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

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

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

i expect and welcome this w/ the territory

kind of like how i expect and welcome chocolate to b brown

OK, cool, bro. TTYL! ;-)

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

but "within the orbit of" doesn't preclude "being critical of"; it's kind of like being raised with religion for some people, whereby you might want to buy into some aspects of it and want to reject it at the same time, but it'll be present in your work regardless. swift's obsession w/fairytale romance signifiers is a bit like that - i mean, she was almost certainly raised in an environment where that WAS sold to her - and it's probably the most documented criticism of her to date - and on her last album, she demonstrated both how much she desperately wanted to buy into it and how she saw it as untrue.

what it comes down to for me is: swift will sing about conservative small town values and traditional gender roles, sometimes from the perspective of wanting to get away from their small-mindedness, sometimes from the perspective of those things acting as her safe place, but i don't think she rigidly espouses or propagates a set role for men and women to behave bar a nebulous "don't be mean".

oh yeah also if kate came back before her ban is up under a new username than i think she should be banned

Still haven't figured out how you guys know who and why people are banned.

lol username

wtf does that have to do with Taylor Swift

uh j0rdan if you look at the admin log Kate was unbanned last week because it's been a month?

Maybe we should use this thread to talk about Taylor Swift and instead of this boring meta crap, perhaps?

I hear she has a new album out, after all.

HAI GUYS I HAVE A BIG HIT.

uh j0rdan if you look at the admin log Kate was unbanned last week because it's been a month?

― ksh me thru the phone (c sharp major), Thursday, October 28, 2010 12:42 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

cool, no biggie -- this is why i said "if"

shut up about meta bullshit

who's talking

I bet she makes big deals out of nothing all for the sake of middling confessional songs

i'd take the "middling" part out of that, and maybe the "confessional" too, because i'm not sure confessional is the right adjective for taylor swift. but making big deals out of nothing, i mean, the clash wrote one of their best songs about fighting with the label over which single to release, and they made it sound like a life or death struggle. and i bet the backstories to a lot of songs on blonde on blonde are pretty petty bullshit, we just don't know them.

re: the overall discussion, she's never struck me as a deep thinker, exactly, but i think she is very self-aware and is able to pinpoint specific experiences and moments and understand why they feel like they do and how they work. i think she's a pretty good pop lyricist and occasionally a very good one. and mostly i think she's a natural with a tune and a hook, and i'm a big fan of tunes and hooks. (also, in terms of her deepness or whatever, she's on paper way smarter than another tune-hook natural, billie joe armstrong, who afaict gets taken much more "seriously.")

IIRC, people only really started taking Billie Joe Armstrong seriously when he wrote an entire album about how much he hated the President.

certainly not when he started looking like Lance Bass' lesbian girlfriend.

I bet she makes big deals out of nothing all for the sake of middling confessional songs

aside from the weird insinuation that taylor will only write songs about things that happen explicitly to her therefore she goes around constructing conflicts out of nowhere so she has subject matter to write about, she said that she writes songs about/to people because she can say things in song that she can't say in real life, because there is no "verse, second verse, bridge" in real life -- in fact she painted herself as sort of socially non-functional, which i don't actually buy, but regardless the above characterization isn't right i don't think

digressing, but it struck me the other day that for all the talk about the "purity" of her image or whatever (which i think is mostly to do with all those white dresses), there's very little moral posturing in her songs. she's supposedly from this super-christian family, but is there a single god song -- or even a single god lyric -- on any of the records? all the trespasses or redemptions are pretty secular.

I'm not a big enough fan to wade through all these posts, but has this been mentioned? Taylor Swift Reveals Song Subjects In Hidden Messages

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/ourcountry/67334/taylor-swift-reveals-song-subjects-in-hidden-messages/