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 have actually been compelled to write about enjoying her music as a queer person lately, largely bc she is finally horny again on this album and even though she is an extremely awkward heterosexual i always feel the fluid queerness of desire in her songs devoted to the subject (i am once again especially referring to "dress"). also i don't even know why i did this but i wrote a small thing on my tumblr yesterday about "fifteen" and my many years of confusion and trauma before coming out as a trans woman https://www.tumblr.com/unbornwhiskeyy/748211375167389696/i-listened-to-fifteen-today-and-as-usual-i-burst

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?

Taylor's easter-egg ex-pop, Beyonce's bibliographic R&B, Genius dot com and the MCU have more or less conditioned an entire generation of music fans to hear lyrics as clues and cheer for the billionaire business plan

— Eric Harvey (@ericdharvey) April 19, 2024

I just see so many reviews that are like, "here's all the references what do I win"

— Eric Harvey (@ericdharvey) April 19, 2024

Last night I played some of the new album for my oldest (9yo), whose favorites are Speak Now and the s/t, and she said, "It's so much less fun. It's all kind of...sad."

Later, we played Lover front-to-back, and well, she has a point. Not just a more upbeat album, but MUCH broader range and palette of sounds. It was produced by Antonoff, too, but is more dynamic in production, composition, and style. Vocal samples ("Cruel Summer," "False God") and piano ("I Forgot that You Existed") and horns ("False God") and acoustic guitar ballads ("Lover," "Soon You'll Get Better") and handclapped girl-group throwbacks ("Paper Rings"). Even the ungodly "ME!" sounded fresh after a trip through the gauzy murk of TTPD.

I think it's why "But Daddy I Love Him" is an early consensus favorite here; it's the first hard shift since "Lavender Haze," brightening the palette with non-electronic instruments.

Harvey otm

an extremely awkward heterosexual

lol that is definitely her sexual orientation.

Great Tumblr post, ivy. I think that line about "I didn't know who I was supposed to be" is a key example of how/why she works as a writer. It's very specific song, right down to the real name of her best friend, but she almost instinctively locates the universal in her own experience. (Every bit as much as say Westerberg on "Sixteen Blue.")

Seems awfully improbable now but I'd love to hear a Taylor Swift album produced by George Daniel.

Paul Westerberg being an extremely awkward heterosexual

"It's so much less fun. It's all kind of...sad."

it sure is!!! that's what being a woman in your mid-to-late-30s is all about

Any time I try to write something extended and serious about Taylor I ask myself “is this bit about Taylor the songwriter or Taylor the public persona” and usually remove anything in the second category - basically the same thing I do with usage of passive tense in any work writing.

Those tweets seem unfair; it’s not like Taylor is the first songwriter with biographical lyrics (or like fans of Dylan or the Beatles never engaged in strained, exhaustive exegesis).

Anyway, I thought the truly unhinged fringe fan thing was to interpret every line of a Taylor song as referring to her release roadmap – like insisting “I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve” (in “Cowboy Like Me”) is about her Instagram Easter eggs, etc.

just coming here to say that ivy has been otm itt and i’m into the Album songs as they stand - haven’t dug into the rest of the anthology songs yet

My favourite tweet about this album so far was “this album is tolerate it on crystal meth” which is correct on several levels (paranoid intensity, horniness, still going way past the point it probably should have gone to bed) and I’m here for that vibe TBH.

I'd say coke tbh -- not much difference!

True but “Tolerate It” already implied a certain amount of coke consumption

ivy. your enthusiasm is wonderful and your posts about this record, I enjoy them v much (more than the actual record)

Yes seconded!

Seems awfully improbable now but I'd love to hear a Taylor Swift album produced by George Daniel.

i'm pretty sad that she & healy broke up before they had the chance to make music together, (beyond some scrapped attempts from the midnights sessions?) that should have produced excellent results

Don't want to contribute to a "backlash," cause artists need space to fail - but - production seems fair game. And the album sounds like demos to me till the very last track (Clara Bow), when a group of musicians finally get a crack at one tune...

— Damon K 🎤 (@dada_drummer) April 20, 2024

thread

it sure is!!! that's what being a woman in your mid-to-late-30s is all about

― ivy., Saturday, April 20, 2024 2:39 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

In retrospect Lover does seem to be a solid black demarcating line between both her 20s and 30s (literally) and the type of art she was motivated to make in those stages of her life. Covid lockdowns probably accelerated the transition. I wonder if we'll ever get another effervescent smash like "Cruel Summer" again? It must be thrilling as an artist to see your fans, the critical community (mostly), and the public broadly embrace you after taking such dramatic artistic shifts in just a few years' time.

xp I don't know how a person could hear some of these songs before Clara Bow and say they sound like demos.

Loved «  so high school » immediately.

I thought it was silly that ppl predicted a link w the movie Dead Poets Society, but apparently two of its stars appear in the video (so joke’s on me).

ok so i think i understand why i’ve always been underwhelmed by antonoff’s production for taylor in the past: there is a lot of swelling and pulsating, but not a lot of unique and memorable underlicks or melodic instrumental moments that you can sing. no riffs, licks, fills, or other moments of musical personality (this is also prob why damon k thinks these songs “feel like demos”). i also think that’s why some taylor fans like it—it puts the focus entirely on her voice and lyrics, sets the mood and doesn’t get in the way. but to a listener like me, who is not invested in her personal life or the grand narrative of her career, everything just washes over me and all that stands out are the show-offy lyrical moments, which clunk more than they connect. it puts an undue pressure on taylor to deliver an “anti-hero”-level melody, which she can obviously not do every time!

there were a few songs on this one that grabbed me with musical moments: the plaintive piano intro on “loml,” the chamber choir of “so long, london,” the mournful acoustic guitar figure from “clara bow.” guess what? those are all dessner’s!

still haven’t listened to evermore, maybe i should check that one

I hear so many production touches in these songs. I understand fatigue with this set of producers and things not catching ones ear, but "like demos" is a provably bad label for why that might be.

there are plenty of interesting textural and percussive touches in the production, but nearly all of the melody comes from her voice

Yeah that’s a great observation, vc. There’s a definite contrast with Jack A’s work for, say, LDR.

i understand the complaint bc antonoff's whole approach to producing a taylor swift song is primarily rhythmic, been the case since 1989, the drums are usually the lead and the synths are usually oscillating arpeggios. i also think... almost all of her arrangements are musical echoes and deconstructions of the melody she's providing? martin would occasionally interrupt her with some kind of subatomic drop i guess, and i was listening to "enchanted" the other day and missing when her music was allowed to have guitar solos. but dessner really broke open the formula

a song can have a guitar solo or 1 million words in it - it can't have both!

they made their choice. "Demos" implies choices left unmade.

can't engage with damon k's point bc i don't think i've ever agreed with him about music. i support his tirades against spotify

xpost Or the common people of Ancient Greece

i don’t agree with damon that they sound like demos, but his criticism of the lack of space left for instruments besides her voice is otm to me

vc otm about the lack of riffs in the music itself. "Fortnight" is a prime example, with the album beginning on a mere three ascending softly played notes before the pulsing synths and Taylor enter. There are little musical flourishes added throughout and Post Malone's vocals add some depth but truly the entire song hangs on her vocal melodies. "The Tortured Poet's Department" similarly begins simply, 4 bars of the beat, with a meager synth swell before Taylor comes in. Thinking back on Lover and Midnights it's very much the same, with only "You Need to Calm Down" and "Bejeweled" coming to mind as Antonoff tunes with an instrumental identity that stands shoulder to shoulder with Taylor.

And that's fine! She should be the feature, after all. But I think that's exactly what Damon means by: "The insularity of the Antonoff tracks is stifling, the sound of one man with DAW keyboard shortcuts. I mean, cello too? Let someone besides the vocalist make an instrument sing once in a while..."

I have decided that my fantasy next-Taylor-album is with someone like Jack White producing, bringing in some alt-Nashville cowriters like Maren Morris or Brandy Clark or Allison Russell. I want her to make a rock-ish Americana album, something like that.

A Tom Petty album! She should co-write with Mike Campbell.

I nominate Frank Liddell.

She needs to quadruple down, remove more melodies and other people. Make her Ricky Music.

ha i was actually thinking about the petty listening thread and how there was always a little hook from campbell or tench to latch onto even in the weaker tracks.

maybe she should get a heartbreakers for her next era? or at least a 400 unit

Why can't she keep a man (to play riffs and underlicks)?

the smallest man who ever riffed

a tattooed golden riff player

Even my Swiftie friend said that he thinks a “loud rock album” would be great. It seems like such a no-brainer move… cycle back to that Red sound… triangulate the Swiftie dads (or whatever)…

She can rock pretty well! "All Too Well" is basically a heartland rock song, and it's her epic.

Roffle

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5_q6PGu4Vl/

Even my Swiftie friend said that he thinks a “loud rock album” would be great.

I keep saying Beyonce's third album in her trilogy needs to be hard rock or metal so there you go -- joint album, three hours long.

duetting on a cover of "Station to Station"

The return of the thin black tie white noise duke
Throwing tweets
In pathetic eyes

“Strangers When We Meet” is basically a Taylor song

but not in her current mode