Yo P&J, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but ILX had the greatest 2009 poll of all time! All time! (2009 ILX Trax Poll Results: TOP TEN TODAY)

also, the "idiosyncratic" voices i don't have time for seem mostly to tend towards "sounding like a child" - adults who affect childlike poses are the worst savages to me

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 2:00 PM (1 hour ago)

I agree, but I also think it's completely wrong to put Joanna Newsom in some sort of opposition to the likes of Fever Ray or Bjork. 'Natural' is the least fitting adjective for Karin Dreijer's vocal ticks I could think of. She uses it as a tool to great effect. The mostly female songwriters who grasp for some childlike innocence are posing, trying to come off a certain way that's besides their music. Newsom just has an odd, marmite voice.

That's a good point. My rather good-looking former dance teacher was heavily into ballet when she was younger (to the point where she got to briefly perform with the Pennsylvania Ballet) and she talked about being a social outcast (at least until late high school) partly as a result of that. (By the end of high school people were more like: oh, cool, you get out of taking the classes we have to take because of your dance rehearsals.)

But anyway, in other songs on Fearless (most of them even) she talks about perfectly normal high school experiences (which are alien to me).

x-posts

yeah people seriously trying to have it both ways with "ratface" AND "she's too pretty to sing about unrequited love"

i think the thing is that EVERYONE feels like an outcast in high school; a thousand little cuts, puberty, initial heartbreak, lack of control of your own destiny, shared awkward moments... the girl who ate her own boogers in third grade still had to deal with that as a hs senior. It's a hellish backwater.

does it really matter how popular taylor swift was in high school? the song is one big cliche, whether or not she 'lived it'

yeah tbh that's mainly why i feel at an arm's length from her songs -- feels more like she's patterning her narratives off of romantic comedies than anything in her life

plus as pretty as she tends to look, she still has the slightly hunched posture of a tall, gawky girl in most of her pictures!

she strikes me as the equivalent of the blue-stocking, poetry-writing girl most of us probably knew at school; maybe not a total bullied outcast, maybe on the fringes of the Popular Crowd (close enough to be able to speak to the hot sporty boys, at any rate), enough on the fringes to fret about acceptance into it.

I like "You Belong" a lot (it was in my top 20 singles of the year but I ended up bumping it to make room for some album tracks), but really for me it's all about the hook -- musically's right, the character she plays in that song is a total passive-aggressive bitch.

bumping it from my ballot, I mean

not invested enough in the argument to google for old interviews to confirm my recollection but I feel like I read that she was flat-out ostracized and socially tortured in school

I just like to rhyme.

pies and fries, you belong with me because I'm hungry

tempted to create a Tyra-inspired login named "SMIZE! SMIZE! SMIZE! SMIZE! SMIZE!"

i mean for the debate in question i'd say that the ybwm video is more problematic than whatever happened to taylor irl (because honestly who cares?) because the video's idea of making her awkward is giving her big fake glasses to wear along w/her perfect hair and makeup.

every time you close your eyes, PIES! FRIES! SMIZE! PLIES!

"You Belong with Me" definitely reminds me of some other pop songs along similar lines that I disliked, so I can definitely see the cliche thing, but then it's somehow remarkable to me that she is able to work with that cliche material and somehow make it into something I want to hear. So: it's good because it's a cliche; I have imbibed the Taylor Swift kool-aid.

i mean for the debate in question i'd say that the ybwm video is more problematic than whatever happened to taylor irl (because honestly who cares?) because the video's idea of making her awkward is giving her big fake glasses to wear along w/her perfect hair and makeup.

I agree 100%, hence my "marketing doesn't match the music" post upthread.

the song is one big cliche, whether or not she 'lived it

well yeah - the thing about Swift is she takes absolutely conventional images, archetypes, clichés, and gives them just enough detail that they become vivid and personable and just really likeable. And then there's a whole lot of "she puts the names of REAL PEOPLE in her songs"-type promo, so we get the sense that she in fact IS the archetype.

like forks says, everyone feels ostracised in high school - and I think everyone has moments where they experience being the archetype, even if it's second hand. I say this a lot, but i understand taylor swift songs because i have some empathy and i've watched HS dramas on TV more than because 'she's talking about me'.

personable and also likeable! well done there, me.

but so it's not quite "marketing doesn't match the music", it's that she's got two different strands of marketing going on that don't quite match?

i'm very interested in where she goes next--like, ppl are already uneasy about "today was a fairytale" and i'll kind of lol if she releases another album and this is the entirety of her range

lol ie, not that important

For me, chords are way more important than lyrics. Which is not to say that I reduce songs to their chords and judge them on that alone (unless it's like a Chicago-style blues, and I'm like "argh, enough with the tired-ass 12-bar pattern"). But the song's overall harmonic contour (including the relationship of the chords to the melody) is a big part of what I immediately, viscerally respond to when I listen to music.

Taylor Swift in middle school:
http://www.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/youngtaylorswift-500x333.jpg

it's been said already but never enough; when the drums come in on 'fancy' it's like a goddamn space shuttle taking off.

also: this thread finally got me to come around on 'so good'. uncensored version IS u&k.

"When you think Clint Black..."

http://oceanup.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/zoom/legacy/2009/02/21/taylor-baby-10.jpg

wait are we really posting photos of preteen taylor swift now?

so i'm the only person who likes the drums coming in on Fancy but finds it pretty stupid that they come in with only about 10 seconds left? k

so i'm the only person who thinks "Fancy" is the weak link on the album and that "Right Side" does tender better and the title track(s) do epic better?

^ I actually agree with that, but I wanted to vote for at least one Dream track and Fancy seemed like consensus pick on the voting thread.

that's sad imo, you shoulda voted for the song(s) you like best

^^^^

strategic voting in opinion polls ruin them

yeah if only a few people hadn't deliberately left My Girls off it could've been #1

misread that as GIRLS for a second and was about to be massively infuriated

some dude- Well, I was just going to vote for the album alone since so many of his tracks were nominated. But then I had room on my tracks ballot for him and figured I ought to throw him a vote since I listened to him so much in '09. I usually like to stick to singles only for my tracks ballot. But Sweat It Out was my favorite of the official singles and I didn't think that would place. So I tried to be strategic and vote for the one I thought would actually make it. Don't get me wrong--I love Fancy so I didn't mind going that route.

so i'm the only person who thinks "Fancy" is the weak link on the album and that "Right Side" does tender better and the title track(s) do epic better?

Nope.

some dude otm, for fucks sake a tracks poll is not the place to rep for your favorite albums

title tracks are good but nowhere near the best parts of the album

oh I don't think those are the best either -- really I like the uptempo pop jams best but I'm just saying even if I wanna hear the moodier stuff "Fancy" isn't what I go to

which is why "Rockin'" and "Take U Home 2 My Mama" were the ones on my ballot even though I knew there was no way the latter would place

yeahhhhh so taylor swift being fugly as a preteen doesn't improve her music to me in any sense. (I actually sorta like the song but #1 song of the year is pretty lol...regardless, the vote was v. close - are fewer people voting in these polls than previous years?)

just the opposite, thanks for playing tho

the song's overall harmonic contour (including the relationship of the chords to the melody) is a big part of what I immediately, viscerally respond to when I listen to music.

yeah definitely. and that's why i like all the chord charts you can find online, if i like a tune i think it's sort of interesting to go look at the architecture -- allowing that a lot of those are approximations, obv. sometimes it's just something like with "you belong with me," where it's a sort of well-duh classic pop progression (tho the fact that it's seemingly the exact same progression as in half a dozen other taylor swift songs says something about her songwriting approach and tastes). but with more complex songs it can be illuminating to see exactly which key change happens where, or what pivots or digressions it takes and how it resolves them. if i could read music, i'm sure it'd be interesting too to really look at melodies and harmonies. but the chord patterns and keys at least give a broad outline. and i know there have been whole threads about this, but i wish more music writing got into that kind of stuff more, because i'd find it educational.

so i'm the only person who thinks "Fancy" is the weak link on the album and that "Right Side" does tender better and the title track(s) do epic better?

some dude- Oops. I just realized I misread the first part of what you said here. I don't think Fancy is the weak link on the album. I do agree with the latter part of your statement though.

I'm feeling a little slow, but what was the actual placing of the Taylor Swift song in this poll? It looks like from the points (assuming that wasn't a joke too) that it was #2, and "Boyfriend #2" was #1 and everything else should move down one place. Is that correct?

oh OK -- i was pretty o_O at the idea that you voted for what you thought was the weakest track just out of support for the album

"Boyfriend #2" was a joke post, "You Belong" was the real #1 and "Daniel" the real #2

Oh, OK. Got it now. Thanks.

he probably won't see it but steve shasta OTM way way upthread linking to Scraper by Liquid Liquid as being a tuned percussion banger like Inflation.

so i'm the only person who thinks "Fancy" is the weak link on the album and that "Right Side" does tender better and the title track(s) do epic better?

― PLIES! PLIES! PLIES! PLIES! PLIES! (some dude), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 10:00 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i agree with this, but i didn't vote