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)

okay, stupid is harsh. I get that it's a necessary evil, but trailers are made by marketing firms separate from the filmmakers most of the time, and they're designed to highlight the most populist/marketable aspects of a film. e.g. Master and Commander is far more than Russel Crowe shouting and staring at exotic women but you wouldn't know that from the trailer.

trailers often willfully misrepresent a film just to get people to go see it. on top of that, there's the whole 'not what movie's about but how it's about it' thing.

yeah, but once a musician or a filmmaker has consented to letting marketing machinery control their project's public image, you can't just fully blame the image on the machinery -- it's just working with the raw material the artist handed them, or convinced the artist to go along with

i'm not fully blaming it on the machinery, but 'consenting' is often 'we're paying for this, do what we say'. lots of filmmakers have aired their dissatisfaction with how their films have been promoted, but that's the price you pay.

swift is a commodity, and it isn't surprising that she's sold in a pretty standard form.

I love "Fancy" but listening to it w/o leading right into "Right Side of my Brain" sounds like absolute torture. Those two are just inseparable to me

supposed to be a video being made for 'Fancy' wasn't there? curious to see how the music would be cut at the end if so (more drums and piano!).

The last trailer I saw that wholly misrepresented what the movie was about was this one:

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi234684697/

really not as awesome a date movie as that trailer would lead you to believe

lolling at that.

The problem is that we're talking about a pop single here, so if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie, right? Like, I think having watched the video for "You Belong To Me," I've also heard the song "You Belong To Me." The marketing is part-and-parcel with the content and it seems sort of hopeless to separate them and say "Oh yeah, everything that's grating and stupid about that song is an artificial thing that The Company put on there."

"I know we've been dating for a few months, do you want to go see this awesome romantic comedy with Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia? Maybe afterwards we can hit some parties and get shitfaced!"

20 minutes into the movie, part 2 of the plan seemed like a VERY BAD IDEA

not seen this then

xpost

you're right doctor, in that you do hear the song, but being critical of it based on the video is the wrong way to go about it imo

xpost

er - "You Belong With Me" that is. Obviously, the Carly Simon song is an entirely different matter.

"Fancy" video was cancelled btw

hahahaha wtf at that trailer

shit, i take that back. that is pretty much the perfect representation of that film.

basically I'm sitting here like "where is the Rifftrax"

Dan, you don't know about the cult of "The Room"?
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20246031,00.html
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-room,25723/

i'm not fully blaming it on the machinery, but 'consenting' is often 'we're paying for this, do what we say'. lots of filmmakers have aired their dissatisfaction with how their films have been promoted, but that's the price you pay.

swift is a commodity, and it isn't surprising that she's sold in a pretty standard form.

― Freddy 'The Wonder Chicken' (Gukbe), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 12:11 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

now, artists don't tend to get into the "the label made me do it" blame game until years later, and even then only if it backfires or they undergo a big change of direction, so it'll be a while before we have any idea if that's the case with Taylor -- but it seems like you're working with the premise that she's being willfully misrepresented by her media presence by being pretty and glamorous in videos. sure, she'd be really average-looking and maybe even tomboyish if she was just another high school/college student, but i don't know what game you're running here other than desperately trying to counter the (admittedly nonsensical) "she's too good-looking to play the shy nerd" argument.

As one of the people offering that argument, let me say that the problem isn't so much that she's too good looking to play the shy nerd, but that overall, the portrayal of shy nerd is really unconvincing. It just dosn't ring true...dunno whether that's because they just stuck big glasses on her (blame the video production) or because the song just doesn't have the much-hyped specificities that would make it feel convincing as a situation that happened to actual people not currently playing roles in a high school movie or an unimaginative music video.

i mean she's a young skinny blonde who's being "sold in a pretty standard form" as... a young skinny blonde. it's not like they got her a tit job and a performing alias, they just got her some good hair and makeup people and some pretty dresses. (xpost)

my problem is really arguments like doctor casino's right there: what does the quality of the video have to do with the quality of the song itself?

i just don't think 'this song is shit because look at her!' is very good argument.

oh dan, you need to see the room

if you guys recall this started as a discussion of essentially the authenticity of taylor writing an outcasty teenage pop song and whether it felt "real" enough or whether it was too "generic" and some ppl were using evidence from her actual life and other people were using evidence such as that video

so um yeah no one ever said it was a bad song because look at her

it's a bad song because I don't belong with her! she's not my type at all!!

hahahah

yeah but you know what i mean

xposts

xpost cosign the lols.

I love "Fancy" but listening to it w/o leading right into "Right Side of my Brain" sounds like absolute torture. Those two are just inseparable to me.

― Moreno, Wednesday, February 3, 2010 4:35 PM (40 minutes ago)

i can see how someone might think this but nah. fancy is the heart of this album, yall are just blinded by the light

I think I just hit a wall of Taylor fatigue by the time "You Belong To Me" came out. If I look at it objectively, I can see a lot of the qualities that cause people to elevate it. However, by the time I heard it, I was already so tired of "Teardrops on My Guitar" and "Love Story" that my default reaction was "ugh not another mopey teenage love song" and that's never really gone away.

But really though, the problem with the song - or rather, A problem with the song - is a credibility gap between the story she's telling and the way the contents of the song and its presentation in video suggest no familiarity with the world the song is supposed to inhabit. The video compounds the lack of detail/color/verisimilitude which already hobbles the song. It *doesn't* feel convincingly high school to me, it *doesn't* feel like the life of an outcast or whatever. Or at least not *my* life as an outcast which is obviously a different thing, but still. Maybe she has in fact lived it, okay, well she's not very good at translating it into song then. Sorry Taylor.

i can see how someone might think this but nah. fancy is the heart of this album, yall are just blinded by the light

― plaxico (I know, right?), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 12:39 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it might be, but i can enjoy the album without particularly liking its heart. let me see the booty!

kind of lolling btw at Ke$ha's blatant "Just Dance" imitation "Tik Tok"

― PIES! PIES! PIES! PIES! PIES! (HI DERE), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 8:54 AM (31 minutes ago)

gotta adress teh rongness here:

"just dance" firstly is in no way relevatory or original in any way/shape/form and secondly "just dance" feels straight up euro (spanish/dutch) dance with the obligatory "do-do-doo"s c/p'd straight out of "Blue" or a Milky track matched with the finesse of '00s No Doubt OC disco flavor.

"tik tok"s beat feels more american dance (ie, rhythmic/synocopated, eh "funky" or "SLAMMIN")... although I admit that I like it because it reminds me of an updated take on the breakdown of "Music Sounds Better With You". "tik tok"'s vox on the verses are way more hip-hop inspired (almost crabcore-esque in content, which appeals to me a lil) whereas "just dance" is pure Stefani.

i don't want to get into the semantics of gaga vs. ke$ha's images/brands because frankly both girls are probably super annoying IRL and I get enough of that with Jersey Shore tbf.

Tik Tok and Just Dance sound alike? I am not hearing that at all.

xpost

Doctor Casino do you yell at the TV when She's All That comes on? were you disappointed that Revenge of the Nerds wasn't a documentary?

Fancy/RSOMB was the only case i came across last year where the smooth segue into the next track occurs. what are some other examples from 2009?

it does bug me a bit because why split the tracks up at all on the CD? i never really liked this practice on an album (different for actual mix comps). also the cash register intro...anyone ever get that coming up on itunes shuffle? lulz

I don't relate to YBWM at all, but I still think it's great.

Also that Doctor Casino argument is what I was getting at with all the video nonsense.

now why on earth would someone draw a connection between synth-heavy lead-off singles from blonde female pop singers about how they get totally blitzed and dance all night

man you guys can make music seem a whole lot less interesting than it actually is

(IOW I am talking thematic similarity, not musical similarity)

xp: then leave

your display name etc.

gaga is not a blonde!
http://cream-nyc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/i1cwsbe5xlptbe73vitr0f1ho1_400.jpg

lol

Doctor Casino do you yell at the TV when She's All That comes on? were you disappointed that Revenge of the Nerds wasn't a documentary?

― PLIES! PLIES! PLIES! PLIES! PLIES! (some dude), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 12:43 PM Bookmark

No, but...what's your argument here? The song must be convincing and identifiable-withable because its tropes are recycled from "She's All That"?

If you don't find the lyrics in the song relatable, and you feel that to be a problem, then fine. The video is designed to appeal to a mass audience using recycles genre tropes because that's what videos do.

recycled*

now why on earth would someone draw a connection between synth-heavy lead-off singles from blonde female pop singers about how they get totally blitzed and dance all night

― PIES! PIES! PIES! PIES! PIES! (HI DERE), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 9:45 AM (4 minutes ago)

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

I think everyone and their grandmother has already done the "Gaga is nu-Madonna" thing