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

Well yeah, that's when I got on board (and then bought Red, loved it)... but it was a transitional phase. I'm splitting hairs I guess!

This is the same conversation people have about Outkast, where they released a series of platinum selling albums but a lot of pop people didn’t hear about them until “Ms. Jackson” or even “Hey Ya”

For Taylor it’s less clear to me. She does have many hits that even a non-swiftie like me can recognize: “shake it off”, “i knew you were trouble”, “blank space”, “bad blood”, “style”, “never getting back together”…. So the hits are definitely there… but I don’t think any of those were as globally massive as a “Billie Jean” or “Uptown Funk”.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Friday, April 26, 2024 10:19 AM (fifty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Totally hear what you're saying but comparing anyone to literally the biggest pop star of all time isn't really fair. I'd compare her career and popularity to someone like Billy Joel, perhaps.

Also "Uptown Funk" just happens to sound a lot like "Billie Jean" and we should probably be thankful that Taylor has never tried to make a funk pop record with Mark Ronson

Yeah Taylor is “career artist” in a way that hasn’t really existed since last century.

i feel like "shake it off" is as ubiquitous as any song in the 21st century as far as pop goes. up there with "uptown funk". non-fans might not know who did it, but they know it. maybe i shouldn't be speaking for the entire country though. fuck it, i'll speak for them. they know that damn song. and "all about that bass" as well.

and "seven nation army" obviously...

Yeah I guess “shake it off” is that song in her discography.

Also agree on her being closer to a Billy Joel than a Michael Jackson. She seems to be valued more (and I think she also prioritzes - as a “singer songwriter” than as a “popstar”.

She’s a little bit of that a little bit of the other but speaking in general terms I mean.

Swift could do a good cover of “New London Boy.”

or "Left To My Own Devices"

Aired on November 1st, 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAhAz7JU0dg

Haha – see, that's a great pull ("Over the past month...")

Except it posits a preexisting superfandom that the adults are responding to

I guess my point re: 1989 was that's when she became seen as a true "pop star," rather than a primarily Country-identified artist (at least in the US) with big crossover hits

My point was that Red is when that happened, although I suppose it took the extent of the Red album cycle (er, era) to solidify that image in people's minds. And certainly there was symbolism in her moving from Nashville to New York in the months before 1989 was released (and "Welcome to New York" being the first track on that album).

For sure, I agree on Red – as I said, it may be splitting hairs differentiating Red from 1989 (even though "Shake It Off" is when the true culture shift happened, as that SNL sketch illustrates)

This may be one of those cases where everyone agrees on the facts, we're just looking at it in different ways... or whatever

I bow to no one in my love for 80s PSBs, but cannot think of another band who get such an easy ride from the press. Half of their new album, like pretty much everything they've released for the last 20 years, is absolute cringey codswallop, yet they still get treated like peerless pop gurus. "Why don't they write songs like they did in the 80s?" What an insufferable old buffoon!

That said, I would like to hear TS do a version of I Want A Dog, just listing different breeds of cat.

or maybe I Want an Ex and list those

Yeah as a Taylor fan more or less from the jump — liked the singles on the first album, went all-in on Fearless — I do think 1989 marked a real shift. Its way was certainly paved by Red, but 1989 is the first one where it felt like EVERYONE was talking about/aware of her at once. A situation that has only become more pronounced since.

fearless/1989/folklore are the real flashpoints in her career

For those w/Amazon music, apparently there's a "Track by Track" feature where she discusses the album...track by track.

she’s like Bruce Springsteen

Uptown funk sounds more like “give it to me baby” to me

Taylor does seem like Springsteen yeah, i mean just absolutely massive and an artist known for storytelling and perhaps vibes and iconography moreso than huge hooks. which isn't to say neither have hooks, but for example i wouldn't say Springsteen beats Petty or Mellencamp in that department, much like TS doesn't beat some of her contemporaries. as a late-blooming Springsteen fan i don't think it's an insult even if i'm not a TS fan. (i'm convince-able in terms of her overall work, though this new album is distinctly unconvincing imo.)

tennant does say that "shake it off" is no "billie jean" so i took his point to be more about pop craft from his pop nerd perspective than ubiquity

Yeah “shake it off” is embarrassing compared to “billie jean” but most top 10 songs are tbh.

Half of their new album, like pretty much everything they've released for the last 20 years, is absolute cringey codswallop, yet they still get treated like peerless pop gurus. "

But is it any good?

It’s worth noting that “Shake It Off” is not even particularly good. I think any discussion of Taylor’s “pop craft” that uses that song is a barometer is necessarily going to find her wanting - about the nicest thing I can say of it is that it’s better than Mary Lambert’s “Secrets”.

“Gorgeous” and “Call It What You Want” are probably my favorite of her songs in terms of what I think of as “pop craft”… though neither was even a single, so I’m probably making a category error.

Area musician sells albums, is popular:

https://variety.com/2024/music/news/taylor-swift-first-week-figure-units-tortured-poets-department-1235984882/

This is ludicrous in 2024:

Streaming aside, “Poets Department” sold 1.914 million copies in its first week. That is the third-biggest sales figure for any album since SoundScan began collecting accurate sales data for the industry back in 1991.

Which gets to something I've been thinking about this album in particular, even more than prior Swift albums: It has felt like a cultural event in a way that few albums in my lifetime have. The day it came out, I heard back-to-back songs from it on our local Top 40 station. I went to a housewarming party at a friend's house the next night — this was all people in their 30s-60s — and the host had it on. It felt like a quarter or more of my Facebook friends were posting about it, including lots of people who don't usually post about music. The media of course was full of it. The University of Tennessee picked that week to announce a new media course in Taylor Swift studies. It's remarkable — the closest thing I've experienced to my dad's report of the ubiquity of Sgt. Pepper's when it came out. Regardless of the quality of the album, she's at a zenith here that only the very smallest number of extremely famous people have ever touched.

And all this for an album about fucking Matty Healy ...

Yeah, even my son wanted to hear the new album, but in secret, because his friends all hate Taylor Swift

Tortured Album-Equivalent Units

It's remarkable — the closest thing I've experienced to my dad's report of the ubiquity of Sgt. Pepper's when it came out.

These are both kind of specialized cases and audiences, but a couple things that come to mind are the first few Eminem albums were inescapable on release (getting blasted at parties, coming out of every car etc.), and--for Rock audiences anyway--Radiohead from '98-'03

Yeah, but exactly like you say, those had boundaries. They weren’t holding midnight Eminem silent discos at brewpubs or Radiohead yoga classes, which both happened here in the last week (and probably everywhere).

OK, children, let me tell you about inescapability:

- 1984, when every other kid in my middle school was wearing a Bruce Springsteen Born In The USA T-shirt
- 1987, when Pink Floyd's reunion tour squatted in cities for a year (3 shows in Montreal, 2 in Cleveland, 3 in Toronto, 4 in Chicago, 3 in New York, 3 in New Jersey, 5 in Los Angeles, 4 in Oakland, and on and on)
- 1991, when Metallica's Black Album and Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion records were released a month apart (Metallica in August, Guns N' Roses in September) and record stores were mobbed at midnight

They weren’t holding midnight Eminem silent discos at brewpubs or Radiohead yoga classes,

Neither of those things existed at the times in question, but now I feel robbed that they didn't.

Kid Namaste

I think an unusual feature of Swift fandom is its age range elasticity - even relative to examples like Bruce Springsteen.

Before the most recent album's release, a 48 year old admin assistant at work was flooding our slack board with breathless hype and anticipation, and then yesterday when I visited my sister, my five year old niece was wearing a Taylor t-shirt.

Neither of these things seems remarkable, which itself is notable.

It means that people's lives are more likely to intersect with awareness of the fandom, rather than it being something that happens around them but which they can ignore. This runs contrary to the general trend towards cultural stratification we otherwise see in the present moment across basically all forms of popular culture.

Yeah I participated in Bruce-in-the-USA mania, I saw the tour, the whole thing. He was monumental. Ditto MJ and Prince, though none of them were solitary on the landscape. They were giants among giants. And still somewhat generationally constrained, because everyone over 60 was still from the pre-rocknroll era. Bruce spanned two generations, but not four.

Which is not to say that Taylor Swift is more famous than Bruce (or Jesus), but she is singular in some ways.

Arguably TS's ubiquity is part-premised on a slowdown or diminution in generational bracketing.

The generation gaps ain't what they used to be

Also I don't think Springsteen and Prince were equivalent to Thriller mania, nothing has been imo

Thriller’s first single was a duet with PM
Torturted Poets first single is a duet with PM

But what is her Billie Jean?

Charlie Puth

What is her “Bobby Jean”?

(I guess it’s “Dorothea”…)

"seven"