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

Then, you took me by surprise
You said, "I'll never leave you alone."

You said, "I remember how we felt, sitting by the water.
And every time I look at you, it's like the first time.
I fell in love with a careless man's careful daughter.
She is the best thing that's ever been mine."

He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring
And said
Marry me Juliet you'll never hae to be alone
I love you and that's all I really know
I talked to your dad go pick out a white dress
It's a love story baby just say yes

I guess it just annoys me that her latest big song kind of apes her last big song

because there's a POV change? that also happens in two of her 30 other songs? i guess it's not that big of an issue to me

notice the part where I said "her last big song"

i don't think it's bullshit to say that arguing that a pop singer's songs aren't good enough 'character sketches' might be missing the point of the music in the first place

which reduces the set to 'love story, you belong with me, mine'

her last big song was "you belong with me"

i'm not gonna disagree that "mine" is structurally a lot like "love story" -- it's just a lot less fairy tale enough for me for it to not come off as a total retread

also it seems taylor has an awful lot of fights @ 2 am in the morning

i love the recurring taylor motifs - fights at 2am, kissing in the rain, tuesday nights &c

*sigh*

pop singers: rihanna, kesha, katy perry

girls with guitars: alanis morrisette, joni mitchell, taylor swift

is taylor swift dueting w/ b.o.b. or john mayer?

damn dude, that is a fucking archaic way to view pop music

lol @ the idea that kissing in the rain is a specific taylor motif, rather than just a terrible cliche

tape store,

laura marling (and joni mitchell) comes from a completely different songwriting tradition and is trying to do completely different things with her music (and doing them very well) (to be slightly reductive, individual catharsis vs. relatable normativity).

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Monday, September 13, 2010 7:45 AM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark

i mean, if you're gonna sit here and argue that taylor swift -- literally the highest selling musician in america -- isn't a pop musician, then you're kind of insane

was alanis morrisette not pop?

yes...

you're the one who seemingly set up the dichotomy between "pop musician" and "girls with guitars" -- alanis & taylor aren't (or weren't, in alanis' case) both?

alanis morissette's songs are mostly even more "simplistic" than taylor's

basically what i'm saying is that taylor is a part of the, um, let's say 'auteurist tradition,' and she's a p unremarkable auteur

as opposed to someone like rihanna, whose main job is (often) to be a great interpreter

lol my argument is getting v murky right now but taylor's lyrics still suck

idk i think what you're doing is setting up like two totally different criteria with which to judge taylor or any female pop artist who plays an acoustic guitar

well that makes more sense xp

what i was trying to say is this:

taylor comes from the tradition of picking up a pen/piece of paper/guitar and writing/recording, and lyrics are an important part of this tradition. i think her lyrics are bland.

like what separates taylor from coffeehouse performers?

the auteurist tradition isn't as homogeneous as you're making out tho, TS

because if we're going to start talking about taylor as a pop artist, then let's discuss the production.

no, you're right, it's not. that's what i meant by 'murky argument,' since plenty of non-girls w/ guitars play the role of auteur.

idk i think it's pretty obvious what separates taylor swift from colbie callait & sara barelies (too lazy to look up the spelling) let alone 'coffeehouse performers'

what are your beefs w/ the production

If she's a pop star, the production is what counts? Ridiculous.

lol never thought I'd see someone try to use rockism to argue against taylor

personally her lyrics are what make her for me - sure they're about bog standard things, but the way they play out in lockstep with the music, how she almost seems to write the music to fit the lyrics (instead of the other way around which is what I feel like happens most of the time), that's what's special.

lex (and anyone else who didn't hear it), here's the VMA song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF0x2_mXjM4

i've heard it now, she's still not good at hitting notes live, huh

Nope... not quite, haha.

She sounded much better at the live show I saw earlier this year than she does on live TV, fwiw.

I like the NYT line about the song being "an extremely savvy insult masquerading as the high road," totally OTM. But whatever she's a bland sucky simplistic writer, blahblah.

I'm w/ jordan, I think the song's great but wish it didn't specifically have to be about last year's VMAs. I love that it sounds like her open-hearted sweetheart thing but manages to also showcase her insanely petty side

Yep, the song would've been a hell of a lot better without the more explicit Kanye references ("32 years old" and whatever else) and NOT performed on the VMAs, just put onto the album. She should've played "Mine"!!!

taylor's songs aren't interesting enough for the lyrics to be bad.

― christopher dullan (Tape Store), Monday, September 13, 2010 4:12 AM (8 hours ago)

http://i52.tinypic.com/20p7fnk.jpg

http://i56.tinypic.com/2gydor6.jpg

http://theangryblackwoman.com/2010/09/13/white-women-tears-and-coded-images/

Except she’s not expressing those emotions in a vacuum, and she’s well aware of the racial subtext after a year of her fans using racial epithets about Kanye at every turn. She’s had a year to debut this song (especially since according to her camp she wrote it in her diary last year) but she held onto it for a publicity stunt last night. There’s some complicated historical and social subtext tangled up in the use of tears this way, and in the reaction to those tears. It’s a subtext that makes the phrase “White Woman’s Tears” a convenient shorthand for a situation that boils down to a white woman wielding her tears as a weapon against a POC. We’re back to intent and the question of whether those tears (genuine or otherwise) and their ability to derail and/or escalate a situation can be separated out from the emotions that may be prompting them.

I suppose when the two people involed are "innocent little white girl" and "angry black man" it's hard not to view the whole ordeal in a racial context, but honestly I don't really see it that way. Swift-gate had more to do with people being fed up with Kanye's antics over a prolonged period of time than it did with some sort of racialized, "know your place black man" thing. And I don't necessarily think Swift was playing on her race in last night's performance (at least not consciously anyway).So yeah, OFFTM

...than it did with some sort of racialized, "know your place black man" thing.

i read a whole shit-ton of stuff saying exactly this?

http://i54.tinypic.com/2vs5fgj.jpg

I think there's a difference here between "Know your place KANYE" and "know your place BLACK MAN," because Kanye had a history of acting like this. Obviously Kanye is a black man, but I don't think the backlash against him was racial (for the most part, I'm sure you can find examples of Swift fans saying racist shit, or Fox News commentators or something...)

ok well the exact wording wasn't "black man" either