Taylor Swift - Speak Now (Oct 2010) - hype, anticipation &c

I bet she makes big deals out of nothing all for the sake of middling confessional songs

aside from the weird insinuation that taylor will only write songs about things that happen explicitly to her therefore she goes around constructing conflicts out of nowhere so she has subject matter to write about, she said that she writes songs about/to people because she can say things in song that she can't say in real life, because there is no "verse, second verse, bridge" in real life -- in fact she painted herself as sort of socially non-functional, which i don't actually buy, but regardless the above characterization isn't right i don't think

digressing, but it struck me the other day that for all the talk about the "purity" of her image or whatever (which i think is mostly to do with all those white dresses), there's very little moral posturing in her songs. she's supposedly from this super-christian family, but is there a single god song -- or even a single god lyric -- on any of the records? all the trespasses or redemptions are pretty secular.

I'm not a big enough fan to wade through all these posts, but has this been mentioned? Taylor Swift Reveals Song Subjects In Hidden Messages

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/ourcountry/67334/taylor-swift-reveals-song-subjects-in-hidden-messages/

kate's first couple posts in this thread are really on point - i mean i love most of the music but i do roll my damn eyes at some of the shit taylor says

xp great read; but knowing that "enchanted" is about owl city guy makes it quite a bit less enchanting.

That's exactly what prompted my post. Yeah, TMI, kinda...

For the record (in response to mordy) I would never construct some defense of Taylor based on her being generally 'subversive'.

Kate if yr interested "should've said no" is a good example of Taylor blaming the man for cheating. Also it's great.

By comparison, "better than revenge" definitely implies some kind of personal beef with the other girl above and beyond the man-stealing. I think it's really about taylor's discomfort in Hollywood-world. The fact she can't hold onto her boyfriend in that environment is just "the last straw" - what really drives the song is a sense of feeling disempowered by the new codes of social hierarchy with which she's now dealing, the sense of being thrown back into schoolyard politics at the very moment she thought she'd escaped them - writing a song is not just revenge against the other woman but against that whole world that judges her for being insufficiently stylish etc.

This doesn't make the song honorable or subversive or whatever, but there's more going on than just "blame the woman".

Like, I can imagine that Taylor used to sit in her room writing songs that play-acted how confident and socially capable she would be when she "grew up" ("Mean" is of course a throwback to this), but then you don't magically acquire these skills when you grow up, or at least if you do it's always one step behind the changing situation, you're always realising in retrospect how heirarchies etc work.

"Better Than Revenge" is really Taylor telling herself "well, actually, I should remember that i'm familiar with this territory and I've found a way to turn it to my advantage."

i've found myself most drawn to the least "interesting" songs, like "enchanted" and "last kiss"...

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Thursday, October 28, 2010 12:20 PM (5 hours ago)

yeah i don't have much to say about "enchanted" other than it's amazing, the best song on the album by a mile

xp wish i did not read that about owl city, ugh

ok that takes the zooey d comparison up one notch further, as that owl city guy is basically cut rate gibbard
doesn't anyone else see this carefully crafted ott cuteness thing as a little much?

i like taylor swift, and she's young so i'll forgive her naive gender politics, but i wish she would loosen up, like a whole lot.

For the record: this is the one and only time I'll go against my new "no meta" rule, but I'm really uncomfortable with the use of government names in this thread. There's a bunch of nastiness I would really like to leave behind, and the new screen name existed for that reason.

OK, with that out of the way, the linked "secret messages" article really puts quite a different spin on "Better Than Revenge" which does change my reading of it slightly, but leaves me with a different set of questions. Like, the actual story speculated on in the link - "pop star boy dates pop star girl, dumps her for actress and writes song about how much less threatening and less complicated he finds a girlfriend who isn't in the same line of work" - it does make her referring to that boy in question as a toy, an object, make a lot more emotional sense, that she's dismissing him for a reason, not just stripping him of agency because she's slut-blaming the breakup on the other girl. But writing a song that implicates the boy in that, like "huh, you couldn't handle an equal, so you dumped me for a bimbo" would have had me, personally, doing a little air punch and slapping Swift a high five. But that's probably about my baggage. And I'm really not sure that the song *works* without the back story, which kind of points to its failure as a piece of art.

I suppose I'll go back and try to listen to the album again with all that in mind, see if it settles differently. But my cautions about that conservative worldview she seems deeply invested in still stand, really.

if the blues undertones of "dear john" are a shot across the bow at mayer than the warm & comforting synths of "enchanted" are prob saying the opposite about big homie from owl city

*looks at his iTunes library and feels sad*

btw is being enchanted by the owl city dude really worse than falling in love w/ john mayer, taylor lautner or joe jonas? no imo

"I wanna run through the halls of my high school" > "I look at my hands and feel sad"

is one of those an owl city line?

i had no idea that camilla belle had beef with taylor or went out w/joe jonas - i just knew her as maria sharapova's former bff who abruptly disappeared from the scene at some point. that point being, according to the internet, when she hooked up with jonas, the implication being that she dumped her own best friend to do so. i quite like the way that entire story is in the lyrics to the song if you're familiar with it: none of the references the blog points out rung bells with me, but i imagine all the teenage fans who treat the jonas bros and their romances as a real life soap opera would have loved it.

that song apart, i'm sort of...both disappointed and impressed by how literal taylor swift is - by leaving so many clues in lyrics and interviews she's pretty much implying that none of the songs are made up, no poetic licence has been taken, even the details are correct.

in the light of that, it's also a real testament to her songcraft that she's able to make pretty much all her songs so relatable - that the IRL situations don't intrude enough to preclude fans from projecting their own comparable situations on to the songs.

aside from the weird insinuation that taylor will only write songs about things that happen explicitly to her therefore she goes around constructing conflicts out of nowhere so she has subject matter to write about, she said that she writes songs about/to people because she can say things in song that she can't say in real life

yeah what gets me about the suggestion that swift only writes songs about things that have happened to her, that she is 'confessional' and this means she reflects the actual truth of actual experiences -- 'speak now' is about interrupting stealing some boy away at his wedding! 'love story' is about getting married herself! these are things that have not happened! So much of the time what she's expressing is as it were an emotional truth, a truth to the feeling of this moment or the romantic ideal the song is trying to capture, but maybe not, you know, the literal truth.

haha xpost

Not to mention:

"Mary's Song" was an entire life of a romance from the viewpoint of a woman in her 80s.

"Tim McGraw" was about a romance from "three summers back" written when Taylor was about 15-16.

"Mine" is about the stresses of actually living with a boyfriend (which hasn't happened AFAIK), and having "bills to pay", which I assume actually isn't much of a concern IRL.

well i bet that she stomps around her apartment screaming at people about her bills so she can then go write a song about it

this yahoo post is A+

"Speak Now," which Swift says was inspired by worry over the pending nuptials of a friend, carries this aphoristic warning: YOU ALWAYS REGRET WHAT YOU DON'T SAY.

2069 Comments

hoooly

This has been a fascinating couple of days, not least because I'm fascinated -- I write this without condescension, believe me -- by how much of the extradiagetic stuff you guys apparently pay attention to; or, rather, at least entertaining the possibility that her songs are transcriptions of her life. I can't listen that way, especially since, in my experience, that's now how creation works: as soon as you put pen to paper or keys to keyboard, you start to embroider. It's natural. Which is why the so-called "confessional" tag immediately makes me think of that Wallace Stevens line about leaves "failing to transcend themselves."

Secondly (no one on the thread is doing this, btw, but my students can't shake the habit) looking for biographical parallels is a fool's errand; it stops analysis, e.g. "`Dear John'" is Taylor's bittersweet farewell to John Mayer." I mean, what does one gain from drawing that conclusion?

Honest question.

*that's NOT how creation works

the yahoo article is so fascinatingly thorough! i keep being reminded of this terrible article i read like two weeks ago that claimed that cheryl cole's new single was a coded love message to her rumoured current boyfriend, and that the word 'alouette' meant that she thought of him as 'her skylark', and etc etc etc.

maybe all these secret messages are a ~double bluff~ yahoo writer did you think of that??

the one thing that i think is sort of crucial about taylor's songs as it pertains to famous people is that all these guys have a chance (or already have taken their chance) to fire back! it's not an 808s & heartbreaks situation where a famous musician gets to castigate an ex who just has to grin & bear it through a song like "heartless" being all over the radio

i think taylor makes it pretty clear that the songs are about famous ppl & are auto biographical (at least to a point) -- i really didn't know much of any of the background until i read the yahoo post, but when she clearly encodes TAY in the booklet in the song that everyone thinks is about taylor lautner i don't think it's exactly an archeological dig

maybe she's playing everyone but i doubt it

is one of those an owl city line?

― sour posse (J0rdan S.), Thursday, October 28, 2010 6:33 PM (24 minutes ago)

yeah, "I look at my hands and feel sad" is an actual owl city lyric

I look at my hands and feel sad

smfh

This has been a fascinating couple of days, not least because I'm fascinated -- I write this without condescension, believe me -- by how much of the extradiagetic stuff you guys apparently pay attention to; or, rather, at least entertaining the possibility that her songs are transcriptions of her life. I can't listen that way, especially since, in my experience, that's now how creation works: as soon as you put pen to paper or keys to keyboard, you start to embroider. It's natural.

yup, i agree, but - as much as i think the yahoo guy is reaching w/r/t a few of the songs - what's surprising to me is that taylor swift herself is encouraging us to believe that the songs are transcriptions of her life

I don't know if y'all have already talked about this, but the first two pages of the liner notes are a note from Taylor. I didn't read all of it, but here's an excerpt that's pertinent to some of the stuff going on itt:

These songs are made up of words I didn't say when the moment was right in front of me. These songs are open letters. Each is written with a specific person in mind, telling them what I meant to tell them in person. To the beautiful boy whose heart I broke in December. To my first love who I never thought would be my first heartbreak. To my band. To a mean man I used to be afraid of. To someone who made my world very dark for a while. To a girl who stole something of mine. To someone I forgive for what he said in front of the whole world.

Secondly (no one on the thread is doing this, btw, but my students can't shake the habit) looking for biographical parallels is a fool's errand; it stops analysis, e.g. "`Dear John'" is Taylor's bittersweet farewell to John Mayer." I mean, what does one gain from drawing that conclusion?

Honest question.

― sandra lee, gimme your alcohol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 29, 2010 6:52 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm, I am very much in your camp of intentional fallacy alfred. one of the cardinal rules of art (or at least my consumption of it) is never trust what the artist says. like you don't need to know leopard skin pill box hat is about edie sedgwick to know that it is an absolutely eviscerating song.

and I really wish wheal dream would investigate some of taylor's back catalog, especially 'should've said no'. think lex has been otm itt when he says taylor inhabits both perspectives.

listening to "Innocent" and thinking about how it was written about Kanye West makes it way harder for me to enjoy the song

she should've just held up her mic said "u mad?" and then we could've blogged about it for a day and let it go

Imma let you finish listening.

i felt the same way about "innocent" until weirdly enough the album came out and it turned out to largely be about famous people. the song gained a more acceptable context than it had at the vmas or would have if it was on, say, 'fearless'

yeah, I really hope over time the songs will become less overshadowed by who they're actually about for me

don't get how that could take you out of it though. like, it's an odd lil bit of trivia and all, but like, is mayer-face peering through yr window when 'dear john' is on? wld it be less distracting if these were abt folks you had a higher estimation of?

I don't have a low opinion of any of them, really -- it's just, for something like "Innocent," the backstory just completely overwhelms everything for me right now. when I usually listen to songs I have no idea about the context in which they were made most of the time, so I don't have that problem. someone else's (the artist's) vision of what their song is about doesn't overwhelm my own

that wasn't completely coherent but whatever

nah i got u

I think the key problem with "Innocent" w/r/t backstory (and I assume this was covered in the debates following the live performance) is that she makes Kanye's conduct into some kind of life-altering burden of shame that he's unnecessarily carrying around with him - as if he's an unwed teen mother or a drug addict or a trying-to-reform ex-con or something. Notwithstanding the forgiveness it feels heavy-handed.\

Whereas when I (initially) assumed it actually was about someone along those lines it didn't bother me.

The diff. between "Innocent" and "Dear John" is that the latter is about her feelings, whereas the former is about the other person's feelings. It doesn't occur to me to get too concerned about the backstory of "Dear John" because that would involve me stepping into Taylor's actual (as opposed to performative) shoes. In "Innocent" she's already doing that herself so it invites the critique more readily.

you must train yourself markers

yeah but taylors projections just end up revealing more about herself

yeah but taylors projections just end up revealing more about herself

yeah, I agree, and I still like the song, I just mean it's not a song where it's easy to just disregard the backstory once you know what that backstory is.

yeah, "innocent" just seems clumsy all around to me. don't care for it at all

xpost

exactly