Taylor Swift - RED - October 22

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)

yeah man drake's been all up on ty segall's dick lately

xxpost I agree billy but I feel like the verses and pre-chorus of "22" are basically taylor trying to write a song in the transgressive vein and this is the closest she ends up getting.

(do they really bake sweets and paint faces? I had assumed breakfast at midnight was more a complement to getting drunk at home)

OTOH "You Belong With Me" definitely had the same working definition as P!nk et.al., just in a different setting.

Yeah that's true, but I never feel like Pink etc feel like they're dorks, and I think Taylor fully embraces that (and why I find the strain of "I wanna get back to being myself after having my identity subsumed by this Cool Guy who tried to Change Me [if you believe tabloid tumors]" songwriting on Red to be particularly poignant).

And yeah judging by her twitter they paint each other's faces and make pies constantly.

Yes I was going to come back and say that taylor thinking she's a dork is probably a key distinction.

BUT I think a big part of the target market for p!nk and even gaga is dorks dreaming of being transgressives - which itself is part of the more general way in which the gay coming out narrative is now the (not so) secret narrative to so much current pop.

Agree about the identity issues underpinning much of Red.

Yeah I've been thinking a lot about how gay American pop has become as far as the kinds of stars/narratives that have become prevalent; the wanting to be transgressive is key, and I think its's partly why some gays (and Sdoyle feminists) have embraced Gaga etc and not Swift (though WANEGBT's campiness has helped) because Swift seems uninterested or maybe cautious of transgression. This comes out a lot in her public interviews; she'd make a great centrist politician.

ooh that reminds me i must get round to putting online the swift quotes that didn't make it into the interview

Yes! I feel like that must have her most interesting quotes esp considering her craft. I assume you asked her those sorts of Q's, which is why you are So Legit.

Ever notice how much this chick looks like Christina Applegate in Don't Tell Mom (the Babysitter's Dead)?

ooh that reminds me i must get round to putting online the swift quotes that didn't make it into the interview
--lex pretend

Is this the part where she responds to your request to cut into her flesh and wear her skin as a suit?

haha

November 2008: Taylor Swift has a #1 album, and the last song is called "Change." November 2012: Taylor Swift has a #1 album, and the last song is called "Begin Again." I think we have to consider the possibility that she's actually running the country.

Apparently the liner notes include her secret political/punditry/out-swifting-silver messages for the US electorate. These confirm that "All Too Well" is actually about the 47% video; the subject of "Treacherous" is post denver mittmentum.

the Papa John promo is "carry out only" which is fucking bullshit

also, uh, ilxor owen p. did them strings

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Monday, October 22, 2012 4:32 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

― king louie riel (rennavate), Monday, October 22, 2012 4:33 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ok, I had assumed that BradNelson was completely and totally bullshitting, but I just read through the liner notes for the 1st time. Nice job, owen!

November 2008: Taylor Swift has a #1 album, and the last song is called "Change." November 2012: Taylor Swift has a #1 album, and the last song is called "Begin Again." I think we have to consider the possibility that she's actually running the country.

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, November 7, 2012 5:48 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:D

No comment!

been spending the last three days watching her interviews on youtube. wow, what a personality that she has. now I'm officially in love with taylor swift the person. my favs are her interviews with ellen and jonathan ross.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggwKZh6TsNU

^^

so. SFJ and the Salon article huh.

is this the right place to act like a teenage girl? because taylor just won 3 EMA's. yaaay! so proud of you, tay tay.

that salon article literally gave me a stroke