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

i was thinking that she might be running herself out of the dating game but then i remembered that she's taylor swift, and duh, the threat of having a scathing song written about you prob wouldn't stop any dudes

she's pretty even tho she looks like miss piggy

not that miss piggy isn't gorgeous

See, this is what makes me quite uncomfortable and why I think that Virginia Plain's criticism is quite valid. The whole lack of self examination shown by the contrast of

Title track is about her stealing a guy AT HIS WEDDING.

vs

A whole withering song of hate dedicated to some actress who STOLE HER MAN and the whole kind of slut-shaming thing and "pick on the woman in the love triangle because the man is blameless" not to mention this whole "stealing manz" thing makes me quite uncomfortable in the way that the man in question is treated more like a piece of property than an actual human being with, like, Agency of his own making decisions for himself... All of this makes me super super uncomfortable in a way that I can't just shove under the rug.

On the whole, listening to the album - yes, I think she's a good songwriter, she certainly has a way with a turn of phrase that reveals her to be very clever in a way her critics don't give her credit for. I find her voice emotionally expressive and charming. The music (I don't know what version I heard, I just listened to the regular version on Spotify) is 90% pop and 10% country - not really a problem for me (I don't really want to get into genre signifiers too much because whoa what a tangle of personal and political there) but without the twang it's really not that far away from a bigger budget jangly indiepop album at all.

But my problem is, that time and again, I am jerked back - possibly because of her skill as a wordsmith*? - to confronting gender roles and engrained ideas about "kinds of girls" and the infantilising view of men that make me really, really uncomfortable. To the point where I find myself not wanting to listen to the album to see if the other songs counter this dismal view of gender in any way at all. So sorry but, while recognising her skill, this album still gets a "no thanks" for me.

*is this a double edged sword? I'm able to write off bubblegum pop that holds more troubling ideas because of its lack of any kind of awareness. I get the feeling with Swift that she's smart enough to know better and I feel frustrated by that.

Way too much of the negative (or just ambivalent) writing about Taylor seems to be excessively based on "You Belong With Me".

She writes one song on the album about a boyfriend stealer (and another song where she's a husband stealer...) and people are ready to just assume that Taylor hates women or denies men agency or something.

Guess what: this is a pretty common theme in pop songs! (as I said upthread I think the first thing "Better Than Revenge" reminded me of was Madonna's "Thief of Hearts"; Missy Elliot's "You Don't Know" also springs to mind, though in that song actual physical violence is threatened). And it doesn't have to mean that much: sometimes when someone leaves you for someone else you just blame your ex, sometimes you blame them and the third person, especially (as is heavily implied in this song) you disliked them to begin with. It's not a song about who's right and who's wrong and who should be held responsible in a court of law or at st peter's gates, it's a song about a pretty universal emotional reaction.

I assume the reason that Taylor is held to a standard which Madonna and R&B mostly aren't is that people just assume the latter are dealing in tropes, whereas Taylor makes her songs sound literal enough that people can't help but assume she's sincerely advocating all of the things she says.

I have never heard "You Belong With Me" - I am basing my discomfort on the stated dichotomy of views expressed in "Better Than Revenge" and "Speak Now". The latter, being earlier in the album, made me squirm in discomfort when I heard it first. I wanted to just dismiss that and go "oh no, it's just a silly fantasy a la Busted's Crashed The Wedding with a gender switch" but the whole "kind of girl" thing gave me pause - Busted's wedding-crashing song seems to be just about a love triangle, while Swift seems to be taking sideswipes at the bride's family, the *kind* of people - no, not kind of *people*, kind of *women* that this situation makes them to be.

So by the time "Better Than Revenge" rolls around with its reduction of men to "toys" to be swapped or stolen and its slut shaming and its evisceration of a girl for doing the same thing she did in an earlier song - that's when it all got too much for me, and I started thinking "huh, so this is a *thing* for you."

I'm not familiar with the Madonna or the Missy Elliott songs so I can't comment on them. But this whole "woman steals your man, blame the woman not the man" thing is *rife* within popular culture and it always makes me uncomfortable.

Like I said, maybe I'm being harder on Swift than I am on, say Dolly Parton for "Jolene" (though that song is a lot more complex, conceptually than "you stole my man") - maybe it is because she makes her lyrics seem so personal rather than simply character explorations, maybe it's evidence of her skill as a lyricist that she makes the situations seem believable.

Yeah but surely the contradiction between the two songs is the point: emotions aren't consistent and they're not always right, that doesn't mean we should avoid basing pop songs around them.

The stuff about the family and bride in "Speak Now" is a case in point: Taylor loves dressing in dresses like pastries! But when you're out to steal the husband you (necessarily) don't see things that way.

Yeah, fine, I get it, Swift's emotions are tangled and contradictory -- but they are also deeply tied into a view of the world and a view of gender roles and relations that I find conservative and deeply harmful to women - and to men. Her lyrics and stories exist within a world and a worldview that I have spent my life explicitly rejecting. And it's a worldview that is so amazingly common and often goes utterly unexamined! I recognise that Swift has created or perhaps simulated a convincing and well executed emotional world - but do I want to spend a lot of time in Taylorworld? Really, no thanks.

Do you also think that "Dear John" and "Back To December" and "Last Kiss" and "Mine" denigrate women and deny men agency?

I think that my first listen of the album made me so uncomfortable that I don't really *want* to go back and listen to more of her songs close enough to find out if they go any deeper than the "oh no poor me, you took my innocence" thing they seem to be on the surface.

Which might be a shame, but, hey, there's a lot more music out there that I'm more interested in exploring right now.

As a gay Hispanic male 90% of love songs are explicitly closed to me, so most of my listening consists of relishing situations I'll never encounter. In other words, my agreeing with the sexual politics therein is irrelevant. Surely you can make an effort to listen to an album whose gender politics you find conservative an deeply harmful to women.

I know we all listen to music for different reasons, but even if I agreed with your take on Swift's gender politics, I'd posit that music listening needn't be a cultural exchange.

I made an effort by listening to it in the first place, because I wanted to draw an opinion based on the thing-in-itself rather than reflected criticisms of that thing.

Not everyone has to like everything. I reserve the right to say "this makes me uncomfortable" and not listen to it again.

I listen to lots of things that are descriptions of situations that I'll never encounter. However, this one is just too close to situations I *have* encountered and *do* encounter and I don't really need more of the same. If you're listening to it for its exotic appeal, that's clearly a different viewpoint and one that I can respect.

wheal dream I'm guessing you're not new here

Never really felt like I related to (or could possibly agree with) Eminem or Axl Rose's (gender, racial, sexual) politics but that didn't stop me from digging Appetite for Destruction or the Marshall Mathers LP. Even if there isn't a single subversive quality in Taylor's music you can still enjoy it for being hooky + fun.

ffs ppl, "This isn't for me" is a valid reaction

it's like encountering missionaries hammering away about the Gospel of Taylor

If you do not bow your head at the altar you'll have to be forcibly baptized.

Guess that makes John Mayer the false prophet.

I wasn't really attacking him. Actually, that last thought was more provoked by Tim/et al trying to find something subversive in the music. I'm not sure that Taylor is a particularly sophisticated thinker about things like relationships or life, but her music is fun. I definitely don't think that Speak Now is her Blue, or even her Live Through This.

it's like encountering missionaries hammering away about the Gospel of Taylor

― lol tea partiers and their fat fingers (HI DERE), Thursday, October 28, 2010 2:36 PM (18 minutes ago)

OTM

I'm going to listen to this album eventually. But right now, I've heard two songs off this album, and I think one is fine ("Speak Now") and one is total dogshit ("Mine"). But neither merits all this ott praise. Taylor's lyrics are not smart or clever. Her thoughts on life seem to be informed not by experience but by shitty Jennifer Aniston movies. I haven't listened to the John Mayer song, but Taylor seems crazy immature to me and I bet she makes big deals out of nothing all for the sake of middling confessional songs. But I'll come back later when I can actually deliver a sort of thoughtful response. Maybe it'll blow me away? :/

yeah, xpost, i was telling ramzi that I bet Taylor will be much better when she's actually fallen

Not everyone has to like Taylor or anything else, but I think a lot of us who do like Taylor will react to people who try to shape their disinterest in her music into an ideological critique based on hearing her song once and picking up a few lines of her lyrics to attack. Especially since that carefree way with facts has been the basis for so many ignorant articles with plain old WRONG readings of her lyrics.

I dunno, one of the things I love about pop "moments" is that they seems like the sort of thing you have to have an opinion on.

The little bit I've heard of Taylor's new material has me applauding her vocal coach and whomever engineered her single; a recent live performance had her going back to her bad habits and, without the aid of corrective technology, she sounded pretty much as terrible as I've always found her. That alone is a massive barrier to me listening to her songs to have an opinion on where they stand sociologically.

I've no problem admitting she's, er, problematic live but terrific in the studio.

i was hoping for another "you belong with me" but turned out she couldn't top it yet.

I think Taylor the person is very self-critical and meticulous and over-thinking, but I do not think that Taylor lyrically as songwriter is any of these things. "Speak Now" is a fantasy of stealing someone from the altar, but she is not in any way ashamed or conflicted. It's the right thing to do, because she is better for the guy than the person he has chosen. It's sort of a celebration. "Back to December" is sort of a poor me song in which she realizes she made a mistake and now she's feeling sorry for herself. She doesn't exactly eviscerate herself. "Should of known better" in "Dear John" makes me think that she should have known better, and he should have known better . . . but it does evoke a faux naivete. "Don't you think I was too young to be messed with . . .": yes, she is young, but she is also a global pop star, a powerhouse brand, who is stretching a bit to see herself as some sort of pawn in Mayer's hands. I would have liked to see some culpability on her side--did she like being the young waif with an older man? or was she overwhelmed by his sexual magnetism (ha)?

I like the record, the music and the songwriting, I just find this unblemished Taylor a bit unrelatable. I think the previous album was a bit more soaring and inspiring. I do like that she sounds like she's having fun, with her little spoken asides and giggles.

x-posts now but still.

I dunno, the thing is that haterz like Tape Store make me way more inclined to give Swift a second chance, because there's a part of me that wants to protest "hang on, no, her lyrics *are* smart and they *are* clever" because hey, lines like "made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter" are well turned and salient phrases. And writing off her whole oevre as "shitty Jennifer Aniston movies" just has this undercurrent of misogyny about it, like young womens' thoughts and romantic expectations and dreams are just somehow not worth addressing (even though the history of rock music is littered with really inexperienced and immature young men writing about those very exact things and somehow not being seen as being in need of a beatdown or needing to *fall* or be knocked over because of it.)

And to that, I want to say very loudly, "bullshit!" Because her lyrics are clever, and the subject matter of teenage girls emotional experience is worth singing about.

But the thing is, for me, I could never get past Eminem's gender problems and extreme misogyny, either. It was something that made me unable to listen to the music on any level, I simply could not get past it. Axl Rose/Guns N Roses is a bit different, in that I started listening to that music because I loved the riffs and only heard the lyrics after I'd already fallen in love with the amazing guitar riffs. And even though I was quite young and naive, once I started actually listening to and hearing the sexism, racism, homophobia in Rose's lyrics, it was something that started to interfere with my appreciation of the riffs and that kind of correlated with the time in my own life where I started to notice and become *aware* of sexism, racism, homophobia issues - so my feelings about GNR are very, very mixed.

So in short, no, I'm not just calling out Swift for something that I've just given Eminem or Rose a free pass on. This stuff doesn't exist in a vacuum.

The question is, really, is there enough artistic value to look past the issues that make one uncomfortable? On the whole, country flavour janglepop really isn't enough of a draw to make me forget the other stuff. My loss, maybe. On the other hand, she *is* young, and maybe there will be a moment where Swift has some kind of consciousness-raising experience where she *gets it* and she'll write something that appeals to me. (Or maybe she has had that moment, and I just missed those lyrics because my guard was up over certain trigger tropes.)

And this whole an ideological critique based on hearing her song once and picking up a few lines of her lyrics to attack. - um, I wasn't actually looking for stuff to attack. But this stuff doesn't exist in a vacuum. There are certain tropes that, once I see them in a work of art (try to imagine how you'd react if an artist you were undecided on used a reference to "intelligent design" in a lyric - wouldn't something like that make you turn off and not want to listen further?) I just go "thanks but no thanks." And there's just not enough else to make me want to stick it out.

Also, "hearing a song once" is actually "hearing a song, thinking 'wait, did she just say that?', rewinding the phrase, googling the lyrics, reading the lyrics, rewinding to the beginning of the verse and thinking 'huh, she did say that'" so you're implying a casual misreading where there was some effort to establish what, exactly, was said.

because there's a part of me that wants to protest "hang on, no, her lyrics *are* smart and they *are* clever" because hey, lines like "made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter" are well turned and salient phrases. And writing off her whole oevre as "shitty Jennifer Aniston movies" just has this undercurrent of misogyny about it, like young womens' thoughts and romantic expectations and dreams are just somehow not worth addressing (even though the history of rock music is littered with really inexperienced and immature young men writing about those very exact things and somehow not being seen as being in need of a beatdown or needing to *fall* or be knocked over because of it.)

I ain't made it through all of Wheal Dream's post yet, but way to say what I was thinking. OTM. Etc.

And writing off her whole oevre as "shitty Jennifer Aniston movies" just has this undercurrent of misogyny about it, like young womens' thoughts and romantic expectations and dreams are just somehow not worth addressing

ok ok i'm running to late to class but i will address this when i get back because i'm a big believer in romantic comedies and i need to clarify my statement a bit

ttys <3

Like almost every other songwriter ever sometimes Swift writes something clever (agreed about 'careless man's careful daughter') and sometimes writes something inane that sounds like highschool poetry. She's definitely not the first person to have that kind of inconsistency and it's even to be expected that when you keep trafficking in dramatic romantic tropes that you're going to cross over some well-worn cliches. I think Tape Store is right to hear "Speak Now" as a rom-com situation (a priest saying, "speak now or forever hold your peace" and Swift making a final last-ditch plea to the guy to leave the bride for her -- this is super melodrama, and even if she's being hard on herself too and self-aware you have to realize that 50% of those Julia Roberts movies end with the protagonist realizing how selfish she is -- see: My Best Friend's Wedding).

FWIW:

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/10/taylor-swift-kisses-and-tells-and-goes-too-far/65097/

Something about the hesitance in the first sentence rings true:

Like it or not, Taylor Swift is apparently the confessional female singer/songwriter of her generation.

And btw, re: undermining a young woman's experiences, a huge criticism of nu-metal and then emo music was that it was guys whining about how hard their lives are, etc, and David Cross once described Linkin Park in Spin Magazine as being a band that stands outside a locker room and writes down all the inane highschool bullshit that people discuss. I don't think this is only a cudgel against young women performers but one used in a number of - uh - non-canon genres.

The tl;dr of my post is kinda:

I'm a little bit uncomfortable with the gender roles that seem to be implied by Swift's lyrics.

But OH HOLY SHIT I AM REALLY REALLY SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE with the misogyny coming off some of her critics.

But I mean, this is the eternal debate that applies to the debate of any powerful female from Hilary Clinton to Sarah Palin at either end of the spectrum so it's not surprising that Swift gets the same stick.

(This post is no longer about you or what you said, Tape Store, so please don't take this post personally.)

- i totally appreciate kate actually taking the time to listen to taylor swift and writing criticisms that make me feel like she's actually paid some attention to taylor swift's songs (contra jezebel, sady doyle et al).

- i actually agree w/virginia plains here: speak now feels like a much more black-and-white album than either of swift's previous, much quicker to judge and moralise and place one party on the Bad side of the line and the other party (usually taylor) on the Good side. possibly this is a deliberate decision - that ann powers piece nails what she's doing, how the album functions as commentary on "being mean" - but songs like "fifteen", "tim mcgraw" and "breathe" were notable for the lack of judgment, even on parties responsible for hurting others, and that's not really apparent on this album.

- "better than revenge" is an interesting one. the first time i heard it i have to admit that i thought "oh god jezebel will have a field day with this one". it's kind of...out of character? and oddly ineffective as castigation of the girl she's addressing. what i find interesting is how taylor seems to blur archetypes...on first listen, you assume the girl who's taken her man is the mean girl in the equation, but actually that's the role that taylor deliberately takes on herself (and doesn't quite convince in), from the catty slut-shaming comments to the primacy given to (unspecified) revenge. there aren't many clues as to the kind of girl her rival is, though interestingly the line about vintage dresses seems to indicate your arty-bohemian-hipster type. i like to imagine that that song's about the jezebel writers (and if taylor's going to air all her dirty laundry she may as well write about them).

- but they are also deeply tied into a view of the world and a view of gender roles and relations that I find conservative and deeply harmful to women - i guess this isn't untrue; i'd rather ascribe it to taylor's roots in country, but it seems that she writes within the orbit of a conservative world view with traditional gender roles - cf most r&b and hip-hop artists - and while she can play with them and subvert them in interesting ways, she's not interested in busting out of them. i disagree that this makes her unfeminist or makes her songs harmful to women: i realise this is kate's personal reaction, but the things you criticise her for - references to "that kind of girl", treating men like property - are all hallmarks of r&b, too. yet they're mostly overlooked when done by beyoncé or missy elliott or kelis (not to mention madonna, xtina etc).

- it's interesting that the last act to have pretty much been labelled "the death of feminism forever" were the pussycat dolls, who are the exact opposite of taylor swift.

- anyway, i was gonna write some stuff about how taylor's forte is playing with that sort of archetype, and how that's a key part of both pop and formalist genres like country and r&b, but where i think taylor weirds people out is in tying it to confessional singer-songwriterism, which usually tries to explicitly avoid archetypes, but my thoughts are a bit confused now. i really haven't got any sort of angle on this album yet, and - "dear john" apart - i've found myself most drawn to the least "interesting" songs, like "enchanted" and "last kiss"...

(xps - i haven't read any of the articles linked since ann powers, and i'm not going to, because i really really want to get my own thoughts on the album straight first and maybe write something of my own if anyone commissions me, and only then can i indulge in reading other thinkpieces on her)

(do any other writers find this? that if they're going to write a long piece on something, they have to avoid the entire conversation on them first)

the things you criticise her for - references to "that kind of girl", treating men like property - are all hallmarks of r&b, too. yet they're mostly overlooked when done by beyoncé or missy elliott or kelis (not to mention madonna, xtina etc).

I don't think this is true.

I don't know, I think "Irreplaceable" is a pretty good example of exactly what lex is saying: "I could have another you in a minute" is dead-on treating men like property.

Right, and that is one of many reasons why I think that song is eternally stupid, as I argued long and vociferously on this very board.

Haha, that's why I think it's awesome!

the hating on other types of women for being nasty girls who think they're so fine that runs through survivor is waaaay more slut-shamey than taylor swift could dream of being (i'm not saying that's a bad thing, the self-righteous mean-girl psychodrama of survivor really makes the album for me)

My point, really, is that while a lot of people love those artists and love the songs that exhibit these traits, when they get criticized it is often along these exact lines, so I don't think it's exactly right to treat Taylor as a special case for this type of analysis/criticism.

really weird "defense" of taylor swift

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/steve_chapman/2010/10/in-defense-of-taylor-swift.html

There is a certain brand of "girl power" that is posited as that ultra competitive treat-men-as-property, be just as bad as the boys (who are, of course, all dogs, natch), use sex as a weapon - which gains a lot of its power from being an inversion of traditional gender roles. And yes, people like Madonna and some R&B singers use it in that way.

I find it personally questionable (so many assumptions I'd want to challenge) but on a "I'd never do that myself, but I understand why other people would want to, and respect them for it" level. But I understand what it is, and why it works that way.

Swift, on the songs I've flagged, doesn't seem to be doing it in that way. She seems to be reinforcing a straight-up "when a man cheats, blame the other woman, not the man" thing which is subtly different both in intent and meaning, even if it hinges on the same set of gender biases.

One is a purposeful inversion of a power dynamic, the other is just boring old slut-shaming and placing the responsibility for policing of sexual behaviour in the hands of women, not men. I don't think they're *exactly* the same thing; I could be wrong.

i'd agree that on "better than revenge" swift is straight up blaming the other woman, but i don't see how that amounts to espousing "blame the other woman" as a philosophy - even without being aware that the traditional swift tactic to date has been to place all the blame on the man ("should've said no", "picture to burn", "forever and always").

actually, one of the best thing's about swift's songwriting as a body of work is how almost every song she's written has an equal and opposite, and this is something she takes care to highlight with judicious use of her signature recurring motifs. on the last album, "love story" and "white horse" obviously functioned as oppositional takes on fairytale romance; here, you have little things like the phrase "sparks fly" - used on that track as a harbinger of a great romance, but recurring on "the story of us" as a false dawn. and "dear john" and "innocent" are oppositional reactions to being done wrong by an older person, one condemnatory and the other forgiving. "understanding the other person's perspective" is a taylor forte, which she only departs from when trying to be funny: "you belong with me", "speak now" and..."better than revenge", which i still think of as a failed attempt to get in character as someone she usually isn't.

OK, that's one of those cases where I'm at a disadvantage because I don't know what the "traditional swift tactic to date" really is. I'm going by reading this afresh as a new document. And that does put a slightly different slant on things.

But what it comes down to is, really, that we both recognise that Swift is coming from within the orbit of a worldview with really traditional gender roles that she's not particularly interested in busting out of - and you're OK with accepting her despite - or maybe even *because* of that - while I'm really less interested in returning to the orbit of that world. Or I don't find enough stuff-of-interest-to-me within the small sample of her work that I've heard to justify having to willingly put myself back in that world.

it's like encountering missionaries hammering away about the Gospel of Taylor

― lol tea partiers and their fat fingers (HI DERE), Thursday, October 28, 2010 2:36 PM (18 minutes ago)

i haven't read past this post yet, but when someone comes in & posts a thought out & rather long criticism of the album (or any album!) that also includes the sentence "this isn't for me" are the ppl that like the album just supposed to go "okay cool bro, talk to you later"?

i advocate the "okay cool bro, talk to you later" reaction from both parties when it turns into a 2 day, 600 post black hole like deej vs. the world in the gza thread, but we certainly aren't there yet