Taylor Swift - RED - October 22

really enjoyed the piece lex. can't wait to hear this.

Um. Confession. The Ed Sheeran track is really growing on me. Alot. I was skipping it but then I wasn't paying attention and I've heard it three or four times now and I kind of like it a lot.

Not as much as my new favourite 'Stay Stay Stay' but still.

AND I GUESS WE FELL APART IN THE USUAL WAY
AND THE STORY'S GOT DUST ON EVERY PAGE

stay stay stay for real is taylor effortlessly doing what she does best. like 'ours' it's not super ponderous or deep or whatever. it's a trifle.

but it's the kind of thing that delights and is delightfully crafted and that she could probably write in her sleep in 2012.

it's also the only thing that has the pure joy of something like 'hey stephen'. nuTaylor joyousness is A++ wonderful, but her ability to convey it without the big sweep of strings is fun too.

(see also: the piss-take joyful relishing of stealing a man at the altar in 'speak now')

anyway, i was wrong about it. it's not cutesy. it's funny.

i'm pretty sure we almost broke up last night / i threw my phone across the room at you / i was expecting some dramatic turn away but youuuuuuuu / stayed.

this morning i said we should talk about it / because i heard you should never leave a fight unresolved / that's when you came in wearing a football helmet / and said "okay, let's talk"

oh my god the football helmet line totally passed me by until now

that

wow

i really don't get the criticism that the lyrics aren't as special. there are so many perfectly judged lines on this album, so many passing details that you almost miss and so many elegant ways of putting things.

"all we know / is touch and go / we are alone with our changing minds" - and then you remember that the casual, low-key "changing minds" is one of those swiftian motifs, not as obvious as tuesday nights or kissing in the rain, but her way of conveying how heartbreak is so easily and thoughtlessly inflicted, and the line becomes devastating. and then what she changes it to a verse later! "all we know / is don't let go / we are alone, just you and me / up in your room and our slates are clean" - forgiveness of the previous verse, redemption of it.

"put your lips close to mine, as long as they don't touch / out of focus, eye to eye til the gravity's too much" - and they say she presents herself as virginal. L-O-L.

recurrence of traffic lights throughout this!

interesting angle on the album, and taylor generally: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/oct/18/taylor-swift-red-review

real pity it was just a capsule review, b/c there are some things to unpack in there! impressive that at this point anyone can come up with a really original angle on taylor that i've never seen before.

also i'm kind of impressed that "the lucky one" continues to go undiscussed considering how baity it is (and as a song it's getting kinda underrated! the twist is awesome!)

Although the real killer is "After plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your own /
Now you mail back my things and I walk home alone."

so true - but it's all about the sudden lightness in her voice when she sings "walk home alone" - the line has such pathos on paper but that's not the way she sings it, that line is the hinge for the...forgiveness? acceptance? of the situation. i mean the song's conclusion is almost celebratory - glorying in all those feelings the song's taken you through, and the fact that they existed at all.

"all too well" might be her actual masterpiece. along with all the other ones.

so true - but it's all about the sudden lightness in her voice when she sings "walk home alone" - the line has such pathos on paper but that's not the way she sings it, that line is the hinge for the...forgiveness? acceptance? of the situation.

Well said. So many people knock her singing, but she is the greatest singer when it comes to the way she can use the subtlest change of inflection on one word to shift a lyric's meaning, as you point out.

The other example of that on this album that kills me is the way she emphasizes the word "listen" the following lines from "Sad Beautiful Tragic": "Kiss me / Try to fix it / Could you just try to listen."

Also the way that the timbre of her voice shifts in "State of Grace" when she transitions from the breathy verses to the bridge lines "So you were a never a saint / And loved in shades of wrong / We learned to live with the pain / Mostly broken hearts."

have played '22' & 'starlight' like twenty times each today

One of the (many) things i love about 'Begin Again' is the fact that when she sings 'i watched it begin again' she still sounds slightly unconvinced that this time is going to be any different

lol @ her pronunciation of 'foyer' in the lucky one except i guess that is how you americans say it huh?

living in french-language-places is confusing because us anglophones incorporate so many french words into our english i don't know when people are mispronouncing things.

"you look like bad news, i've gotta have you, I'VE GOTTA HAVE YOU!"

love this lyric, assuming it's extremely self-aware

Keepers:

Starlight
Holy Ground
Red
State of Grace
Stay Stay Stay
I Almost Do
Begin Again

those + All Too Well + I Knew You Were Trouble + 22+ maybe Treacherous

"red" is so, so good, good in a way that for some dumb reason i never even expected from or wanted out of her

I'm listening to the album whilst purposely skipping the snow patrol and sheeran tracks, is there a reason to change that

Le1f is doing a set on pitchfork as we speak

The people watching him are dead

i just tweeted that, but why are you writing about it in the taylor swift thread?

the back half of this album is kinda -_-

hmmm not sure about that. stay, holy ground, sad beautiful tragic, lucky one, and starlight are pretty strong.

I mean. The back half is more -_- than the first half, like Speak Now, but I stand by Stay x3, Holy Ground, Starlight and Begin Again.

Speak Now had Never Grow Up/Innocent/Haunted which weren't the greatest.

(Remember the days I had an a blog I could use for stuff like this?)

The thing that's struck me, is how Red has a wonderful reverence running through it: that love may 'break and burn and end', but the moments of love experienced are the 'worthwhile fight', which feels like a more mature perspective from Taylor, who has been more caught up in the extremes of the experience itself than that hindsight appreciation. In State of Grace, and also Holy Ground, you get the same sense of reflection and captured glimpses of the past as many of her other songs (and Lex's interview is great for drawing that out, her intent to capture those fragments in a single song), but while, say, Forever and Always, and Dear John, are very pointed in the specific memory--they're designed as a message, and fuelled by regret and bitterness, and seem concerned with conveying that damage to the man in question--the songs on Red have a much more graceful appreciation of the memory passed, and love shared. Holy Ground is so lovely with the 'hooray' refrain kicking in, and even though we learn this is another failed relationship -- "I guess we fell apart in the usual way" -- there's a gentle nostalgia and sense of joyfulness driving it with those drums instead of acrimony.

All Too Well is my obsession right now, because it's a Dear John (Dear Jake?), but feels directed inwards, rather than to him. It manages to capture that sense of looking back, and having nothing but glimpses of something that is gone so completely, you have to remind yourself it existed at all. "Wind in my hair/I was there/I remember it/All too well," is as much a reassurance for herself as anyone else. I love how her trademark reversal of POV comes in at the end, with the scarf, and still feels like a surprise even after 3 albums-worth of this trope, and it's just such a satisfying narrative closer, it really hits the way Dear John did, with that final 'I took your matches/ before fire could catch us/so don't look now', but here we have 'It reminds you of innocence/and smells like me/ You can't get rid of it/ because you remember all too well'. And of course, that crushing line 'You call me up again/ just to break me like a promise' which is so typically Taylor and succinct, it cuts through just the way 'you made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter' managed to pack a lifetime of relationships into a single line.

Treacherous is the one growing on me fastest, because of the quiet intimacy to it, and the late surge 'get you alone/follow you home' section. "Nothing safe is worth the drive". It really is one of her more intimate/sexual songs, not just with the 'say it with your hands', but the sense of hesitance and decision that comes -- cycling through 'this path is dangerous/but I, I, I like it' to 'I will get you alone' to 'this hope is treacherous' like following an impulse through the late night to the morning after.

I Knew You Were Trouble is a beast, of course; 22 charming, Starlight too, Red requires me to get over the Masarati reference which is about as un-Taylor as a ref to drop as you can get. Begin Again is a wonderfully optimistic note to end on, and I much prefer The Last Time as a Snow Patrol song that happens to have Taylor on it vs the Ed Sheeran one...

But on the Ed note, I do like how Everything Has Changed has that turn on a dime sentiment that comes up again in some of the other songs -- State of Grace's 'I never saw you coming/ and I'll never be the same', Holy Ground's 'took off fast/like a green light, go', and Everything Has Changed with 'I know something now/ something I didn't before' and 'All I know is a newfound grace/ all my days I'll know your face'. It's that wonderful concept of this person -- this person! -- arriving in your life, and it being the start of something irrevocable, the before and after of a meaningful presence, and how those beginnings seem almost miraculous in the simplicity of their change.

So, yes, fall = love of a new Taylor album is right on schedule.

^^^ HOTTTT POST, A+

"Starlight" has the irresitable momentum of the Corrs' "Breathless" and other prime Mutt Lange pop (doncha love the piano?). But then the lines about dreaming about ten kids let the song down. She's past 21 and can boast of a catalog of unusual acuity into relationships yet she's still clinging to Disney World princess fantasies?

That's basically her MO, no? Esp on this album, which accounts for the wild shifts in mood (something I initially saw as a flaw, and now find as an intriguing stylistic choice); that knowledge that comes from experience, that you are wary and cautious and should know better, but guardedness is no match for the rush of infatuation and its attendant daydreaming optimism.

Also, not that it matters that it's about Ethel and RFK, but didn't they have 10 kids (at least)? We know how much she likes to cram in those details.

RFK-Ethel is not exactly a model for healthy marriages (a healthy sex life mayhaps).

On that note, is anyone else thrown by "chose the Rose Garden over Madison Square"? Unless its just a general rose garden. Unless it's about Reagan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Garden_(arena)

So it's about Oden then, cool.

But then the lines about dreaming about ten kids let the song down.

oh that is the most self-aware lol-at-myself moment TS has ever recorded though!

MISSING HIM WAS DARK GREY ALL ALONE

Bonus track "Girl at Home" will please a lot of fans.

state of grace: best opening song in a taylor swift album? I mean, fearless is a better song but as an opening state of grace has that special something.

this is a state of grace
this is the worthwhile fight
love is a ruthless game
unless you play it good and right
THESE ARE THE HANDS OF FATE
YOU'RE MY ACHILLES' HEEL
THIS IS THE GOLDEN AGE
OF SOMETHING GOOD AND RIGHT AND REAL

― lex pretend, Wednesday, October 17, 2012 3:17 PM

now this make sense

the bridge of "treacherous" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

such a neat trick she plays - the sexual intimacy isn't the climax of the song but the scene-setting, and the bridge is this sudden wrenching away that intensifies the emotions

the only track i consistently skip on this is the one with the snow patrol dude uuugh

hahaha i like it so much now

also, uh, ilxor owen p. did them strings

its too much of a plodding snow patrol song for me. them strings is dope tho

Starlight is amazing.

i feel more blue about "red" the more i listen to it. that synth in the chorus is so cheap-sounding/bad

I can't distinguish "Red" from "22." f

"22" is another one where the pop feels sorta... grafted on to me? idk.... something about the production doesn't sit right w/ me