Taylor Swift Album Poll

Had to go with Speak Now

i think '89 w/ fearless a close second

can I choose 4

I will regret any choice

1989 (deluxe edition with the 3 bonus tracks)

evermore
red
folklore
reputation
speak now
fearless/lover (tie)
1989
s/t

everyone voting for 1989... why

1989 (deluxe edition with the 3 bonus tracks)

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, February 11, 2021 11:22 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

"You Are in Love" <3

Evermore
Folklore
Speak Now
1989
Reputation
Red
Lover
Fearless
s/t

but the s/t is still 8/10 & I could exchange the order of everything after Folklore except the s/t

it's still red for me... her most exciting album, the one where it feels like anything might be possible

the one i would stump for as underrated is reputation ... the singles were so bad and it's where her public persona started to curdle a bit but the songwriting is really strong throughout, even if the production choices felt dated even at the time. i think it's the album where i most enjoy her engagement w/ her own celebrity. w/ distance i've come to feel like it's her best post-red and/or pure pop album.

1989... i never loved this album, particularly a few of the singles and the final three songs, but the rest of the album is pretty incredible, half a dozen knockouts on that record to me. it's a pretty tight album too which after this would become a rarity for her

i think the one that moves me the least is lover... there's def some really good songs on that, prob like 3-4 i'd put onto a "best of" mix, but i listened to it recently and it just left me pretty cold. emotionally i couldn't connect w/ it & tho there are a few of her best pop songs on there it just feels like she's spinning her wheels creatively for me

fearless sounded about as good as ever to me when i re-listened recently... there's a lightness of touch, a certain sparkle, w/ that album that i don't think exists anywhere else in her discography.

speak now is the one that i never really think about but whenever i listen to it i'm like, damn there's a lot of amazing songs on this record. i think it's just that red is very similar to it in scope but more adventurous so speak now gets overshadowed to some degree

honestly have not listened to evermore more than a few times, it was just too much taylor and the national for me by the end of last year. i'll go back eventually but i'm leaving it off my list

red
fearless
speak now
reputation
1989
folklore
s/t
lover

reputation def the best pop taylor album and surprisingly enough the production aged really well imo

Yeah it's still really fun to listen to.

Speak Now and Red are excellent albums, but Fearless is the album o' my heart and still makes me sob tbh.

I love 1989, too

it's between fearless and folklore but yeah, there's a magic sparkle to fearless that puts it on top

In general every time I try to do this I find I overrate whatever the more recent Swift albums are, which is weird because it's the opposite of what I do with every other artist.

Speak Now > Fearless > Folklore > Red > Evermore > 1989 > Reputation > Taylor Swift > Lover

I'd have to think about this a little more, but it feels like Lover is being underestimated here. It's definitely better than Reputation.

Reputation has higher highs and lower lows than Lover. I at least give it credit for going for something. Lover is just boring IMO.

Don't get me wrong, Lover wouldn't likely make my top 4, but it's a much better record than the singles would indicate.

Lover is my favorite; I love the juxtaposition of the fun pop sound with the self-awareness and anxiety in the lyrics. And it has "The Archer" which is probably my favorite Taylor Swift song.

When "Cruel Summer" is on, it sounds like the best song ever written, particularly the middle eight.

I would also argue that we wouldn't get Folklore/Evermore without some of the tentative steps on Lover.

Mine:

Speak Now
Red
folklore
1989
evermore
Fearless
Lover
Taylor Swift
Reputation

It's obv now that Lover represented the End of a Method or approach begun with Red.

When "Cruel Summer" is on, it sounds like the best song ever written, particularly the middle eight.

― meticulously crafted, socially responsible, morally upsta (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, February 11, 2021 2:50 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ot fucking m

I think Lover is really poorly served by having "I Forgot That You Existed" as the first track; if you skip that one and start with "Cruel Summer," it instantly becomes a much better album imo. I always do that, to the point where I think of Cruel Summer as the first track. (I guess you could say that I forgot that I Forgot That You Existed existed.)

Red
folklore
Fearless
evermore
Lover (with the edited tracklist)
Speak Now
1989
Reputation
Taylor Swift

I regret this already.

Mine was Speak Now for years, but I think Red has edged it. Red has a couple of songs I actively dislike, which is not true of Speak Now, but I like the range and musical variety. So at the moment, I think I'd go:

Red
Speak Now
Fearless
folklore
1989
Lover
s/t
evermore
Reputation

Red
Fearless
folklore
Speak Now
Lover
1989
S/T
reputation

I can't place evermore yet. It's exhausting and several songs actively chafe but it contains moments of full artistic flower even beyond folklore ("happiness", "cowboy like me") and closes with her best run ever ("ivy" through "evermore")

It's obv now that Lover represented the End of a Method or approach begun with Red.

― meticulously crafted, socially responsible, morally upsta (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, February 11, 2021 2:52 PM (two hours ago)

i think it also makes it clear that the aesthetic pivot that followed was necessary ... there's a nice frothy sorta pop album somewhere in lover (from "cruel summer" to "false god", with "london boy" being lit on fire) but the joel little songs on there are for me the very bottom rung of her entire discography. she went in the studio w/ louis bell & adam feeney -- the biggest pop producers of that moment -- and came out w/ one of her worst ever singles + 2 songs ("afterglow" and "it's nice to have a friend") that are... nice albums tracks, at best. even the dixie chicks collab was kind of fumbled. creatively she was wheezing a bit to me by this point... the idea of her going pop had lost its novelty, her interactions w/ contemporary pop of the time were awkward (the katy perry reveal video, christ), and just generally that kind of production is not the best delivery vehicle for her songwriting to begin with

"afterglow" is one of the best t. swift songs ever

so good in fact i thought it was an antonoff joint until this very moment, can't believe it's part of the "i forgot you existed"/"it's nice to have a friend" camp

it's her big amy grant ballad, a description that maybe accounts for why i love it and others are unmoved

I think "Afterglow" is an important part of the overarching narrative of Lover (the narrative being, essentially, "I always thought my relationship issues were someone else's fault, and didn't realize how many hurtful and controlling behaviors I had until I ended up in a good relationship that I care about and want to preserve, and now I'm slowly learning how to admit when I was wrong.") It matches up nicely with "The Archer" and "Cornelia Street."

i'm interested to see if Red wins this just barely, or if it's a blowout

Red was my favorite, until Evermore showed up.

I'm interested to see if anyone will vote for Reputation or Taylor Swift.

1989
fearless

speak now
red
reputation

lover
folklore/evermore

folklore is my favourite, but red edited to my liking would beat it

ranking taylor albums is hard because a lot of her albums have at least a few real duds or sequencing issues that make them not very listenable front-to-back, like i love red and 1989 but only with some significant tweaks to their tracklists, and lover is a very weak album as-is but it manages to be worthwhile if you cut out nearly half the tracks.

as-is:
folklore
evermore
fearless
1989
red
s/t
lover
speak now
reputation

edited tracklists:
red
folklore
1989
evermore
lover
fearless
s/t
speak now
reputation

this is impossible

Instead of a poll where you only get to choose one, can we do a proper Artist albums and tracks poll, or are those frowned upon while the artist is still in their prime? If so, I look forward to the 2045 ILM Taylor Swift poll.

I feel like the amount of material she's released since the start of her career has fairly warranted an albums/tracks poll! I'm here for it

Haven't heard any of these but this feels like a good opportunity to try. Starting with Speak Now as that's the one I found at the library (was also probably the one I had the most interest in hearing at the time).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

That was fast. Speak Now by far the best of the ones I listened to, very fond of "Never Grow Up" and "Mine."

folklore

Instead of a poll where you only get to choose one, can we do a proper Artist albums and tracks poll, or are those frowned upon while the artist is still in their prime?

not at all. for instance i have done a Spoon poll a few years back and they are going to be releasing a new album this year. it will be the second since that poll closed.

I voted Fearless, but haven't really listened to her pop albums after 1989 due to her increasingly abhorrent lead singles. Even though I've grown to love Shake It Off and Bad Blood, I don't think I'll ever feel the same way about LWYMMD or Me! I did listen to folklore a few times - liked it at first but every subsequent listening got more bored. Never listened to the follow-up. I'd rectify my negligence if there was a ballot poll on the horizon.

As it stands, I'd probably rank them:

Fearless
1989
Speak Now
Red
Taylor Swift

Speak Now and Red are definitely fighting it out for 3rd because Red definitely has higher highs than Speak Now, but it's incredibly front loaded and I hate the dudes in the duets.

this is impossible

― josh az (2011nostalgia), Thursday, February 11, 2021 9:01 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah...I almost voted for Red and then revisited the second half. Everything through "Stay" is top-notch, but I think I'm going with Fearless. Evermore might be the best yet, but I used to think that about Lover, so I'm going to give it another couple years to brew.

Today, I would rank them:

Evermore
Reputation
Red
Fearless
Lover
1989
Folklore
debut
Speak Now

(that’s pure personal preference)

Red has a few amazing tracks in the final section ("Holy Ground" FFS, but also "Starlight" and "Begin Again", and I rep for "Sad Beautiful Tragic" as a nice game of dress-ups) and is long enough that you can skip the weaker tracks (which in truth are worse on paper than in reality - Gary Lightbody and Ed Sheeran are more useless than they are actively harmful) and still have a substantial album.

Fearless or Lover

xp I like the duets! I like all her duets. (I do sometimes skip "Sad Beautiful Tragic.")

red has no skips! gary lightbody does his best to suck all life out of "the last time", and the deluge of "this is the last time"s towards the end start to sound like a cruel tease, but taylor just about keeps things on track. love the way she sings 'you wear your best apologies - but i was there to watch you leave'.

also "i almost do" > "we are never" > "stay stay stay" > "the last time" is really good sequencing

evermore
red
folklore
speak now
1989
reputation
lover
fearless
taylor swift

the middle 3 especially could all swap around on any given day

clearly I'm missing something about Evermore, which came across as Folklore-lite to me last time I tried

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

bizarre

this is why we can't have nice things!

I think I'd like "The Last Time" more if it was more meta, and Taylor had never written a song again about an ex turning up and asking to be taken back.

As time passes, 1989 is moving past Fearless to settle itself as the most successful album in Taylor Swift‘s career.

her weakest record outside of the s/t won. interesting

1989 is her best Pop album but idk those results are bizarre. it's great if you cut "welcome to new york" and "bad blood" and maybe "shake it off" depending on how you're feeling and throw in "you are in love" and "new romantics" into the album proper but those duds on the official tracklist are truly dreadful

tbf, “I Know Places” is the only true dud. It’s a good album!

Lover 1
reputation 0

^^^ correct, at least

reputation with 0? this board needs more contrarians

i should've voted for reputation

It's so good, and so much fun

I can't even remember if I voted (lmao), but if I did, I should've voted for reputation

would any 1989 voters like to explain themselves?

I voted for Red, but 1989 is probably my second favorite because sequenced synths inna 80s style.

1989 is still really good except for those few duds though

red's weaker tracks aren't anywhere near as bad but i still hate the sequencing jumping all over the place stylistically, my preferred version cuts the three max martin pop hits (which are all underwritten imo), the duets (which aren't terrible but still relatively weak), and "stay stay stay" which is horrible twee grocery store commercial music. that leaves it at a very tight & perfect 10 tracks.

folk-more combined wins tho

“Stay Stay Stay” is amazing though?

otm

would any 1989 voters like to explain themselves?

― winters (josh),

really amused at the total inability of this board to process that her most overall-popular album won for good reasons. it's also obviously her best, the only one I even momentarily considered voting for instead was Folklore. It also has the largest cultural footprint imo, and it has "Style".

i.e. people who aren't fanatics (like me) find 1989 to be the best

I really like 1989 now - even Welcome to New York!

oh totally, good opener

every time i revisit 1989 i like it less... and the transition from "i wish you would" to "bad blood" still makes me want to shut it off. obv i'm a fanatic though, and have come to think of reputation as the better and more interesting pop record (also profoundly misunderstood, which makes me like it more... beneath the "i live 4 the drama" exterior it's almost all love songs)

1989 also def her best ever set of bonus tracks which is also one of my problems with the album lol

petitioning to be admitted into the alternate universe where "wonderland" was a hit instead of "bad blood"

or 'Clean"!!

how do you write a song like "new romantics" and not put it on your album... top 5 t swift song for me

During the mid '10s I listen to her albums less as statements than collections. I skipped around a lot. In 2014, the strength of "Blank Slate" and "Style" as singles reenergized my fandom after Red weakened it. I was wrong about Red and 1989.

1989 is a great album and I'm not surprised at all it won, and yes, all the bonus tracks are great. I'm more surprised that there are 9 people who think Folklore is her best.

i like that fearless and speak now tied. that’s a good result

1989 is very good, but it’s not like it’s her Purple Rain or something.

Lover was way too low. Not saying it should have placed in the top four, but it should have had much more than 1 lousy vote.

Did anybody say that? She doesn't have a Purple Rain anyway.

Lover might be her Graffiti Bridge tho.

We need to do a proper poll for her, damn it

this is probably kind of a good time for it

Did anybody say that?

That's sort of what I took sleeve to be saying; no biggie, I just wouldn't have thought it would be a clear-cut/default choice.

The question is, is Taylor Swift out of her Berlin-era Bowie period?.

@DamonAlbarn I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this. I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really fucked up to try and discredit my writing. WOW. https://t.co/t6GyXBU2Jd

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) January 24, 2022

I totally agree with you. i had a conversation about songwriting and sadly it was reduced to clickbait. I apologise unreservedly and unconditionally. The last thing I would want to do is discredit your songwriting. I hope you understand. - Damon

— Damon Albarn (@Damonalbarn) January 24, 2022

What part of this was reduced to clickbait? You said her songwriting doesn't count as songwriting and then compared her to another female artist with a completely different style.

Don't gaslight and throw someone else under the bus because you never thought she'd call you out. pic.twitter.com/Vjupk6XSyT

— Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) January 24, 2022

Here is a list of songs where Swift is the only songwriter. All of these I consider among the best songs on each respective album:

The Outside
Our Song
Fifteen
Love Story
Hey Stephen
The Best Day
Jump Then Fall
Dear John
Mean
State of Grace
Red
This Love
Lover
Cornelia Street
My Tears Ricochet

You tell him, Tik Tok guy

And even in his cagey response he can't even praise Eilish without making sure her brother is tossed in because surely not even Billie can't do it herself. Gross.

But also Tik Tok guy looks a Joel McHale that didn't finish rendering all the way.

lol, I just wanted to include the screengrab from the article

He looks like a Nick Kroll character, ha ha

(xp - btw, I generally appreciate both the screengrab and the opportunity to laugh at the conversation-jacker)

lol man, Albarn, of all the people to pick a fight with you pick a fight with Taylor Swift ... where have you been, dude?

I don't know how much she does or does not write all by herself - like screenwriting credits and stuff like that, I'm sure it gets political and stays secretive - but I'm not sure it matters, because no matter who contributes what, or helps with what, her songs would not be what they are without her creative input, whatever percent. The flipside question of course is, say, for all his credits and success, would Max Martin be able to write hit songs for himself? And the answer is no.

Taking 1989 as an example, I don't know why they'd credit cowriters for 12 of the 13 songs on the album if she wasn't fully responsible for writing "This Love."

I quickly checked the credits of a few Blur albums; looks like Albarn writes (most of) the lyrics himself, but the music is all credited to the band(?) Is he mainly talking about lyrics here?

she's been pretty open talking about her creative processes in working with varying songwriting partners over the years, none of it's really a secret.

Didn't she even do a documentary about the process for Folklore?

yeah, it was a live-in-studio session where they'd cut to discussions of the songwriting process etc. after each song

I've always assumed TS made a point of filling an entire album with solo credits partly to blunt this kind of thing. But yeah mostly makes Albarn just look out of it. Even casual fans know that she is a capital-S Songwriter.

She obviously likes co-writing too, and she's been smart about who she works with. It may be the most Nashville thing that she's retained from her early years.

I would love to hear a start-to-end document of how some of these pop songs begin and how they make it to their final forms, but that shit is no doubt locked down.

I remember a Rick Beato video where he talks about this one pretty boilerplate (but good!) chord progression, and he pulls up every one of Max Martin's 22 number one hits or something and notes absolutely *none* of them use the boilerplate chord progression *except* the Taylor Swift song, which he surmises is because she insisted he use them. Which isn't a bad thing at all, she knows what she's doing!

Even if she didn't write her own songs (which obv is false), which is this still allowed to scan as a critique in 2021

I would love to hear a start-to-end document of how some of these pop songs begin and how they make it to their final forms, but that shit is no doubt locked down.

as i said this info is very public for a ton of songs - a lot of it's readily available on the wikipedia pages for her albums in varying degrees of detail, and there's other details from interviews that haven't made it there.

I said hear, not read. I would love to hear the earliest glimmers of some of these pop songs and their gradual transition into the finished product.

Have you ever listened to the podcasts Song Exploder or Tape Notes? They can vary from episode to episode, but sometimes they get into the deep-down gritty origins of things. The Carly Rae Jepsen episode of Song Exploder is an example of one where they take you from the raw demos through to the finished song.

https://songexploder.net/carly-rae-jepsen

I don't want to hear it! It's not interesting, and it places burden of proof on her on what is the least interesting part of making pop/country singles. xpost

Swift has released quite a few voice memo demos over the years, you can find them on YouTube and elsewhere. It's obviously not the songs at their very earliest, but they're still pretty gestational. Pretty interesting.

Yeah, I'm not just talking about Swift, I'm talking about lots of songs. I always love learning about the choices artists and producers make, all the different directions they could have gone.

I agree. It's one of the fun things about the Dylan bootleg series, e.g., the way you can hear the songs evolve as he tries different things in the studio.

Dylan didn't write his own songs! Let me tell you about Jacques Levy (sips drink, takes drag from cig)

Is any song ever actually "written"?

The really important thing about this whole exchange is that it brought this fucking asshole out from under his rock:

Damon's right and I don't give a fuck.

Taylor's worst-selling album (before Spotify came along and made that not much of a thing at all) was the one she wrote herself to prove she could do it and that album was immediately followed by her bringing in Max Martin to prove ____?

— Tyler Mahan Coe (@TylerMahanCoe) January 25, 2022

who the fuck is this guy?

I replied b/c I'm bored.

who the fuck is this guy?

He hosts that Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast about country music that music journalists all seem to love.

Ugh, hate to see that. I like some of that show. Meanwhile, the president-elect of Chile is a Swiftie.

Here in Chile you have a huge group of supporters who knows that you write you own songs from the heart. Dont take seriously guys that need to insult or lie to get attention. Hugs from the south Taylor

— Gabriel Boric Font (@gabrielboric) January 25, 2022

lol Coe is an insufferable troll. The podcast rules though.

Has Billie said anything? “Thanks but no thanks?”

Am I allowed to pick neither side in this?

you don't have to be a swift fan to admit albarn was just being wrong & dumb

Oh obviously. He's been an awful cunt for so long it's hard to say if he wasn't always one

taytay's popular-girl 'I used to like you, but WOW. YIKES. You are SO DONE HERE' act (which is also in all her music, and her extremely extensive stan-army twitter presence) manages to grate almost as much as albarn's clueless misogyny though

read the rest of the interview & it's very bad and seems to be almost begging for albarn to say something stupid like this "what did you think of the beatles documentary" "what did you think of boris johnson's lockdown parties" etc

xp I don’t really care for TS but this stupid post puts me firmly on her side

OTM x1000

Albarn always has always struck me as the worst kind of arrogant middle-class English bell end. It still mystifies me that anyone actually cares about his music or are interested in what he has to say. Has he ever actually been seen as a perceptive and interesting individual? Because I must have fucking missed it if the cunt ever said anything worth paying attention to.

xp a thousand? thank you for attempting to simulate the stan army pile-on experience just for me

imagine this being your personality

Albarn always has always struck me as the worst kind of arrogant middle-class English bell end. It still mystifies me that anyone actually cares about his music or are interested in what he has to say. Has he ever actually been seen as a perceptive and interesting individual? Because I must have fucking missed it if the cunt ever said anything worth paying attention to.

well now he looks like an ugly college lecturer in full mid-life crisis!

I'd be interested to hear more about systematic co-writing and if it's ever used to protect an artist's brand. I have no interest or opinion on the particulars in the case of Albarn-Swift and I'm happy to believe the people defending her (lol at Chile's president), but I've still occasionally wondered about this. The case at hand shows it is a sensitive subject, and people here seem to confirm the process is kept secretive and it's not easy to know for sure. Have we somehow gone back to a time when "songwriter" credits are more important than they were previously (50s-60s, 80-90s), when being a pure pop performer was accepted, but now the performer cannot be seen to be separated from the creative team? And co-writing is a convenient way to muddle everything and maintain the illusion? Or maybe not, and it's case by case and several pop stars don't claim any (or minimal) control over the creative process. It still seems like an ingredient of reputability and a marketing value for some though, despite all the discourse to the contrary since, what, 15-20 years that haven't really dispelled the myth of the artist-as-creator. Do we ever get out of that cycle.

he looks as if he worked at the college cafeteria serving warmed over pizza

what I do know is that if she had Antonoff, he had Coxon

Winners all round baby

Just came here to show Taylor solidarity and found @gabrielboric. Love that international socialist Swiftie power! 🌹✨

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) January 25, 2022

Ofc she takes it very seriously

My #SpotifyWrapped will come as a surprise to ✨absolutely no-one✨ pic.twitter.com/H3zWuoOkTu

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) December 2, 2021

look ok obv albarn is the baddie here, we're all acknowledging it, but if it's come to recognising the socialist success story that is taylor swift, something's gone a little awry perhaps

blaming a popstar for the wild and OTT behaviour of their fanbase is unfair, if people want to get caught up in stan culture then they're choosing to participate in that side of things, and as ugly as it is there's no reason to assume that a loud minority of online aggressive fans represent what actual listeners and "normal" fans are like

Maybe accusing someone of not performing the work she’s well documented of having done isn’t anything besides being an ignorant cunt and reaching for the slightest reason to defend Albarn in this light is deeply suspicious at best idk

people saying that her being a bit irritating, and that is on the same level as Albarn's attempts to discredit her agency via misogynistic tropes, is exactly why women have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously and have to be vocally defensive about their own work too.

I don't know anything about Taylor Swift's online fanbase and don't care, Albarn was always a git but now he's outed himself as just another grumpy rockist old git.

never claimed for a second that albarn wasn't in the wrong, or that his statements weren't both idiotic and misogynistic (not to mention an old cliche), but there's also no doubt that swift knows exactly how powerful she is and how to wield that power for greatest personal gain - the idea that she's ignorant of what her stan army is like is surely fanciful. i am not defending albarn at all here though (hence 'awful cunt')

Have we somehow gone back to a time when "songwriter" credits are more important than they were previously (50s-60s, 80-90s), when being a pure pop performer was accepted, but now the performer cannot be seen to be separated from the creative team? And co-writing is a convenient way to muddle everything and maintain the illusion? Or maybe not, and it's case by case and several pop stars don't claim any (or minimal) control over the creative process.

it's very case-by-case. there are pop acts who are very hands on with the songwriting and/or production even if they work with co-writers & producers. there are pop acts who seem to have a more curatorial role, selecting beats and providing guidance for arrangements and usually having co-writers help flesh out their lyrics. there are pop acts who don't really pretend to be too creatively involved but are now contractually insisting on writing credits (this is a trend that only really took off last decade). it doesn't seem like we really see the older, most 'manufactured' model of pop act too much anymore, where there's not really any illusion of creative involvement at all. most acts that used to fit into that box have managed to move into one of the others as their careers have progressed.

never claimed for a second that albarn wasn't in the wrong, or that his statements weren't both idiotic and misogynistic (not to mention an old cliche), but there's also no doubt that swift knows exactly how powerful she is and how to wield that power for greatest personal gain - the idea that she's ignorant of what her stan army is like is surely fanciful. i am not defending albarn at all here though (hence 'awful cunt')

Not only that, but what he suggested - that the musicians created the music, and she comes along afterwards and listens to it and makes some lyrics - is how the last Blur album was made.

I think the issue here is that statements like Albarn's are not "old cliches" but widely accepted biases

The fact that Albarn would casually make such an aside as if he expects an "amirite" kinda response is super-indicative of how normalized this line of thought really is

As someone said on Twitter, a dude whose greatest contribution to pop music lyric writing is the phrase "woo-hoo" really should shut the fuck up.

But as a sometime music journalist, I have a broader question: Why do music journalists ask musicians to offer lightning-round one-liner opinions on other musicians? Does that ever end well, for anyone involved?

I think getting it to end badly is the point.

i assume it ends well for the publications reaping the clicks

they just want to get them to say something that will get clicks. the whole interview was dire

It's more a mystery to me why any experienced musician (or famous whomever) would take the bait. I always assumed it was taken for granted that you don't shit-talk your peers, because you never know when you'll be seated next to them at some awards ceremony or whatever. Unless you are famous for shit-talking, like Noel Gallagher, whose shit-talking (including my favorite Swift cheap-shot, which came maybe five years ago or so, so advantage Oasis on that front, Albarn) is much more entertaining than his songwriting.

Swift is a bizarre choice to argue Albarn’s “point” - like he wanted to say Britney Spears or Katy Perry but they’re not that currently relevant and he struggled to think of another woman making pop music.

As a not-fan “writes a lot of her own songs” is one of like three things I know about Taylor Swift.

He didn't put her forth as an example; he was responding to the interviewer's example. He was talking about his experience with songwriting that holds up in a solo piano arrangement vs songs (incl his own) that get across more on "sound and attitude" in the context of contemporary pop/rock arrangements and production. The interviewer offered Swift as a counterargument.

Yeah, but he responded "she doesn't write her own songs," which goes directly to milo's point

I still don't think he was struggling to think of a woman making pop music and picked Taylor Swift as opposed to just having an obviously inaccurate knee-jerk reaction to the example given by the interviewer.

(one he apologized for within 90 minutes of her response)

Albarn is very talented but has been a jerk in interviews for 30 years.

Maybe this should have been a poll as to which is the more talented songwriter

Personally I wouldn't consider him talented... just famous.

I think if Damon Albarn was in a Who's The More Talented Songwriter? poll with anyone I wouldn't vote for him. Even Eric Clapton.

I think about 99% of his songwriting is embarrassingly awful tbh, but I haven't heard any of imago's deep cuts yet - only really the hits!

honestly I think Coxon was extremely responsible for Blur being any good, but Albarn's written some decent songs, even if I'm much more a Suede guy these days

I enjoyed The Good, The Bad and The Queen mostly because it was really fucking good to hear Paul Simonon playing bass again.

This fucking idiot is still digging:

If you can find a way to say "professional songwriters helped Taylor Swift write a lot of those songs" on the Internet without getting the response I got today, I'd love to see it.

— Tyler Mahan Coe (@TylerMahanCoe) January 25, 2022

Apparently Taylor Swift is not a "professional songwriter."

who is that guy? I never even knew him by his name

He's David Allen Coe's son, who has a very successful and very well made podcast about country music called "Cocaine and Rhinestones."

So dumb. She had a publishing deal at 13, yes she had some grown-ups work with her.

lol i thought I never even knew him by his name hinted that i actually did know who he is :)

Daughters of the Confederacy, Sons of Famous Racists

More solo Writer credits on here than co-writes, fwiw

I think the Coe argument is that if she doesn't need other writers, then ... why does she need other writers? But that's still pretty dumb, because of course countless singers and songwriters have had collaborators over the years. Big deal? If anything, her solo writing credits and such prove Swift is *not* just some pop star puppet, so ... yeah, I don't know what Coe is getting at. He might be right that some fans overlook proven hitmaker Max Martin's conspicuous presence, but Coe's at the same time stubbornly overlooking the fact that (whether he or I or anyone likes it or not) she's tellingly the only constant in this increasingly expansive and singular body of popular work, so, like, suck it, Coe.

just reads like he's being deliberately provocative and then digging a hole trying to find a position he can actually defend. he does not have any sort of meaningful point and is likely just trying to promote his other podcast ("your favourite band sucks") which has an episode on swift coming soon.

"Damon's right and I don't give a fuck." watered down to "Damon was obvs incorrect to flatout state she's not a songwriter. She's just not the songwriter her fans pretend she is." to claiming his point was only that "we should acknowledge the importance of Taylor Swift's co-writers"

"your favourite band sucks" is soooooo stupid.

i can only assume it's totally insufferable

I tried listening to one episode of C&R and he was yammering on about the Miss America pageant, and his voice made me want to saw my own ears off. (Yes, I am aware that my own voice is horrifying to listen to. That's why I let guests do 90% of the talking on my podcast.) I never even got to when he reached the actual subject of the episode and can't remember what the subject was now. And the title of his other show alone makes me perfectly comfortable in saying fuck that guy and everything he's involved with.

oh wow I heard of that podcast but I didn't know it was DAC's kid....does he ever acknowledge or talk about the Rated XXX cuz that is some of the most vile racist shit

I think he's defended it as satire. Here's something I found from 2016:

https://m.facebook.com/tylermahancoe/posts/487555224762620

Good TMC profile here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/04/15/tyler-coe-country-podcast-season-two/

ugh that Facebook response is so fucking annoying

I feel like he suppresses some of that attitude on Cocaine & Rhinestones, he's better in storytelling mode.

He never fails to mention what a liar he thinks Tammy Wynette is though.

unperson OTM, absolutely unlistenable show

I really, truly enjoyed the first season of C&R, but when the long-awaited second season finally dropped, I couldn't get into it. Just haven't been in a country mood lately and I think you kinda have to at least be open to it before you're hammered with the immense amount of information that he drops into an episode. Say what you want about the dude and his voice or attitude, but he does a ton of research for the show.

having seen a bunch of shit head racist at a party laughing and dancing to Rated XXX with a loaded hand gun on the coffee table, i can safely say that no one who listens to it sees it as satire

Coe is right that Neil Strauss absolutely found a mislabeled Johnny Rebel song on Napster and then got it published in the New York Times

Hey there's room to find both Coe and Strauss obnoxious as fuck.

And, yep, can absolutely confirm growing up in the middle of Illinois cornfields that absolutely none of the lunkheads playing DAC in their pickups were appreciating the biting satire of those X-rated albums.

Is it also true that none of the material is "homophobic," as Strauss and the Times allege?

lol I would not say that the lyrics to "Fuck Anita Bryant" are not homophobic

I remember liking the C&R ep on the Dixie Chicks and the broader history of females being censured in country and am surprised to see his regressive hot takes on Swift's songwriting.

I suppose the triangulated position is that Taylor's own insistence on being respected as a songwriter who writes her own material (a decent chunk of it by herself), and in particular her own lyrics, inadvertently feeds into a kind of rockist-about-pop mindset which has been very prominent in general for the past five years or so.

My suspicion is that Coe (in a very ham-fisted manner) was suggesting that Taylor is setting up a false dichotomy as between herself and other pop artists whose reliance on professional songwriters is more acknowledged - this might be particularly salient in the context of modern country, where reliance on professional songwriters is much less likely (as far as I can tell) to count as a strike against an artist.

(I don't think she was actually doing that, of course - or certainly not intentionally)

It's interesting to compare the fan/critic treatment of Taylor in this regard with someone like Miranda Lambert, who writes amazing material, sometimes by herself and sometimes in collaboration, and also performs material written by others, and the dividing line between those various categories is basically non-existent from a reception POV (like, it would seem odd to me to distinguish between "We Should Be Friends", which is a solo Lambert credit, and "Pink Sunglasses", on which she doesn't have a writing credit). The idea that Taylor is personally responsible for at least the words of her songs seems like a big part of the swift-enjoyment-machine, whereas with Miranda it seems less directly relevant.

It seems relevant to this discussion that Swift was signed to a songwriting contract at 13, years before she was signed as a performer. She was literally a professional songwriter first.

I *think* something Coe was ultimately getting at (from the complete wrong angle) is that Swift didn't need someone like Max Martin to come up with songs, she needed him to become a pop superstar.

And the main thing I added that I don't think Damon was saying at all is that it's really annoying to me how fans of an artist need to make a bigger deal out of an artist being in the room with Martin than why Martin is there.

— Tyler Mahan Coe (@TylerMahanCoe) January 25, 2022

But he (and Albarn) picked the wrong fight, because *clearly* Swift can write, and *clearly* she can sell millions of copies of songs she wrote. But if his argument is "yeah, but she needed Max Martin to get on pop radio and sell even more," ... join the club, you know? Who gives a shit? Even Coe seems to understand he fucked up and commenced moving the goal posts. Like, just about every singer/songwriter from Dylan and the Beatles on up has producers and musicians to make what they wrote sound better.

Btw, I found a nice clip of her in the studio with Martin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwJ_hHT5vw8

She had two number 1 albums before Max Martin and one of them sold better than the albums that had Max Martin, though. I don't know that there's any amount of divining his point that doesn't resolve to "he's as much of a dumbass as Albarn."

I suppose the triangulated position is that Taylor's own insistence on being respected as a songwriter who writes her own material (a decent chunk of it by herself), and in particular her own lyrics, inadvertently feeds into a kind of rockist-about-pop mindset which has been very prominent in general for the past five years or so.

It's interesting to compare the fan/critic treatment of Taylor in this regard with someone like Miranda Lambert, who writes amazing material, sometimes by herself and sometimes in collaboration, and also performs material written by others, and the dividing line between those various categories is basically non-existent from a reception POV (like, it would seem odd to me to distinguish between "We Should Be Friends", which is a solo Lambert credit, and "Pink Sunglasses", on which she doesn't have a writing credit). The idea that Taylor is personally responsible for at least the words of her songs seems like a big part of the swift-enjoyment-machine, whereas with Miranda it seems less directly relevant.

But there's no counterexample to "Pink Sunglasses" in Swift's catalog (as she writes or co-writes everything)... i.e., she literally is partially responsible for at least the words of her songs, so is it "rockist" for that to be a factor in fan reception of her work?

Not that this should matter, but ... David Allan Coe only had two top 10 country hits. He didn't write or co-write either of them. Taylor Swift has had 25 country top 10s, and wrote or co-wrote all of them.

xpost No I don't think it is, though of course it depends on how the issue is framed. Is Taylor a better artist than Miranda (or whoever) because she at least co-writes everything she sings? No. Should the fact that Taylor writes or at least co-writes all her own material (and is probably 95% responsible for the lyrics) be a precondition to her being taken seriously as an artist? No. I don't think Taylor argues either of those things, though whether her fans do or don't will of course be a case by case question, and at least some of the fan responses to the Albarn quote kinda imply those viewpoints.

Of course I've separately made the case before for the importance of Taylor's lyrics (and her lyrical approach and her growth as a lyricist) to her music both assessed on a song by song basis and as a body of work.

I hear you (though I also wonder how Albarn would have replied if the interviewer had said: "She may not be to your taste, but Miranda Lambert is an excellent songwriter.")

"I don't know her."

xxxpost

in fairness, David Allen Coe was a writer for other artists, including "Would You Lay With Me a Field of Stone" for Tanya Tucker which is a gorgeous song and Take This Job and Shove It for Johnny Paycheck

I think Johnny Cash did a few of his songs

I was talking to my daughter this morning, wondering how Taylor Swift is going to handle her next tour. Her last tour was back in 2018, a big stadium outing. But since then she's released three entirely new albums, and two newly re-recorded versions of her old stuff, which means some 50 or so songs she's never performed, plus new versions of old songs like that 10 minute song, plus I assume at least another new album/re-recorded album by the time she hits stadiums again, assuming summer 2023 at the earliest, at least in America. Multi-night stands with different setlists?

thought this bump would be about the crawdads song coming out tomorrow

mandy moore had the problem of touring for two records at once and her solution was to play songs from both records, i'm sure taylor will figure it out

Medleys...lots and lots of Medleys

Don't know if Mandy Moore is a good comparison.

I guess the Weeknd is essentially touring behind two hit albums for the first time this summer, his first tour since 2016. Let's see how he handles it, though I have no idea if has the deep cut stans that Swift does.

I was thinking about this recently, too. I've never seen her live and certainly wouldn't mind more of a theater tour.

But she can't, can she? I mean, Olivia Rodrigo just did a (large) theatre tour, and Lil Nas X is doing that, too, iirc, but of course even though iirc neither has/had toured before they could have just started at arenas if they wanted to. But someone as popular as Swift, if she played small(er) places I think there would be a huge backlash, unless she did, like, 20 nights in every city.

I tried listening to the new song, but I think I wasn’t in the right headspace for that vibe.

Getting a vaguely mid-90s Tori Amos vibe (specifically stuff like "Bells For Her" or "Sister Named Desire") off "Carolina", though I would be very surprised if that was what Taylor shooting for. Something about the way her voice slides between notes and the lyrics forsake narrative coherence for quasi-coherent allusion - it feels like it wanders down the pathway that "Seven" gestured towards.

It makes me think most of "Safe and Sound" tbh, but that may just be the Southern Goth Lite vibe.