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 really wanted to buy a subscription to "Taylor Swift Magazine" until I finally parsed the headline

I figured it reviewed boyfriends

The Paste review is pretty badly written for a review about how badly written the album is. I wouldn't put my name on it either!

Tim F that is an inspired thought tbh

No byline fear at Pitchfork (I like the review, fwiw… I think it’s measured).

Her melodies feel staid, like they are made to fit the music, rather than the other way around.

I thought we all agreed the music was built entirely around her dominant vocal melodies to a fault

we fucking wished the vocals played off a riff or underlick 5 minutes ago

Well the music is also "staid," that's part of the problem (IMO). But it's the lyrics that feel "dominant" to me, served up on lukewarm beds of production, without her typical attention to (knockout) melodies.

Perhaps she’s after a sort of text painting—an effort to reflect the all-consuming, uncontainable nature of her sordid affair in the shape of the music itself.

^like, this is another line that connects w/me – and again, it can be read as not necessarily (wholly) negative, but as an interesting thing for an artist to try.

I don’t know what I expected from that review, but … this is just a day I never thought would come. A 6.6!

Is this a New Jersey?

Midnights would probably be the New Jersey in this scenario?

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

GQ's never getting that Taylor cover now!

i like that the score is 6.6.6

Must be exhausting always rating the Antichrist

"Execute order 6.6!"

Hopefully the swifties wont be sending ancient curses to the reviewer this time

They sure are on Twitter.

Doesn't matter how many editorial staffs you lay off, you will still be held to0 account for Beyonce reviews from 2008.

This feels concisely OTM (and doesn’t even necessarily have to be a criticism if you don’t want it to be)…
― rendered nugatory (morrisp), Sunday, April 21, 2024 11:55 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I thought we all agreed the music was built entirely around her dominant vocal melodies to a fault

― 145 feet up in a Jeffrey Pine (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, April 22, 2024 12:07 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

we fucking wished the vocals played off a riff or underlick 5 minutes ago

― 145 feet up in a Jeffrey Pine (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, April 22, 2024 12:10 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The music can be devoid of riffs and "underlicks," and she can still have written the vocal melodies to the music. In particular, her vocal phrasings (the "clipped, staccato" thing Zoladz noted) are obviously influenced by and written around Antonoff's synth patterns.

And I think this gets at the big change that's occurred in her songwriting in the last few years: she used to write the songs on guitar first, even the ones that she'd work with producers to turn into electro-pop smashes (see: 1989 demos); now it seems almost certain that Antonoff and Dessner are bringing her backdrops -- unadorned ones, in the case of Antonoff -- and she's writing the melodies second. I don't think it's a coincidence that one of the most earwormy tracks on the album for me is "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys," one of the two Swift solo writes.

Must be exhausting always rating the Antichrist

― Never fight uphill 'o me, boys! (President Keyes), Monday, April 22, 2024 8:34 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Or the Antihero

I still haven’t listened to this album - probably never will tbh - but that pitchfork review is actually good.

I was thinking of VC's point about the riffs/underlicks while listening to GUTS this weekend and just marveling in how both Rodrigo's melodies and the music are jam packed with ideas and hooks that perfectly complement one another. "Get Him Back!" alone has more musical ideas than the first 6 tracks of TTPD combined.

I like the Pfork review and basically agree with it; on "the album" alone I'd bump it up in the low 7's, but it's fair to review "The Anthology" in toto since she's the one who packaged it that way.

Has this been discussed here?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLuByf0WAAAKRFv?format=jpg&name=large

I have never hear of "underlicks" in my life what are people talking about?

When you fall short of licking your lover's armpits, silly

We might just get away with it
The altar is my pits
Even if it's a false god

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1BDCbRWqNHfaaF6xVdWCNb?si=4Kqh1DkYSdOYMFzKWCcvhw&pi=u-cjuY4uoFTM6k

Underlicked and Overpaid: Christian Rock of the late 80s

Believe VC was just referring to licks that are occurring "under" the primary riff/theme of the song that are assisting in the melodic construction of the song. Listen to "Get Him Back!" The main riff is most easily heard on the last chorus when it's played on acoustic guitar (2:33) but is played throughout the song on the vamping bass in verse 1 then synth/electric guitar (I think?) in the chorus and verse 2 (side note: this use of three or four different instruments to carry the main riff adds interest to the song, making it more exciting and dynamic). But there is this descending 3-note lick on either synth or slide guitar that repeats many times throughout the song first at :15 and :27 that pushes the songs melody forward.

Compare this to "The Tortured Poet's Department." Can you identify a riff? I can't. There's the drums, the chords played on synths, the shimmering repeated synths...It's all backdrop. According to the credits Jack also plays a cello but I can't hear it.

Curious what others think about the swearing because I feel like I must be old man yelling at cloud but it really bothers me how clunky many of the swears are. I don't know how to delineate the songs where I think it totally works ("The Man," "Tolerate It," "Karma" all come to mind) and those where it feels utterly silly and superfluous ("Florida, go on fuck me up" is a real lyric on this album???).

She sounds like a person who allowed herself to use swear words not long ago. Awkward, yeah, but charming.

and believe me this Floridian gets "Florida, go on fuck me up!" in his bones.

I think "Gazing at me starry-eyed
In your Jehovah's Witness suit
Who the fuck was that guy?" works, but it still sounds like an OR line.

"Clara Bow" is such a stunning closer and sounds like a new direction from the Folklore/Evermore Dessner tracks. Love ending the album on that verse, especially.

I once joined a high school friend's spring break family trip to Destin. We were painfully sunburned, pulled a 'hey mister' and drank a case of warm beer behind a hearse parked in the hotel garage.

Compare this to "The Tortured Poet's Department." Can you identify a riff? I can't. There's the drums, the chords played on synths, the shimmering repeated synths...It's all backdrop.

You can also just think in terms of hooks. "Fortnight" is track 1 and the lead single, and it's hookless. Compare w/"I Forgot That You Existed" (Track 1 on the would-be "middling" album Lover), "The 1"... any of her singles...

... you keep making this point about it being hookless

Soon we'll have a pink cursive neon "Florida, go on fuck me up" on the wall of a spring-break bar.

I think that Swift is capable of writing hooks, and so their absence here is a choice rather than a failing. She is maybe not writing to our specific preferences anymore.

"i love you / it's ruining my life" isn't a hook?

when she varies the second verse so that it kind of narcotically slows down "all my mornings are mondays stuck in an endless february / i took the miracle move-on drug / the effects were temporary"... idk, these things are fucking stuck in my head

(xpost to ivy lol we identified the same hook)

I don't think the album's hookless at all, I don't think she knows how to write without hooks. They are not titanium hooks, some of them are the perfunctory stick-on kind you buy 6 to a pack, but I feel like there are hooks of various dimensions and durability throughout. (e.g. on "Fortnight" the "I love you/It's ruining my life" repeated coda — hook!)

It's funny that you could make a lot of these complaints about Folklore, which is where she first went full-on murmur-pop. I agree that Folklore has a stronger set of songs, but the melodic and songwriting approach is virtually identical. But also, a lot of people's complaints about this album were my complaints about Midnights, so we all just pick and choose which Taylor vibes we prefer I guess. I would like to hear her do other stuff, and I think she will, but I don't mind her Adult Contemporary phase. She's a contemporary adult.

I hear many hooks but few guitars, which seems to be the underlicking issue

I didn't enjoy the Olivia Rodrigo song, but the repeating synth line was played on a guitar at one point. Did the guitarist make their instrument sing? Only Rick Beato can say.

i think the "who's gonna knowww you like me" chorus on the title track is one of the most beautiful and ethereal things she's ever written, completely eradicates midnights from my memory and replaces it with something with actual stakes and dynamics. that and the "but daddy i love him" bridge, and the chorus of "guilty as sin?"... these constitute some of her best melodies imo, though i admit with the latter i am more partial to swift in amy grant slow jam mode than anyone else on earth

... you keep making this point about it being hookless

sorry, I don't mean to repeat myself (it's the first time I've mentioned hooks! just building on Indexed's point about comparing the music to other things specifically)