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

... 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)

yeah but it's getting awfully close to "isn't it interesting that there's no music on this record"

"underlick" is pro songwriting jargon, but i think it's a useful term to describe the secondary instrumental melodies that help a song stick in your brain. indexed's olivia rodrigo example is a good one. the example i like to give is the little sax figure during the verses in "peg." or to use one closer to home, that fun little guitar move during the verse of "it's not living (if it's not with you)," by the 1975

morrisp os supplying the hooks that he says the album.lacks, ovu

I think it's a fair argument that these same songs with a crack studio band would sound different, fuller, more interesting. Which is more a complaint about production and arrangement choices than the songwriting per se — because, right, a lot of the bits and pieces we end up loving about songs often come from that kind of input. (Thinking again of the Petty thread and how much the Heartbreakers do for all of those songs.)

sorry, I'll back off... :P

there are definitely songs on here where swift's melody is strong enough to overcome the lack of melodic character in the backing track, but not enough imo

imagine that "move to floooorida. Buy the caaaar you want." is a saxaphone if that helps

or a saxophone even. But these songs aren't less melodically interesting than an OR song where she talks the verses.

sorry, I'll back off... :P

― rendered nugatory (morrisp),

;)

sufjan

there are definitely songs on here where swift's melody is strong enough to overcome the lack of melodic character in the backing track, but not enough imo

― the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili), Monday, April 22, 2024 12:20 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

that's not swift's melody. It is an independent vocal melody used in a way that one could also use an instrument.

you could play it on a guitar, call it a riff

an underiff, say

Same with the oh wah ohs in My Boy...these are extra melodic phrases that function as hooks. They aren't the song's core melody

that's still swift's melody, but whatever. "florida!!!" does actually have a couple memorable musical moments - the five-beat pattern during the chorus is one. the first verse reminds me of "i knew you were trouble" (which has lots of little musical moments that i could sing for you right now)

Same with the oh wah ohs in My Boy...these are extra melodic phrases that function as hooks. They aren't the song's core melody

― 145 feet up in a Jeffrey Pine (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, April 22, 2024 12:38 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah the oh-whoa-ohs are absolutely part of the song's core melody

musical moment on the antonoff tracks i really love: that glittering little synthetic piano note on the chorus of "i can do it with a broken heart"

dolorous baritone guitar stuff on "fresh out the slammer," also when the drumbeat breaks down

oh man and the slide guitar in the background of the "guilty as sin" chorus

an underriff is an upper level enforcer, and reports to the riff

That baritone riff is my favorite instrumental moment.

this conversation is forcing me to hew even closer to the details in this record and and i continue to find it very rich actually

"guilty as sin" and "but daddy i love him" are my favorite of the antonoff tracks (also the countriest ones on the first disc, maybe a coincidence)

oh "but daddy" is a dessner co-write, go figure

Yeah I have the first line of the Guilty as Sin chorus pinging around my brain right now, unbidden. A hook!

"guilty as sin" and "but daddy i love him" are my favorite of the antonoff tracks (also the countriest ones on the first disc, maybe a coincidence)

― the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili), Monday, April 22, 2024 12:56 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Same! Those are keepers. And most of the Dessner tracks work really well, too. I don't mean to be all negative. About half this album is good to great, imo.

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.

― 145 feet up in a Jeffrey Pine (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, April 22, 2024 12:05 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks for giving it a listen. I probably should have used one of the many Taylor/Antonoff songs I like instead of an OR song -- GUTS was just fresh for me because I listened to it yesterday. (And I think Dan Nigro's production is far more exciting and varied than Antonoff's these days.)

otm about Nigro, after my most recent time through Tortured Poets, Spotify elected to follow it with Chappell Roan's "Red Wine Supernova" and it was a comparative blast of energy and color, sonically.

Think "But Daddy I Love Him" is one of her best tracks, ever. Obsessed with the chorus: "Screaming 'but daddy I love him! I'm having his baby! No, I'm not, but you should see your faces!'" is funny and relatable and charming. In her Pitchfork review, Olivia Horn says it's a "spiritual descendent of 'Love Story'" but musically it's the closest thing to "All Too Well" in Taylor's catalogue. It's also the perfect marriage between Swift/Dessner/Antonoff, and you can hear all of their fingerprints on it (including many lovely underlicks from Dessner). The spoken word bridge is a bit awkward ("Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies") but otherwise am completely enamored with it.

I felt like I heard an echo of Hamilton in there:

"Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I'll never see"

"What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see"

it feels really formally intentional to me that that bridge starts in this place of totally stomach-knotting resentment, like the syllables in "sanctimoniously performing soliloquies i'll never seen" dribble out one by one like drops of blood from her bitten lip, and you can feel her language loosen up at the other end of it, the less she gives a shit ("if all you want is gray for me, then it's just white noise, it's just my choice")

I always hear "they'll say I'm nazified taco bell"

Screaming 'but daddy I love him! I'm having his baby! No, I'm not, but you should see your faces!'" is funny and relatable and charming

it is?

Joe and Sal are back at HQ, watching the live feed and telling her what to say!

lol

One of the irritating aspects of the widespread insistence on analysing these songs autobiographically is how... unimaginative/unthoughtful the takes tend to be?

Like, obviously the title track is about Healy, but why do we stop thinking once we work that out?

For me the song's lyrics are interesting to me rather because they're about Taylor grappling with the difference and distance between artistic relatability and human relatability. "The Tortured Poets Department" has a population of two idiots, whose shared idiocy is both real and a mirage.

"Who's gonna know you if you not me?"

The narrator concludes that the only person who could possibly tolerate - let alone valorise - her lover's counter-productive pose as as a tortured artist, their compulsive habit of acting like each chapter of their life is a secret further verse of "Chelsea Hotel #2", is the narrator herself, for the precise reason that she does the exact same thing.

The Taylor of this song knows all this is a mirage - that she and he are modern idiots - but that doesn't necessarily empower her to step outside of it.

Our relationship to reality is reflected not in what we say but in how we act. Does it matter a jot that I can acknowledge "this ain't the Chelsea Hotel" if I then go ahead and act and write as if it is anyway?

You Won’t Believe Which Celeb Gave Leonard Cohen Head At the Chelsea Hotel

it is?

have you ever fallen for someone everyone in your life disapproved of

in love w someone u shouldnt have fallen in love with

great post tim. i love the way that song deals with projections and reality and where the two meet, layer over each other until you can’t tell where one begins and the other ends. our shared life is a movie projected on a blank wall in brooklyn. no one really got the sound going so it looks like we’re saying important things about art. really we are just talking about how underrated charlie puth is