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

best line on "innocent" is the one about how we get to be brand new each day

taken at face value, the lyrics kind of imply that taylor and the object of the song were quite close before? or that he meant something to her? the tone is one of reassurance that she still cares for him (and that she means enough to him that her forgiveness would matter)

best line on "innocent" is the one about how we get to be brand new each day

Yeah not so much the lyric itself but the vocal and the arrangement at this point are just massive.

with "innocent" i sort of imagine that kanye got all obsessive for a few weeks (because he's like that) and kept calling or writing her ALL-CAPS EMAILS about how bad he felt and how he was lying awake at night wondering WHATS WRONG WITH ME, and the song is her responding to that. that's just a guess, but it would make the song make a little more sense.

good point -- we don't know what went on behind the scenes

tbh with each leak from the new kanye album I think the caricature on 'innocent' is more and more otm

if there's one thing you could say about "innocent" is that it's condescending -- it's CERTAINLY otm tho

good point -- we don't know what went on behind the scenes

self-evident, no?

I wonder if kanye sent taylor a picture of his dick

and then told her to runaway

~hmm~

it's self-evident what went on behind the scenes? i don't think so

no, it's self-evident that we don't want to know

I wonder if kanye sent taylor a picture of his dick

"Runaway" sure is an...inelegant variation on "Mean."

Lost your balance on a tightrope

do u think kanye took taylor to a private circus?

Your string of lights is still bright to me

do u think kanye took taylor christmas tree shopping?

You wouldn't be shattered on the floor now

do u think they listened to natalie imbruglia's 'torn' together??

Lives change like the weather

do u think that taylor and kanye's relationship existed for longer than a few months...hence the changing of the weather??

she makes Kanye's conduct into some kind of life-altering burden of shame that he's unnecessarily carrying around with him - as if he's an unwed teen mother or a drug addict or a trying-to-reform ex-con or something

to be fair whenever Kanye writes at length being all despairing about his actions, this is kind of how he characterizes himself.

with "innocent" i sort of imagine that kanye got all obsessive for a few weeks (because he's like that) and kept calling or writing her ALL-CAPS EMAILS about how bad he felt and how he was lying awake at night wondering WHATS WRONG WITH ME

loooool. the sad thing is it's probably true.

do u think kanye took taylor christmas tree shopping?

we know that taylor swift grew up on a christmas tree farm, right?

i like how this review is so quick to note that she "sang in key." poor taylor, she's on constant pitch-watch. (given that, i give her credit for continuing to do these kind of acoustic shows. whatever she lacks as a singer, it's not self-confidence.)

i do know that the first time i see her perform "dear john" live i'm going to be on fucking tenterhooks on the fireworks line

Spotify giveth, and Spotify taketh away. Speak Now has gone back to being premium content so I can't listen again anyway.

Which of the other two albums should I listen to instead?

haven't heard her first record in toto, but Fearless is great!

actually, thanks for the reminder -- I should get her first record

Decided to listen to them in order.

But MAN are the spotify adverts during Taylor Swift albums a whole world of o_0

*I* could be a Disney star if I went to Celebrity Talent Academy? Really?

depends - the s/t title has more filler but is more "country", slightly rougher, less focused on high school scenarios; fearless is a lot more romantic. fearless is the one that made me love taylor swift.

i would say "tim mcgraw", "teardrops on my guitar", "picture to burn", "should've said no", "our song" and "mary's song" off the debut, then all of fearless.

ha xps. yeah listening chronologically is always a good way to go for context-seeking.

OK, I'm going through the selected singles from the first album but seriously - I am having trouble with the banjos. Think I'm getting PTSD flashbacks to my teenage years and I'm not sure how long I can cope. ;-)

"stay beautiful" is worth listening to as well!

i like the s/t more than fearless tbh but it will certainly aggravate anyone's latent banjophobia

"stay beautiful" is worth listening to as well!

^^^ urgent and key

I know that the discussion of "country music" signifiers just gets into a whole mess of culture and class and that for a lot of British people listening to it has a kind of glossy exotic appeal BUT ... jesus I fucking hate banjos and this whole album is just giving me this cringe like I'm gonna get beaten up on the school bus because that's my strongest association with pop-country coz that's where I heard it the most. And the high school theme of her work is really heightening that feeling.

That said, the US country version of Should've Said No is actually way more powerful in mandolin and fiddle styling than in the big pop production I heard earlier.

Still.

There's this running idea (both in Should've Said No - that "you might have still had me" and in Mine, the single of which is still playing on Spodify) of the people within relationships being things, being possessions you can own, and she uses this kind of terminology again and again. And I don't know if it's because she's young and still has naive ideas about what romance is, or if it's because of the culture she grew up in (women are chattel in the conservative mindset, etc.) but it sticks out and it bothers me.

OK, that all said...

Her vocal *tone* on the first couple of songs on Fearless is really amazing, like, she actually manages to capture, really perfectly that breathless, obsessive, OMGI'mGoingToDie sensation that is the simultaneously circumscribed and expansive world of the teenage girl in the grips of a crush. (Which is the best feeling in the world, really.) And her little breaths and whoops on Jump Then Fall are really quite amazing.

Yeah, OK, sorry to hijack yr thread with all this old news but I guess I do see what the fuss is about.

do you think she's consciously using that kind of possessive language, though? xp

There's this running idea (both in Should've Said No - that "you might have still had me" and in Mine, the single of which is still playing on Spodify) of the people within relationships being things, being possessions you can own, and she uses this kind of terminology again and again.

out of curiosity, do you have the same objection to "my girl," "my guy," "my sharona," "sweet child o'mine," "be my baby," "little t&a," "jolene," and about 25,000 other songs?

Kinda, but it depends on the context and use.

There's a difference between saying something like "my baby" or "my Sharona" where it's an adjective modifying an existent person, and refering to a person as "mine" which reduces them to thing-ness. Like there's a difference between introducing someone as "this is John, my boyfriend" and putting a label on someone that says "TAYLOR'S BOYFRIEND, PROPERTY OF MS. SWIFT NOT TO BE TAKEN AWAY."

But yeah, this is a recurrant problem of mine with lots of aspects of popular culture, so no, I'm not just picking on Swift. I don't like anything that reduces a partner to a piece of *property* rather than a human being with whom a relationship must be negotiated.

I dunno, outside of that one line "you are the best thing that's ever been mine" I just don't get that sense of ownership at all - I mean ffs the song is about struggling to pay bills together & staying together through tough times

"you are the best thing that's ever been mine" seems less possessory when the preceding line is "you made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter." possessions don't do that AFAIK.

I'll differ with most of y'all: "Enchanted" is one of the meh songs. The slow part is nice, but the power chords, in this instance, are abrupt and tacky.

what do you think of 'when you were mine' or 'be mine'

H8 H8 H8 the phrase "be mine" with a real passion. But I recognise this is personal prejudice.

how about 'i got you'

i got you . . . grocery bag

putting a label on someone that says "TAYLOR'S BOYFRIEND, PROPERTY OF MS. SWIFT NOT TO BE TAKEN AWAY."

ok. but, like i said, "jolene" -- "please don't take him just because you can." i mean, this is both a standard lyrical trope and also the way people in the real world (at least some people -- people i know!) think about relationships, at least at sort of a lizard-brain level. a sense of possessiveness is very much part of the dynamic of romance and relationships, and i think that runs very deep, it's not just some bible-belt social construct.

which is to say, it seems like a weird thing to single out in taylor swift songs.

yeah, I was going to try and articulate a post about how the language of desire in english is basically interchangeable with a language of possession - 'i want you' 'i need you' etc. it just seems really hard to express sentiments of love & desire w/o involving language that also suggests possession, at least in english anyway

the exclusivity inherent to most romantic relationships makes it really easy to think of such things in terms of possession

Yeah, I'm aware that it's a way that a lot of people, especially young people, think about relationships.

And it is very tied into and related to a view of one's partner (especially if that partner is a female) as being property, rather than an automonous human being with rights of their own.

And that makes me deeply uncomfortable. I think it's a view of relationships and romance that can be very dangerous - that maybe it is a grey area between *feeling* possessive towards someone you love, and thinking of that person as a possession, an object, a belonging. And the latter view is something that needs very much to be grown out of, and transcend one's lizard brain urges if one wants to act like a responsible adult in a non-abusive relationship.

But this is no longer about Swift's lyrics, so I'll stop there.

Going back to what folks were saying earlier, I saw this ad last night and was got very annoyed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jKcG86bNRs

I can't stand this idea of selling an album like it's an issue of US Weekly or Heat or whatever your cultural tabloid touchstone might be. It's just tacky.

I prefer not to know the context for which Taylor is actually singing about tbh. Someone upthread saying how she manages to relate these issues as IRL identifiable experiences is OTM. She's very impressive in that respect.

tbh i just think all the gossip stuff is sort of funny. it doesn't really interfere with the music. i think the songs are (mostly) standing or (occasionally) falling on their own for me. like, the chorus to "innocent" was stuck in my head the other day, and it wasn't conjuring kanye, it was just a good hook. which i think will be even more true as the buzz fades and the songs become just things you've heard a hundred times.

also, maybe the most under-mentioned song on this thread for me is "sparks fly," which i'm pretty sure is the one i've hit repeat on the most. it's a jam.

I've SEEN. Sparks. FLY.

S'thisisme
Swallowin
Mypridestanninin
FrontaYou
SayinI'm
Sorry for
Thaat niiiiight