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)

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

i don't think "fancy" is a weak link per se, it's pretty great, but it doesn't blow my mind the way "right side" does, so i voted accordingly.

Good NYT piece on Taylor's loss of innocence and her challenges ahead:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/arts/music/02taylor.html?ref=music

Some pretty great posts on Swift. Just a few things I'd chime in on - -

I agree with this:

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.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, February 3, 2010 9:43 AM Bookmark

...especially the "because honestly who cares" - I'm not invested in the biography, I haven't read an interview, and until someone mentioned it above I didn't realize "Teardrops On My Guitar" (which just absolutely annoyed he hell out of me on a daily basis at work last year) was the work of the same person. So I don't really know what her star-text is to be honest, and I'm reacting basically to the song/video by itself and the associations it provokes. And those have a lot to do with:

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

― PLIES! PLIES! PLIES! PLIES! PLIES! (some dude), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 9:37 AM Bookmark

OTM. Someone else mentioned that they could relate to the song b/c they'd watched a lot of HS movies. I'm a bit baffled by all the references to "specific detail" that makes the narrative seem more real - it feels so totally off-the-shelf. To me, anyway.

Lady Gaga is never an artist about whom you could say "this describes me life" - her (best) songs rather stake their claim on not possibly being by or about anyone else, they exist within her aesthetic self-construction.

I think this is going a bit far. I do basically buy your premise here - Taylor Swift is your best friend who helps you sort out your situation by reminding you of stuff you already know, and Lady Gaga is definitely NOT that. But I think the fandom for her is still more visceral than you suggest, for many people... if Swift is best friend, Gaga is platonic girl crush. People want to BE her because she's so COOL and gets away with doing strange and wonderful things that you are too shy and ordinary to do (until you go to college and join some burlesque troupe or whatever). The details of what those things are - the bewildering forest of her "aesthetic self-construction" - provide lots of interest and give you something to link to almost daily on Facebook ("Grammy dress! heart gaga").... but people think she's *awesome*, not just intellectually interesting, etc.

Besides, I mean, again setting aside star-texts just for the moment, look at the songs - "Eh, Eh" for example is almost completely lacking any arch-ness and irony, and the dress-up for the video is familiar imagery of hyper-Little-Italy-land, about as elaborate as Swift putting on nerd glasses. The narrative is a completely straightforward romantic situation - she had a nice romance going, met somebody else, is excited about this somebody else, and is still kinda bittersweet about having to say goodbye to the other person. That story is WELL-worn, lyrics aren't anything to write home about... but I'll go ahead and say that it feels more real and relatable to me than the Swift songs. The song didn't chart and this isn't the thread for it, but for me it's all in the title/hook - there's a lot of lived experience packed into those dismissive "Eh"s that just clicks with me. I've been there.

Or "Pokerface," which I dunno if this got run into the ground upthread, but this is a song about pretending to enjoy sex when it's kinda ehh and you'd rather be with someone else. (A woman, it turns out, but that's not heavily implied in the lyrics.) Not saying Swift has to write songs about fucking to get a "serious songwriter" pass - just that I think a lot of people who like this song like it because it's an experience they can very directly relate to. Plenty more may like it just because of the great chorus and the funny pu-pu-pu-poker face hook (that's where I got on board anyway) but the material is a TOTAL "real life" situation.

OK, I'm ILXing straight through breakfast hour..when I get back I fully expect five hundred posts on the Black Eyed Peas to have pushed this hopeless ramble completely off the page!

I love "Fancy" but listening to it w/o leading right into "Right Side of my Brain" sounds like absolute torture. Those two are just inseparable to me.

sory Doc, I think instead we're gonna argue some more about Joanna Newsom

...and from 2-2:30, aerobics w/vampire weekend

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/02/arts/02taylor_CA0/articleLarge.jpg
<3

tbh they're asking for that to happen when they ask the big winner to pose w/ all the statuettes at once -- at least give 'em a table to stand behind or somethin

although if i was ever up for that many awards at an event like that, i'd spend weeks mastering the art of juggling, so i could totally blow everyone's minds at the press conference photo op

Lady Gaga is never an artist about whom you could say "this describes me life" - her (best) songs rather stake their claim on not possibly being by or about anyone else, they exist within her aesthetic self-construction.

i missed this but imo it's totally wacky--a tune like "just dance" is about a generic/universalist going out and partying thing that is supposed to appeal to everyone but really just reminds me of suburban girls going to tacky downtown bars.

kind of lolling btw at Ke$ha's blatant "Just Dance" imitation "Tik Tok"

Just catching up. A few thoughts on various things:

Re: 'Fancy'

It's not a weak link at all, but I also think it needs 'Right Side of My Brain'. I guess I'm just a fan of payoff and that's why I voted for the latter. This is similar to a Four Horseman-->I'm Not Down situation.

Re: voices

Agree that it's not really about idiosyncratic voices. The Lykke Li thing is a great example. I really didn't care for her album, but in the right context, the affected voice worked really well (specifically in Kleerup's "Until We Bleed", which is phenomenal).

Re: Taylor and her media presentation.

I think ragging on a young pop star for her media presentation is a bit silly. She's being marketed by a record company, so of course they'll doll her up and give her the token nerd glasses because that's what America does. It's a bit like not wanting to see a movie based on a trailer, which is pretty stupid imo.

In regards to her lyrics, I think whatever she intended to get across isn't as important as what I take from her songs. 'Love Story' still has a tragic ending imo, and all the passive-aggressive stuff in 'YBWM' is an interesting insight into the character/persona/whatever. I haven't heard an artist reveal so much about the teenage psyche in a long time. (Avril as inspirational etc... OTM upthread) Whether you care about the teenage psyche is another matter, but it's interesting to me.

It's a bit like not wanting to see a movie based on a trailer, which is pretty stupid imo.

how the hell is this stupid

Like, isn't that the entire purpose of a trailer? To make you want to see a movie? If you find nothing attractive or interesting about the trailer, why on Earth would you feel any obligation or desire to see the movie?

okay, stupid is harsh. I get that it's a necessary evil, but trailers are made by marketing firms separate from the filmmakers most of the time, and they're designed to highlight the most populist/marketable aspects of a film. e.g. Master and Commander is far more than Russel Crowe shouting and staring at exotic women but you wouldn't know that from the trailer.

trailers often willfully misrepresent a film just to get people to go see it. on top of that, there's the whole 'not what movie's about but how it's about it' thing.

yeah, but once a musician or a filmmaker has consented to letting marketing machinery control their project's public image, you can't just fully blame the image on the machinery -- it's just working with the raw material the artist handed them, or convinced the artist to go along with

i'm not fully blaming it on the machinery, but 'consenting' is often 'we're paying for this, do what we say'. lots of filmmakers have aired their dissatisfaction with how their films have been promoted, but that's the price you pay.

swift is a commodity, and it isn't surprising that she's sold in a pretty standard form.

I love "Fancy" but listening to it w/o leading right into "Right Side of my Brain" sounds like absolute torture. Those two are just inseparable to me

supposed to be a video being made for 'Fancy' wasn't there? curious to see how the music would be cut at the end if so (more drums and piano!).

The last trailer I saw that wholly misrepresented what the movie was about was this one:

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi234684697/

really not as awesome a date movie as that trailer would lead you to believe

lolling at that.

The problem is that we're talking about a pop single here, so if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie, right? Like, I think having watched the video for "You Belong To Me," I've also heard the song "You Belong To Me." The marketing is part-and-parcel with the content and it seems sort of hopeless to separate them and say "Oh yeah, everything that's grating and stupid about that song is an artificial thing that The Company put on there."

"I know we've been dating for a few months, do you want to go see this awesome romantic comedy with Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia? Maybe afterwards we can hit some parties and get shitfaced!"

20 minutes into the movie, part 2 of the plan seemed like a VERY BAD IDEA

not seen this then

xpost

you're right doctor, in that you do hear the song, but being critical of it based on the video is the wrong way to go about it imo

xpost

er - "You Belong With Me" that is. Obviously, the Carly Simon song is an entirely different matter.

"Fancy" video was cancelled btw

hahahaha wtf at that trailer

shit, i take that back. that is pretty much the perfect representation of that film.

basically I'm sitting here like "where is the Rifftrax"

Dan, you don't know about the cult of "The Room"?
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20246031,00.html
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-room,25723/

i'm not fully blaming it on the machinery, but 'consenting' is often 'we're paying for this, do what we say'. lots of filmmakers have aired their dissatisfaction with how their films have been promoted, but that's the price you pay.

swift is a commodity, and it isn't surprising that she's sold in a pretty standard form.

― Freddy 'The Wonder Chicken' (Gukbe), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 12:11 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

now, artists don't tend to get into the "the label made me do it" blame game until years later, and even then only if it backfires or they undergo a big change of direction, so it'll be a while before we have any idea if that's the case with Taylor -- but it seems like you're working with the premise that she's being willfully misrepresented by her media presence by being pretty and glamorous in videos. sure, she'd be really average-looking and maybe even tomboyish if she was just another high school/college student, but i don't know what game you're running here other than desperately trying to counter the (admittedly nonsensical) "she's too good-looking to play the shy nerd" argument.

As one of the people offering that argument, let me say that the problem isn't so much that she's too good looking to play the shy nerd, but that overall, the portrayal of shy nerd is really unconvincing. It just dosn't ring true...dunno whether that's because they just stuck big glasses on her (blame the video production) or because the song just doesn't have the much-hyped specificities that would make it feel convincing as a situation that happened to actual people not currently playing roles in a high school movie or an unimaginative music video.

i mean she's a young skinny blonde who's being "sold in a pretty standard form" as... a young skinny blonde. it's not like they got her a tit job and a performing alias, they just got her some good hair and makeup people and some pretty dresses. (xpost)

my problem is really arguments like doctor casino's right there: what does the quality of the video have to do with the quality of the song itself?

i just don't think 'this song is shit because look at her!' is very good argument.

oh dan, you need to see the room

if you guys recall this started as a discussion of essentially the authenticity of taylor writing an outcasty teenage pop song and whether it felt "real" enough or whether it was too "generic" and some ppl were using evidence from her actual life and other people were using evidence such as that video

so um yeah no one ever said it was a bad song because look at her

it's a bad song because I don't belong with her! she's not my type at all!!

hahahah

yeah but you know what i mean

xposts

xpost cosign the lols.

I love "Fancy" but listening to it w/o leading right into "Right Side of my Brain" sounds like absolute torture. Those two are just inseparable to me.

― Moreno, Wednesday, February 3, 2010 4:35 PM (40 minutes ago)

i can see how someone might think this but nah. fancy is the heart of this album, yall are just blinded by the light

I think I just hit a wall of Taylor fatigue by the time "You Belong To Me" came out. If I look at it objectively, I can see a lot of the qualities that cause people to elevate it. However, by the time I heard it, I was already so tired of "Teardrops on My Guitar" and "Love Story" that my default reaction was "ugh not another mopey teenage love song" and that's never really gone away.

But really though, the problem with the song - or rather, A problem with the song - is a credibility gap between the story she's telling and the way the contents of the song and its presentation in video suggest no familiarity with the world the song is supposed to inhabit. The video compounds the lack of detail/color/verisimilitude which already hobbles the song. It *doesn't* feel convincingly high school to me, it *doesn't* feel like the life of an outcast or whatever. Or at least not *my* life as an outcast which is obviously a different thing, but still. Maybe she has in fact lived it, okay, well she's not very good at translating it into song then. Sorry Taylor.

i can see how someone might think this but nah. fancy is the heart of this album, yall are just blinded by the light

― plaxico (I know, right?), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 12:39 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it might be, but i can enjoy the album without particularly liking its heart. let me see the booty!