Yo P&J, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but ILX had the greatest 2009 poll of all time! All time! (2009 ILX Trax Poll Results: TOP TEN TODAY)

But Taylor is dressed up as all kinds of characters in the video for this song (and the unconvincingness of those characters is part of the problem, as someone pointed out above - the whole issue that IRL it seems hard to buy that Taylor Swift would be the underdog in this song's scenario)!...

Setting that aside, I don't think she's as naive or unconscious of what she's doing as you suggest, but I don't know much about her beyond this one song. I think it's an interesting argument that you make, but it's not artlessness that gets to me, it's.... I dunno exactly. I have no particular hostility to country but I don't inhabit its landscape and don't know its tropes and techniques well enough to fully "get" the song maybe - I mean "Sk8er Boi" has basically the same plot and I understand that very clearly. It's also annoying in a lot of the same ways that maybe do brush up against annoying ideas of authenticity and ownership of identities - who the fuck is this snotty, conventionally pretty, boring as hell blonde chick to pretend she's an outsider LIKE I ACTUALLY WAS AT THAT AGE??! The problematics of this are probably pretty obvious, but it's definitely at least a part of my resistance to the song.

But honestly, I don't know that there's so much to resist, or that this has to be understood in terms of "why WOULDN'T someone like this song?" It's not the kind of giant-size, hook-jammed ear candy that made me eventually vote for "I Got A Feeling" even though I spent months decrying its unabashed stupidity and dippiness. It's just got the goods. The Taylor Swift song doesn't have that kind of arsenal and it also doesn't tug on my heartstrings or call forth tender memories or do any of the other things that pop does to make me FEEL things. It's just a dull song.

I voted for "You Belong With Me" #1 and I loved it orders of magnitude more than any other 2009 single. That's because of the massive power chorus, whose rush never fails to take my breath away. I can sympathize with the character but that's not important to my love of the song: more important than the underdog character is the throbbing of its narrator's longing, from verse to chorus to verse to bridge, the way a crush ebbs and flows each day, the logic of its hopelessness only driving it further toward climax. I don't know why you don't want me, she says: would she write this song for you? This chorus, that's how strong my love is. But you can't make someone love you, hence the resignation of the title each time.

you don't need to know exact sales figures, but you were aware that she's a pretty big deal, right?

btw is there anything else that sold a million copies on iTunes this year that isn't on the list?

It's not the kind of giant-size, hook-jammed ear candy that made me eventually vote for "I Got A Feeling"

it's pretty hook-jammed really -- i've played the video for my 5-yr-old son and my 60-plus parents and gotten positive responses from both ends of the spectrum (plus my contemporaneous sister) -- so i don't think it's a problem of inaccessibility. which doesn't mean everyone has to like it, obviously. but by whatever objective standards there might be out there, it's really a pretty huge pop song. (and it uses one of the all-time great chord progressions, a variation on the G-Em-A-D, except basically it just runs it in reverse -- this is like Pop 101, but it's done well.)

i can think of one song

Much as we like Taylor Swift in this house the growing connections to Avril Lavigne need to be recognised.

really if you add up what she owes to avril and shania, she's practically half-canadian.

haa

(btw do a search for "D-A-Em-G" and "taylor swift" and you might think she maybe needs to learn some more chords for the next record...)

people care about chords???

People who play guitar, etc. do. Some chord progressions are used over and over again in pop.

(and rock and punk and blues and...)

ya totally that progression is just beggin for some Cmaj7#5 action

But Taylor is dressed up as all kinds of characters in the video for this song (and the unconvincingness of those characters is part of the problem, as someone pointed out above - the whole issue that IRL it seems hard to buy that Taylor Swift would be the underdog in this song's scenario)!...

Yeah but I think you've misunderstood me - I'm not saying that Taylor doesn't play dress-ups herself, but that the act of dressing up isn't central to her artistic personality. I was invited to a party last weekend where the theme was "Dress up like Lady Gaga". And while LG is an obvious artist to do this for there's a sense in which it applies to a lesser extent to most pop stars. There's a projection of a real sense of style, even if it's not one you'd consciously want to imitate. A party of that sort simply would not work with Taylor Swift. Taylor still conveys the image of a girl going to other dress-up parties. In fact when I saw her live she played with costume very enthusiastically but simplistically, starting off in a dowdy t-shirt and jeans but that ripping them off to reveal a (rather cheap looking) glittery gold sequined slip dress - this was charming but the implication was that she was acting being a pop star, that the entire manouevre was as ridiculous and cheesy and fun as if one of her fans had pulled the same stunt in a karaoke performance.

Underneath those unconvincing dress-up games (and her video clips fall into that category), Taylor portrays a kind of aggressive normality, and fans relate to her in that way, by almost denying that she's a pop star, collapsing the distance between her and them. I see lots of fan comments to the effect of "this song describes my life / happened to me / could be about me!" And while this is a not-uncommon thing for pop fans to say I reckon it characterizes fans' relationship with Taylor to a much greater than extent than can be said about any other big pop star of the moment. And even when people talk about her "craft" as a songwriter, it's with an understandable air of surprise - instinctively, Taylor's songs don't feel like the work of an artist who has skills that you or I don't.

Lady Gaga is never an artist about whom you could say "this describes me life" - her (best) songs rather stake their claim on not possibly being by or about anyone else, they exist within her aesthetic self-construction.

Avril is actually a good point of reference for Taylor, except that Avril also taps (tenuously, skeptics will want to qualify) into a kind of punk-derived heritage of "saying all the things I can't say" - such that i reckon an Avril fan is more likely to perceive Avril as being an inspiration, as setting an example, i.e. not me. Whereas Taylor is like the narrator inside your head who can explain your life in a way that seems clear and neatly articulated and romantic and a little bit wise and also rhyming.

And again this is part of what may be the obstacle for people - the fact that Taylor's music encourages identification with the narrator means that if you feel a strong sense of distance from her characters then you're gonna be turned off, whereas the idea of distance from the character wouldn't be an issue (or might even be a positive aspect) in your relationship with other pop stars.

people care about chords???

i know, talking about "music" is boring even on ilm. but if you google even that chord progression without her name, you get three taylor swift songs in the first 20 results. which is sort of interesting. especially since one of them is a 6-year-old better than ezra song i'd never even heard of that she apparently did a cover of at some point. doesn't mean anything in particular, but i think chords are at least as important as lyrics. but even people who talk about music don't talk about them much because they don't have a good vocabulary for it.

taylor no.1 worth it for all the head scratching and grousing

xp- also just, chords are what you make of them and are totally uninteresting until they've been coloured over with melody. reducing a song to its lyrics is unfair, but at least lyrics are their own individual and separate sub-compartment of a song that can be looked at as such. saying "oh that's just a 1-4-5" is meaningless, because chords alone don't say anything about anything. it's like saying "nice white shirt with letters on it" or something.

great post, tim

i want to build on this a bit

Underneath those unconvincing dress-up games (and her video clips fall into that category), Taylor portrays a kind of aggressive normality, and fans relate to her in that way, by almost denying that she's a pop star, collapsing the distance between her and them.

i think taylor is so successful because her music intrinsically breaks down barriers -- or rather, doesn't build up barriers -- that the modern pop fan wants to bypass. even though there is obviously a place for an epic pop star like gaga in the world, i think by and large we want to feel like we are our pop stars' -- and celebrities' -- friends. this is partly why twitter has been able to carve out a huge niche (aside from the breaking news aspect) and it's why tmz is massively powerful in the entertainment world and it's why ustream exists. we want full access to our celebrities, and taylor is able to convey that better than anyone in her music. even though there is a kind of groundswell growing against her reactions to awards, i imagine that it's remarkably endearing to her core fans to see her in shock (or acting in shock, w/e) when she wins a big award, just like it's endearing to see gaga do what she does to people who value that aesthetic in their pop stars.

Yes, I'd cosign all of that, pretty much. In a lot of ways Taylor comes across like one of those artists whose fanbase is based almost entirely around their blog/myspace/facebook/youtube amateur clips, like that plucky dude from Shortbus - only on a massive scale, but without actually losing the sense of intimacy implied by that model.

OTOH I dont know that we want this "by and large" - more that there's space in our pop hearts for this as well as for gaga, as well as for beyonce etc. In the same way that Taylor herself can simultaneously value the unapproachable boy and the totally approachable best-friend-forever. I think Taylor fills one of several roles we look to pop stars to fill.

Tim, it's interesting because Taylor Swift is a country crossover star, and I think what you're describing is how country stars are generally recognized by their audiences. Like, what you're saying would have applied to Garth Brooks or Shania Twain (or, reaching further back, Dolly Parton). They all have a "deflationary" sense of stardom. One thing that's different about Swift is that she seems to be more playful with her celebrity; she's aware of her stardom and her songs tend to have a kind of myspace openness to them, like, we're all, including me, the narrator, looking in at my life. This is what makes "Tim McGraw" such a weird (and great) song: she's looking back at her past as though her life is alien even to herself (because our past "us"es are like that to us, in memory), so that we're as much voyeur into her life as she is. And in "You Belong With Me" we all know that a star like her is hard to imagine as the nerd band girl getting ignored by the cheerleader: she's larger than life, how could she be ignored? But the song is aware of this; it's winking at us. In this regard she's more like a pop star of the now than a normal country star like Brooks or Twain.

BTW, people who find it hard to believe the narrative in YBWM might be surprised to know that Taylor's already done two songs with pretty much the exact same narrative ("Teardrops On My Guitar", "Invisible" - albeit both are weepies) and another two songs that at least fit the narrative in part ("Stay Beautiful", "Hey Stephen"). Which makes me think that she's either had this experience at least once or she's seriously inspired by the idea of it. (all of these bar "Teardrops On My Guitar" are favourites of mine, incidentally, which may be the hidden-inadvertent-gay-teenager-subtext at work? That doesn't occur to me when I'm listening to them, but it's a neat explanation...)

ha ha xpost!

Euler I agree with all of that - I tend to think also that Taylor's songwriting is a bit less formalist than the really big country-pop stars (Garth, or the Garth I'm familiar with at any rate, Shania, Faith Hill say) - which it allows it to seem both more "confessional" and also seem more self-aware. Shania, for example, didn't really invest her songs with that same air of specificity - where her songs get specific, it's metaphorical, one detail standing in for a host of other possible details (Man shirts! Short Skirts! ....So, you're a rocket scientist?). Whereas with Taylor the details matter.

Right, it's the mix of confessional writing that somehow seems "true" (which is pretty par for the course for country songwriting, especially female country songwriting) with self-awareness (which is more an element of pop songwriting nowadays), that's characteristic of Taylor Swift's songwriting.

Off topic, but can someone link the "best of 2000-04" poll results? I'm curious about those results.

One more "results" just for good measure.

poll hit-rate over the years for me...the no of songs i actively like-to-loved, or have basically +ve feelings towards:

2004 - 35/50
2005 - 33/50
2006 - 26/50 (ugh can't believe "crazy" beat "what you know" this year)
2007 - 25/50
2008 - 32/50
2009 - 35/50

I found this, but nothing further: End of a half-decade: ILM kinda official Top 100 Albums & Tracks Poll - VOTING OVER (thank heavens)

Oh wait... yay! ILM Top 100 2000-2004: ALBUMS

ILM Top 100 2000-2004: TRACKS

I love old ILM. Anybody want to do something like this for the 05-09 poll?

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/

wouldn't be that hard

COnclusions from this poll: I have been living under a rock/in a different universe for the whole of 2009. Other than Lisztomania, Animal Collective, the XX and a couple of dubstep tracks, I hadn't even heard/heard of the majority of things here. Not even Taylor Swift or 1901 or anything. The 2005 poll is the same - I haven't knowingly heard one track in that year's top ten.

the 2005 top 10 is

1. Amerie - 1 Thing
2. Girls Aloud - Biology
3. Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone
4. Three 6 Mafia ft. Young Buck, 8Ball & MJG - Stay Fly
5. Madonna - Hung Up
6. Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl
7. Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx - Gold Digger
8. Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch
9. The Game ft. 50 Cent - Hate It Or Love It
10. Robyn - Be Mine

YOU ARE ACTUALLY TAKING THE PISS. not one of those tracks??!!!

You and me both, matey xp. That's kind of exactly what's cool about it though - a little bit of passion can turn the whole thing upside down. Trax week is a massive boon for me getting 2009 2010 off to a great start. If we had 10,000 people participating, most of the new stuff would get lost in the noise.

the only act on the 09 list i hadn't heard of before this was washed out

i mean...it doesn't take much more than basic "paying attention to other people" to have heard of a majority of these artists, even if you don't care for the music

how is there someone on earth that hasn't heard "gold digger"

or "since u been gone"?? i think it should be an automatic perma ban from the board if you haven't heard that song, sorry

did they play exclusively crazy frog over there in 05 or what? sheesh

Lex - actually now I come to think of it, I've heard Gold Digger and Hollaback Girl. Might have heard the others, but not knowingly.

(Too busy listening to Feels I guess :-p )

not sure you're taking account of the fact that some people have 'other stuff to do', lex

xpost
Still, even if a lot of the stuff in this list isn't my usual taste, I'm glad to be checking it out. My TV aerial's been broken for most of the year and there's no radio in my office so a lot of mainstream stuff goes right over my head. I realise this can be quite amusing to a lot of people I know who see me as a music nerd.

Ismael OTM - I don't stop listening to music, but there's a lot of stuff out there i know i AM going to like, that I don't have time to check out stuff I probably won't. As such, I've gone and downloaded Taylor Swift's album out of intrigue more than anything else, because otherwise I'd have written her off as the next Jewel (or what have you). It's very handy having these polls.

And for once I'm going to applaud Lex for being open minded enough to give things like AC a go, even if he knows he's going to hate it.

Another thing to take into account is that I listen to a lot of old music. Along with dubstep, I was rediscovering the Beatles back catalogue for instance - something I know Lex definitely didn't. Anyway, enough defensiveness... On with 2010.

the sad thing is, when i first checked out an AC-related thing - the panda bear album from the other year - i really expected to like it, given how people were talking about it, and then THE HORROR :(

I don't like Panda Bear's album much tbh. The only thing I think you might perhaps have an infinitesimally small chance of enjoying is the Prospect Hummer EP they did with Vashti Bunyan. AC, I feel are a band who take a while to click, and never will for a lot of people.

Another conclusion I've made from this poll is that a lot of people invest way too much in artists' singing abilities - their ability to sing "well" - almost to a Simon Cowell degree of fussiness. Like the Girls track or Joanna Newsom - sure they're not Mariah Carey, but whatever happened to allowing for idiosyncratic vocals that suit a particular kind of music? It's like moaning about Nirvana because Kurt Cobain doesn't sing like an angel. The Girls track wasn't a great song - it was flimsy, fairly formulaic, like a Lemonheads b-side or something. But complaining about the singing seems a bit redundant to me.

Listening to Since U Been Gone - I've heard this before I think. It's absolutely the opposite of what I'd ever want to listen to for fun. Sounds like Pink or Alanis-style commercial pop/rock dressed up in punk clothes. Sorry, not my thing at all.

It's not really dressed up much.. just Max Martin doing his thing. (He did it even better with The Veronicas' "4 Ever")

even better?

oh my!

fuck an 05-09 because Since U Been Gone would probably win it (if not YBWM)

not a fan but those do shed some light. (Kogan and Bradley excluded for overreaching and making me want to vomit.)

whatever happened to allowing for idiosyncratic vocals that suit a particular kind of music?

idk, there are plenty of "idiosyncratic" vocals which seem widely accepted on ilm: fever ray is the most obvious example here, shakira sounds like a hiccuping goat (in a good way!), taylor swift is far from a virtuoso; and more generally, the likes of björk/tom waits/pj harvey rarely get the sort of mockery that girls and joanna newsom did here. maybe dan can pinpoint a more technical reason, but to me joanna newsom (and devendra banhart, lykke li et al) seem really affected and mannered while karin dreijer and björk seem less forced and more natural; while someone like swift makes up for her technical limitations with a conversational tone and great phrasing. i guess it's a case-by-case basis.