Taylor Swift - RED - October 22

This album definitely isn't as patchy as people say it is and esp. for a 16 song pop album it's actually unsurprisingly unpatchy. A couple of comments re the most recent claims of patchiness:

1. Yes, the two duets are among the weakest songs here but they're actually better than you could reasonably expect given the people involved. Each have great moments in them (love the way TS sings "you wear your best apology / but I was there to watch you leave")

2. Yes, the nasal vocal on "22" is jarring at first but it's the best written and produced Martineseque pop jugganaut since "Teenage Dream".

3. Yes, "Sad Beautiful Tragic" is a relatively undramatic Mazzy Star knock-off but it's not blah singing at all, if anything it has one of my favourite sung moments in this climax:

Distance, tire me, break down, fighting
Silence, this train runs off its tracks
Kiss me, try to fix it, would you just try to listen
Hang up, give up, for the life of us we can't get it back

Also love this couplet:

And time is taking its sweet time erasing you
And you've got your demons, and darling they all look like me

Also I think that the strategy here is largely more satisfying than either of the first two albums where the weaker material (stuff like "Teardrops On My Guitar", "A Place In This World", "I'm Only Me When I'm With You", "White Horse", "You're Not Sorry") tended to be basically less interesting versions of the stronger material.

Granted, for all the people who want to make straightforward snap judgments about such things it's a lot easier to simply ignore the weaker tracks on Fearless and pretend it has no flaws (and also pretend that anything on the first album other than "Tim McGraw" simply doesn't exist).

tim otm but "white horse" and "you're not sorry" are my favorite tracks on fearless, the only thing i don't like on fearless is "change"

I'm not really into "Change" but it didn't fit my theory so I left it off.

I massively turned against "White Horse" when I saw Taylor in concert, that and "Fifteen" were both performed as if she was actively pandering to the ten year old portion of her audience but at least with "Fifteen" there was some justification.

How so? Can't remember anything particular about those performances. Non-US Speak Now Tour, btw. Love Story -> White Horse has remained one of my favorite things on Fearless, and agreed with BradNelson xp.

When I saw her she sung it surrounded by a crowd of young girls hand picked from the crowd at the back of the auditorium and let them sing the chorus, it was either during that or "fifteen" that she descended through them letting them touch her like some kind of religious icon. It was the only time I've actually felt uncomfortable about a live pop experience.

This was the Fearless tour btw.

Back to Red, the duet with snow patrol feels like a deliberate acting outro extremes of the single chord chug that underpins so many of the songs here so successfully (as a side note I wouldn't be surprised if Taylor herself has a love of that kind of sound from its constant use on tv dramas like grey's anatomy).

It's a really effective setting for the accretion of details in her songs, though less so on "the last time" itself.

M

...more generally when "treacherous" is playing I can't imagine liking any other music more.

"white horse" is a phenomenal song - it was the one which, on first listen, really triggered the "whoa taylor swift is a master craftsman" realisation in me

what's wrong with "teardrops on my guitar"? it's not a top-tier single overall but it's top-tier on the debut album, and the line "the kind of flawless i wish i could be" is such a massive moment. i like that it's the same story as "you belong with me" (and of all of taylor's singles, those are the two that work best - word for word - as high school gay anthems).

Also I think that the strategy here is largely more satisfying than either of the first two albums where the weaker material (stuff like "Teardrops On My Guitar", "A Place In This World", "I'm Only Me When I'm With You", "White Horse", "You're Not Sorry") tended to be basically less interesting versions of the stronger material.

but i agree with this point more generally, and also that red isn't that patchy (granted i'm just skipping the duets; if your reaction to ed sheeran is not "kill it with fire" it probably will be at some point if he's allowed to continue, so trust the britishers on this). agree on that moment in "sad beautiful tragic".

the back half may seem "patchy" cuz it's all over the place - the first 8 or so tracks are a massive rush of non-stop quintessential taylorness, then suddenly you get a jokey country song and duets you have to skip and "holy ground" which sounds as if it should come earlier in the album and a weird experimental song about fame. but it's more that the album's momentum is halted than the songs are bad.

When I saw her she sung it surrounded by a crowd of young girls hand picked from the crowd at the back of the auditorium and let them sing the chorus, it was either during that or "fifteen" that she descended through them letting them touch her like some kind of religious icon

this sounds amazing and i am jealous of those who got to sing with her and touch her

I think "invisible" is a better version of "teardrops on my guitar", though I certainly still like the latter.

...more generally when "treacherous" is playing I can't imagine liking any other music more.

amen

"white horse" is a phenomenal song - it was the one which, on first listen, really triggered the "whoa taylor swift is a master craftsman" realisation in me

otm.

I think all her albums have some clunkers, tho on Speak Now I came to like or at least respect every track. Red feels looser and sometimes less carefully crafted than Speak Now, but that also seems deliberate -- the last one was her "I'm a songwriter, in case you hadn't noticed" statement, this one is much more about pop/rock hugeness (sonic and commercial). And for a huge pop/rock album, it still has plenty of the intimacy and grace notes she can conjure when she tries.

they sound like, i don't know, a student talking to a college professor in front of a class. definitely no other power discrepancies at play there...the link is pretty dumb

Yeah, I didn't think it was fair to characterize my questioning of a blog post as resentment that an obvious truth was being pointed out.

oh for god's sake

not even gonna argue with this faux-offence

don't think anyone found it offensive, was just a strained blog post from a bored but well-meaning academic

Liking this album the more I listen to it, I guess. Still feels very oil and water in terms of the pop stuff versus the singer/songwritery stuff, which I don't mind. I don't think "22" is nearly as good as a lot of people are saying t is -- stuff about "dressing up like hipsters" or "too many cool people" feel like stock phrases, not meaningful details.

As someone who has used "Tim McGraw" to talk about How Great Taylor Swift Used to Be (more I often I use it to point out how stupid it is to think Taylor Swift "used to be innocent" or something), I take all of Tim's points here. Though I think "White Horse" and "You're Not Sorry" are two of her best songs, and that "Teardrops" was great as a pop country song. But I think you're also underestimating how good "Our Song" and "Picture to Burn" and "Should've Said No" and "Cold as You" and maybe even "Mary's Song" are. Would say that stuff is closer to a particularly country songwriting tradition, maybe, whereas the new stuff is competing with singer/songwriter (incidentally bought "Red" at Starbucks for twelve bucks; sounds great in the car).

But actually I kind of have to own up to the fact that I wasn't super into Taylor Swift after her first album, wasn't as interested in "Fearless" as a singer/songwriter album as I was in "Taylor Swift" as an album that bridged the (then) country/teenpop divide. I do think she works better when Liz Rose has more credit on the album (Fwiw, Rose is the co-writer on "All Too Well," one of my favorites on the new one), but then "Our Song" and "Should've Said No" are Swift solo credits, too.

feel like stock phrases, not meaningful details.

i don't think they function as either!

But I think you're also underestimating how good "Our Song" and "Picture to Burn" and "Should've Said No" and "Cold as You" and maybe even "Mary's Song" are.

No, these are all my favourites on the first album (plus "Stay Beautiful" and "Invisible" and "Tim McGraw" obv) and I love them to bits. It took me a long time to recognise just how good Fearless was because of the absence of stuff like "Picture To Burn" on the one hand or "Our Song" on the other (you don't need to contest this point - I got the second album eventually).

I'm just saying the first album is patchy too - probably patchier than Red in that the above songs simply tower above most everything else.

I had the same experience with "Fearless" (took a while to click). And actually, there aren't many clunkers on "Red," I suppose, just seems kind of uneven from a sequencing standpoint. In fact I bet you could make two pretty solid albums out of tracks from "Speak Now" and "Red" that are closer in style without getting rid of many (or even any?) songs.

I felt the "stock phrase" thing re: the indie record line that a bunch of people liked, too -- seemed like she should name an indie record! "When you think Neutral Milk Hotel, I hope you think of me." My pet theory is that the record is Best Coast, would have loved something about a dumb song singing about your cat a la that interview she gave. I think that Taylor's quite good with some of the bombast on both "Speak Now" and "Red," both sonic ("Holy Ground" and "State of Grace") and just in terms of broader imagery -- like color-coding her feelings and driving Maseratis. Just not sure it's as interesting to me.

seemed like she should name an indie record! "When you think Neutral Milk Hotel, I hope you think of me."

noooooooooo this would be terrible

I think that Taylor's quite good with some of the bombast on both "Speak Now" and "Red," both sonic ("Holy Ground" and "State of Grace") and just in terms of broader imagery -- like color-coding her feelings and driving Maseratis. Just not sure it's as interesting to me.

Yeah but see i feel that we always overrate in memory how consistently details-focused the prior album(s) is/are, so each time a new one comes around everyone's like "oh she's shifted away from hard details."

Whereas it's always been the case that, with some very specific exceptions, her songs have always shifted b/w the two gears of detail and bombastic generality.

I dunno, as is, both just seem kind of dull as reference points. (The NMH thing was a joke; that would obviously be the worst line ever.) "Ugh, I hate how they always dress like HIPSTERS and listen to their INDIE RECORDS."

xpost, Yeah, you're probably right. IIRC my usual stance on Taylor Swift from c. 2006 to present has been a perpetual thing of hoping she'll put out an album like "Autobiography," which never really happened. But then she's amassed way more good material at this point than Ashlee ever had a chance to. (And Ashlee can be plenty patchy, too.)

i've just been arguing on twitter about how TS's hipster-bashing is one of my favourite things about this era

also you know I love ashlee but EVERY taylor album is better than autobiography

I don't think the "dress up like hipsters" line is particularly negative, if she and her friends really hated hipsters they wouldn't be seen out dressed up like them. And Taylor's been rocking thick-framed glasses a lot recently. There's a level of irony there - instead of dressing up like princesses like we used to when we were kids, now we dress up like hipsters - but not dislike I think.

The bigger "issue" IMO is the "this place is too crowded / too many cool kids" line, which posits a fantasy speaker that is neither taylor nor 99.999% of her audience. It's not the falsity of that which is an issue for me but the way that this post-p!nk (ever since the video clip for 'get this party started' actually) anti-celebrity-for-the-weirdos construct has become the default pop star move against which all other versions are at best only one or two steps removed. So Taylor adopting it feels like an effacement of her personality. Basically everything in "22" except the chorus falls into this category for me and I don't think it's a good look for Taylor, it's too obviously a construct, including the hamfisted contradictions ("happy free confused and lonely" / "miserable and magical").

OTOH the chorus is absolutely amazing which lifts it above being a "Raise Your Glass" knock off for me.

Won't comment on that one, obvs, but I think the important thing is that for whatever reason on albums 1 and 2 I wondered if there was any connection between Ashlee Simpson and Taylor Swift, and by album 4 I don't think I care as much about trying to make the connection (because the answer was, "kind of but not really, who cares?").

xpost, but the whole line is "let's dress up like hipsters and make fun of our exes," isn't it? Or are those two unconnected things?

I hadn't heard the lines as being connected, maybe they are though. But what would it mean that all of them had been dating hipsters??

That they were famous people dating other famous people?

Well yeah exactly - I don't think either way the line can really be construed as suggesting that "hipster" is a category that the singer is outside of and disapproves of.

The club line is still the problem, I guess -- because if they dress up like hipsters out of general emulation or whatever, the cool kids line seems that much more disingenuous. And if it's to make fun of exes, then it's the same problem as the "cool kids" line. But yes, chorus is unstoppable nonetheless, and if I could get over "Better Than Revenge," "22" shouldn't be a problem.

i don't get what the problem is meant to be? they go to a hipster club and try to act like hipsters as a joke, in the full knowledge that they're not considered cool by that crowd, and get bored because they're too many ~cool~ kids (and taylor being taylor has still pulled)

what is disingenuous about that?

The problem is not that it's disingenuous (though I suspect that it would be almost impossible for taylor to go to a club in the US and be disdained for not being cool enough) but that it feels like a really familiar and heavy handed construct that she struggles to inject her usual nuance into.

It's like max martin gave her the music and a list of words and told her to come up with a vocal.

Still love the song, mind, but would prefer it if it was just about going out and pulling.

though I suspect that it would be almost impossible for taylor to go to a club in the US and be disdained for not being cool enough

really? taylor is...not exactly "cool"

it's ot heavy-handed at all. what is there to BE heavy-handed? heavy-handed is the "miserable and magical" line.

No that's exactly what I mean though!

Specifically it's the "we're being superficial because we're trying to forget how DEEP AND COMPLICATED we are" angle that I don't click with. Be superficial! It's okay!

This is also why the "you look like bad news / I gotta have you" culmination is indeed the best bit.

really? taylor is...not exactly "cool"

yeah but even hipsters get star struck by celebrities they would scoff at online. Again, I don't have a problem with that little fiction - it's not like "Stay Stay Stay" is any more truthful!

"we're being superficial because we're trying to forget how DEEP AND COMPLICATED we are"

that's why the problematic lines are "miserable and magical" and the other one, not the cool kids - they escape the cool kids to have superficial uncool fun!

I'll say this: the hipster line in "22" is much better inflected than the one in "We Are Never..."

You out clubbin' but I just made Caramel Delights

xxpost I think they're both part of the same logic though. Being unimpressed by the cool kids* is totally part of the pop lexicon - seems like every pop star does this, just as every pop star wants to celebrate being "miserable and magical". Being a damaged every(wo)man is kind of the standard persona now.

*(also, not that it particularly matters, but assuming this is about partying with Selena Gomez then it's more likely that the party they had to escape was full of models and actors with a soundtrack of rap rather than, like, brooklyn barristas and a soundtrack of best coast)

It might not bother me if it didn't make the whole thing totally 'Raise Your Glass Part II'.

And it's all probably subordinate to my private theory that "Raise Your Glass" is an example of one of those moments where a pop-cultural artefact is so self-identical with the trend it represents that it basically exhausts any further creative potential for that trend.

Being unimpressed by the cool kids* is totally part of the pop lexicon - seems like every pop star does this

i haven't noticed this at all! maybe because no pink song since the missundaztood era has made the slightest impression on me

(also, not that it particularly matters, but assuming this is about partying with Selena Gomez then it's more likely that the party they had to escape was full of models and actors with a soundtrack of rap rather than, like, brooklyn barristas and a soundtrack of best coast)

she dated indie kid gyllenhaal

not to bring biography into this too much but that is clearly the root of a lot of these things

most likely

oh yeah totally, there's that too. That's why I never bought alfred's criticism of the "indie record" line as being reflective of nervousness about her public image.

And I've no problem with her feeling some need to purge herself of her plaid shirt days. As I was saying it's the elevation of her and her friends' beautiful dark twisted fantasy that bugs me, rather than the mocking of cool kids/hipsters except insofar as the latter feeds into the former.

btw i'm not pursuing this discussion to try to win the point, more because I think the nuances are kind of interesting - totally get with and sympathise with yr position lex, and as I said it might simply be that i've had to pay more attention to p!nk.

Without checking, I'm pretty sure Australia is her strongest market on a per capita basis.

And it's possible actually that this kind of reflexive positioning as the anti-hero of the underdogs is something that Australians embrace in their popular music to a greater extent than in comparable countries which is part of why P!nk is so big here (though also, she's toured fuckloads), which is why I feel this sense of being target-marketed to when I hear it at work.

I feel like Swift has a different definition of "cool kids" than Pink (and Gaga and Ke$ha, for that matter). Pink et al do the anti-hero thing and align themselves as the freaks/weirdos in reaction to the the more palatable pretty and popular. They are Transgressive whereas Swift is not, and therefore not "cool." Swift and her pals leave the cool kids to paint each other's faces and bake sweets. Swift ends up DREAMING instead of sleeping while Pink raises her glass (of alcohol, presumably).

imo hipster-bashing is actually a really unique and refreshing position to take in the pop landscape in a time when so many pop stars and rappers are falling over themselves to get that hipster cred (fucking solange, jeez - kanye and drake too)