Taylor Swift '08: The Hype, Anticipation & Appreciation Begins Right Here

goes without saying but derogatis is garbage, completely clueless as always

I don't disagree with that re: Grammys, Dan, but if the writer is posing as preferring daring, freaky, outsiderness, whatever, then frankly he should be dismissive of the Grammys altogether and shouldn't be making it a part of his argument.

"Listen up; if I ever get my life together enough to reproduce other life forms, they will not be joining Taylor Nation – they will be brave, creative, inventive, envelope-pushing little monsters who will find a pretty, skinny white blonde girl in a white peasant shirt strolling through nature-themed screensaver-esque fantasylands singing about how “when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them” not only sappy, but also insulting to their inevitable brilliance."

This is creepy parenting and self-congratulation in the guise of "empowerment" btw.

What his whole thing seems to come down to is being butthurt that Lady GaGa didn't win the Grammy. Sorry, dude, but Grammys do not work that way.

i understand her virginal video white-princess image getting on people's nerves, but i think they're not really paying attention to the music.

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, February 9, 2010

This is OTM but I'm not sure I can blame people for where they're putting their attention. Which is to say, the video for "Fifteen" does a good job of burnishing the white princess image but really diminishes the song. It's much more affecting on the radio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb-K2tXWK4w

Also she is a lol terrible actress.

I don't disagree with that re: Grammys, Dan, but if the writer is posing as preferring daring, freaky, outsiderness, whatever, then frankly he should be dismissive of the Grammys altogether and shouldn't be making it a part of his argument.

I disagree with that pretty strenuously but can't effectively argue why without reading the article, which I'm afraid will undercut my thesis (namely, rejecting what is in the mainstream is not the same thing as rejecting the concept of the mainstream; the outsider who wants to destroy the system is a very different beast from the outsider who recognizes that his/her outsider status is a factor of circumstance and is looking for an angle to shift things back in his/her direction) and also because life is too short to read some asshole's half-baked theories on Taylor Swift; even if I don't like her at all as a singer, she's obviously a talented songwriter and her music connects with most of the people who hear it. The fact that it isn't for me doesn't make it worthless.

Dan, I agree with that, but pretending that the Grammys don't already embody white-bread-ness seems less like a political position and more like a logical error. How can you want to "destroy the system" under discussion while pretending that Norah Jones winning the Grammys is anything other than an extremely typical expression of that system?

The "system" I mean is Taylor winning the Grammys, not the idea of the Grammys as an important award.

See this is where me refusing to read this article is working against me because I don't know if he is actually positioning/championing himself as Type I rather than Type II and that is what is making you react to my post as if Type II didn't exist or if I didn't do a good job of describing Type II.

I am secretly an advertiser on that site and this is all a ploy dedicated to getting you to click through.

But if anything, I think he's a Type II who thinks he's a Type I and can't figure out why the two are in conflict.

No I think Type II does exist and you described it fine, but the writer is blurring the lines between Type I and Type II - like a revolutionary socialist seeking endorsement from Alan Greenspan for their ideas.

ha ha xpost.

Seeing Taylor live again tomorrow night!

― Tim F, Tuesday, February 9, 2010 10:27 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

jealous!

The author of that Autostraddle piece is a woman, btw.

i think the problem with the whole grammys part of the argument is that pushing gaga as some sort of transgressive outsider is lolworthy garbage by any standard

apparently the transgressive outsider is Adam Lambert?

Sidenote: I could write a whole new essay about what Adam Lambert is bringing to the table right now for male sexuality

lol

what Adam Lambert brings to male sexuality: shrieking on pitch, eyeliner

i just think it's terrible the way taylor is disempowering girls by becoming gigantically successful on her own terms and writing and singing songs about being a girl. WHAT KIND OF ROLE MODEL IS THAT?

yalls reactions seem just as retarded to me tbh

Seeing Taylor live again tomorrow night!

Pleaseeeee get a live review up on Pfork for this one! Would be awesome.

yalls reactions seem just as retarded to me tbh

― plaxico (I know, right?), Tuesday, February 9, 2010 1:56 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^

how can people listen to the horrible arrangements/production on this shit?

(and that is literally all i have to say about taylor swift. aside from wondering why she appears barefoot in every video i've ever seen.)

the arrangements are shit hot you fool, and the production is just on the right side of glossy.

amateurist do you like the production on any commercial country music?

seldom

Maxim: unless you can find something to enjoy in >50% of a particular musical style, don't waste time passing judgment on specific examples of it.

that's probably a good maxim.

"Listen up; if I ever get my life together enough to reproduce other life forms, they will not be joining Taylor Nation – they will be brave, creative, inventive, envelope-pushing little monsters who will find a pretty, skinny white blonde girl in a white peasant shirt strolling through nature-themed screensaver-esque fantasylands singing about how “when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them” not only sappy, but also insulting to their inevitable brilliance."

http://images.quizilla.com/M/MichaelJFoxFan/1048637160_lexPKeaton.jpg

one day ilm is gonna be ashamed of this period

hahaha

do ilm taylor fans think this is accurate? http://boompix.com/viewupdate.php?id=48

not meant to be a troll -- i'm sure i never would have discovered "you belong with me" if it hadn't been on the singles poll. think some coworkers know me a lot better since i've been going around singing "she wears short skirts / i wear t-shirts"

i admit i haven't read through this whole thread yet, so apologies if this is retread.

idk what "accurate" means - it's super reductive for sure. i think some of those themes show up in her music but they're done in an interesting way, and i think the people who would cite that as a reason why she's no good are basically saying there's no value to be had in songs that are ostensibly ABOUT those things, which is dumb

The song is about as anti-feminist as Buffy the Vampire Slayer is.

― Tim F, Monday, February 8, 2010 8:02 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

I reckon that chart is accurate and kinda funny, but it shouldn't be seen as some kinda KO blow (I suspect it's by a fan anyway - who else would sit through all her songs in order to work it out).

Think of those motifs like you might think of the following references in R&B songs:

- being in a club
- dropping by for a booty call
- making love until dawn

etc. etc.

And as with R&B, what marks out Taylor is not the use of particular motifs but the way in which she assembles and redeploys them, the way the songs hang together etc.

Like recently i've become quasi-obsessed with "Hey Stephen", even though it's got one of the most cliched and Taylor-Bingo-Scoring choruses ever ("'Cos I can't help it if you look like an angel / can't help it I wanna kiss you in the rain, so...") - I still feel like it's a really clever, well-constructed, interesting song.

always thought the "i can't help it" innocent shrug of a line was taylor being kinda self-aware about that - i love that song too

yeah, I figure a lot of my problem w/ Taylor is I'm just simply not interested in country or teenpop tropes

It's interesting to hear people reject music based on its lyrical tropes, though (and I mean that without being snide)---I have no interest in clubs or booty calls and while making love is awesome, going on until dawn just sounds tiring and/or drug-induced (which tbh also sounds tiring), and yet I'm interested in contemporary R&B b/c it's full of great *songs*. Ditto for Taylor Swift. If I were to reject music on its lyrical tropes I doubt I could enjoy any non-backpacker hip hop post-Chronic, and that would mean missing out on lots of great songs.

rap's lyrical tropes have changed a lot in the past 18 years and backpacker rap has plenty cliches of its own

sure, but I mean, if I wanted to avoid songs about drug dealing it would reduce the amount of rap I could enjoy by a lot---if that's wrong, let me know, b/c it's something I have to overcome when listening to rap.

right, but that's an ethical issue with a specific trope, not an issue with tropes in general

Right; I'm just saying I'd miss out on a lot of songs I love if I rejected them on their lyrical tropes.

credit or blame for this goes to nerding out on REM records in my earliest musically obsessive years, b/c the lyrics were nonsensical. My friends who grew up on classical say the same thing: they just don't notice lyrics.

I can sympathize more with rejecting contemporary country based on its production (though I don't do that at all).

Oh, I like some contemporary country, I'm just not at all invested in it.

This past year I liked "Need You Now" and "Moustache" and "Welcome to the Future" a lot

"Need You Now" is a jam, it is true. I await a version with Taylor Swift at the next CMAs.

can't really imagine her singing that one (wait weren't we mentioning booty calls as an r&b trope?)

booty calls are also a country lyrical trope! Hell, so are clubs.

but wrt Swift, she's going to be up for an image makeover with album #3 I suspect.

oh totally, she almost has to

she's probably going to have go through an awkward "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" phase

one tricky thing there is that her songwriting is so meta, which deflects attention from "her" as the one being written about. Will she turn into a more confessional songwriter? I hope not b/c I suspect her life is pretty boring, and she doesn't have a wealth of experience to draw on.