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

nobody asked me, I know, but in response:

I haven't heard Fearless enough to start making grandiose claims about it, but I'm beginning to wonder just from what I have gathered if it isn't *THE* Album about the Adolescent Crisis Between Transcendence and Immanence. I mean, nowadays everybody knows that teenagers are, if not exactly experienced enough, then at least sophisticated enough to know that life essentially sucks, popularity is a stupid game with unfair rules, fairytale romance is a myth, and the object of your heart's desire is kept at a fair distance for a reason, but at the same time, all this knowledge does not keep teenagers from still playing these roles. k-punk described these tendencies with grim terms such as "reflexive hedonism" and "inter-passive nihilism" but surely these concepts transcend mere postmodernism. Teenageers should know better and know they should know better, but they still seem powereless against those compulsions, and I'm wondering if that is why Swift seems to connect so deeply with her audiences...

The stuff I'm looking at are the flagrant contradictions in this album: Love Story vs. White Horse, You Belong With Me vs. Fifteen's "In your life you'll do things greater than dating the boy of the football team
But I didn't know it at fifteen" (apologies to J0rdan), the way the meta stuff, the incessant framing devices and false nostalgia accrue into a sly admission that, for her part, most of her key relationships have been self-penned fictions...though perhaps maybe this is just the stuff of emo, and I really should know better...as I said, I really haven't spent that much time with this album to be able to say anything really insightful...

it was just a thought...

http://allieunplugged.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/new_taylor_swift_remix.jpg

"reflexive hedonism"

http://allieunplugged.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/taylor_swift_new_video_you_belong_to_me1.jpg

"inter-passive nihilism"

http://allieunplugged.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/taylor_swift_new_video_you_belong_to_me3-235x300.jpg

"but surely these concepts transcend mere postmodernism"

http://allieunplugged.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/taylor_swift_new_video_you_belong_to_me4-236x300.jpg

"the way the meta stuff, the incessant framing devices and false nostalgia accrue into a sly admission that, for her part, most of her key relationships have been self-penned fictions"

Rockin' with Taylor Swift (TIME Magazine feature)...

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1985209,00.html

Taylor POX:

Jump Then Fall
You Belong With Me
Our Song
Fearless
Forever and Always
Hey Stephen
Tim McGraw
White Horse
Love Story
Should've Said No

I've grown to love "Today Was a Fairy Tale" through hearing it on the radio so much. It's just a great generic Taylor single. Gorgeously produced, her performance is perfectly judged and the sense of "oh noes she's talking about fairy tales AGAIN" fades a bit the more you listen - the fragile, climbing "time slows down... whenever you're around" pre-chorus and the ecstatic "can you feel the magic in the air - it must have been the way you kissed me!" bits are both awesome.

Yep, love that single. I think "generic" is the key word, though. It doesn't really do anything "new" with her sound/style, kinda runs with the fairy tale thing from "Love Story" and milks its success, but you're right -- the performance is great, and reliably makes my heart swell up each time I hear it.

Taylor Swift Has a Fishy Wish for Her New Home

Since moving into a decked-out Nashville apartment, Taylor Swift has made some significant changes to her home's original floor plan.

"There are rooms where there weren't rooms before, and I have a birdcage in my living room that is people-sized," the country musician, 20, told PEOPLE at Tuesday's BMI Pop Awards in Los Angeles. "Then there's a pond in the living room as well, and I want to get stingrays. I don't want people to think I'm crazy, but wouldn't that be cool?"

Stingrays (which are tropical marine life related to sharks) or no, such an eccentric pad requires an equally eccentric nickname.

"My friends and I have been calling it things like 'The Imaginarium,' because it has all of these crazy whimsical things in it," she says.

Will this fanciful state of mind carry over into her future song writing? So far, she's not saying, but does admit that the songwriting process for her new record, "has been amazing. I've been writing for the last two years. I keep making new lists, which is a good sign to me."

The trick, it appears, is in the editing: "I bump things off when I write something new that I like better," says Swift. "It's really all about honing it down."

she's smart

MINE! Out now, Speak Now released in the fall

'You were in college, working part-time, waiting tables
Left a small town; Never looked back
I was a flight risk with a fear of falling
Wondering why we bother with love if it never lasts.'

This is closer to something like "Mary's Song" than anything off of Fearless - not sure if it's a big step forward or anything, but it's damn good, and miles better than either of the soundtrack numbers she's given us in the interim.

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

Fuck, sorry. Apologies.

You're Not Sorry finally clicked with me. Don't know how I thought this was one of the weaker tracks on the album. Packs a punch, and has v. nice use of space.

Especially that last chorus modification with "there's nothing left to beg for".