writing about her ex's required? Like, must I spend three paragraphs plotting how autobiography and art intersect? Rereading on a whim reviews of Blood on the Tracks, Desire, and Street-Legal, I noted a similar obsession with how many tunes were "about" or nodded to Sara and I just couldn't.

Maybe Swift should release an instrumental album -- Taylor Swift Composes Tone Poems of Color, say.

ha -- Dave and I are often on the same tip. I said to a friend last year when she released the last re-recording that she's become a mid '00s mix tape rapper except that she occupies a bigger cultural space than Wayne did pre-2008.

i don't think so!!! i wish it happened less often!!! that substack piece i posted upthread (not the dave moore one) suggests that not knowing or thinking about swift's public life actually makes the album more enjoyable, and i agree!!! and then that piece discusses her public life and who the songs are about lol

xp

I've realized I'm a gay writer so attuned to subtexts that limning a text (i.e. who's fucking or dating whom) holds no interest, lol