Taylor Swift - RED - October 22

Which again is admittedly me reacting a lot more to the vitriol around the piece and not as much to the piece itself, which I'm pretty sure I've repeatedly said is problematic at best.

True, really. I was killing time while my Trader Joe's frozen falafel heated up. Verdict: not good!

xpost

I am in line at an airport but I just want to say two things. One, I know a lot of "nice" people (men and women!) who
have misogynist tendencies. Two, reeling off a list of related artists from
Spotify, which that list pretty much is, so all over the map is it in terms of micro-era and importance and so on, is the opposite of research.

Should have hit the rock encyclopedia!

(LOL research)

I mean Jesus "nice guy" these days is like Reddit code for "burgeoning MRA" too. Just ugh

Yeah, fuck nice guys.

>:(

well I mean if you're going to spout off you should at least know what you're taking about? but I guess cheap shots at trashy sluts get the word count job done.

Nah, not nice guy so much as I went into the article having seem his involvement in campaigns, issues, etc., over the past decade. Not the New Criticism approach, but that's not one I see in music criticism anyway.

I should read the piece again, but did he call them trashy sluts? Because that would have been pretty sexist.

why don't you go reread the piece again

Done. Still problematic!

(I've repped for Hopper in an overall way when she's written dicey criticism, for very similar reasons.)

yeah i would say mark's writing is pretty Dice-y

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/236071/Andrew+Dice+Clay.jpg

Bam!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shiroibasketshoes/

now there's a nice guy :-)

that salon article is really really stupid

The sexism is one thing, but the pointless shoehorning Taylor Swift's career into an airy discussion of the last ten years of the US economy made me want to smash myself into little pieces of gore.

RIGHT?

yes but how can you map Swift's career and Australia

whiney otm--too many fucking music writers

it is important to remember, i guess, that a lot of nastily pervasive sexism does come from people you'd recognise as "good guys" and not from "bombthrower assholes", and it's the fact that these "good guys" are the ones maintaining their sexist line with a blithe lack of self-recognition that makes it so nastily pervasive.

― of course you end up shazaming yourself (c sharp major), Monday, November 12, 2012 6:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like w/ any other kind of casual prejudice! i mean, i'm a nice enough person and i've done and said things that were offensive/awful/wrong, and I have the choice to either say "because i recognise myself as a nice person it is impossible that what i said was offensive" or "because i want to continue recognising myself as a nice person i should recognise when i am being offensive and learn to quit it"

― of course you end up shazaming yourself (c sharp major), Monday, November 12, 2012 6:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

TRUTH BOMBS

yes but how can you map Swift's career and Australia

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, November 12, 2012 8:03 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well naturally Taylor's persistent search for a redemptive relationship with a man who won't let her down resonate with Australia's attempts to negotiate non-exploitative free trade agreements with more powerful countries after having pre-emptively abandoned our emotional defences, I mean trade tariffs.

lol

Taylor Swift ft. Ira Davies - "Trade Tariffs"

She taxes agriculture, I tax t-shirts

2 Chaaaaaaaaainz

i KNEW you WERE troublewhenyouwalkedinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn <3

unsurprisingly, it's the next single

if its out before end of year it might top my pazz n jop singles ballot

it was already released as a standalone promo single ahead of the album, don't see why that wouldn't count

yeah didn't it chart at #3 on the hot 100? i'm not aware on the statutes governing p&j polls but that would seem to indicate it's a single to me

Finally heard the album and I like most of it. Some of it quite a lot.

Not to extend the discussion on that stupid Salon article, but the most wtf thing to me was the notion that the last decade of pop music has been terrible. Maybe I've got it wrong, but I can't imagine any narrative whatsoever where the last decade of pop, certainly in the mid-00s, wasn't heralded as some kind of epoch, or at the very least, very very good. It was certainly discussed enough.

The writer is an idiot.

Note that he had to ignore that Taylor was having big hits pre GFC.

And also that, if anything, the trend towards authenticity in chart pop (to the extent there was one) probably peaked in about 2004, not more recently.

so it occurred to me that "Treacherous" hits the same pleasure centers for me as Hole's "Malibu", sorta.

Good "Fucking" Charlotte?

imo pop music has always been good, in every decade, it's the dialogue around it that changes.

Ugh I've had so many good convos about this article this past week but I am shit at getting those thoughts out on the page

Nah I'm just shy. Basic conclusion was something something "capital-oriented music is always going to be ugly when you're standing over there"

so it occurred to me that "Treacherous" hits the same pleasure centers for me as Hole's "Malibu", sorta.

Yeah, I can see that. "Treacherous" is the real grower for me on this; I liked it at first but didn't pay a lot of attention. Now I think it's got the best singing on the album, and the build from the chorus into that huge bridge is just bam bam BAM.

xxxxpost - that was when rock and being (or seeming) slightly damaged were at their strongest as chart-pop signifiers (in the past decade) - Good Charlotte were part of that but I was also thinking Avril, Ashlee et. al. Even Lindsey and Hillary at that point. Taylor's current work, for the most part, would have fit into that pop landscape more naturally than it does in today's (although, as discussed upthread, you can see P!nk and Ke$ha also carry that flag and have influenced Red to some extent).

Now I think it's got the best singing on the album, and the build from the chorus into that huge bridge is just bam bam BAM.

Yes.

Another favourite and slightly underrated moment on this record: the crescendo in the bridge of "I Almost Do" and the way that Taylor subtly repurposes the title lyric to immense emotional effect.

"State of Grace" on X Factor USA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8oWD4z4KqE

I have to see her live.

^^ wow, she skipped the best part of the song (these are the hands of FAAATEEEE).

by the way now I agree that the song order in this album is off. it's basically downbeat song, upbeat song, repeat.

at 3:01? It's such a long song I wondered how it would be truncated, I'm glad they kept that great drumfill towards the end.

I initially didn't like how it shifted so wildly in tone from one song to the next, but I like it as a stylistic choice. Sort of appropriate for the rollercoaster of emotions she's going through.

Swift told Good Morning America the writing process for All Too Well was laborious.
'All Too Well was the hardest to write because it took me a long time to filter through everything I wanted to say,' she admitted.
'It started out being a 10-minute song, which you can't put on an album. I had to filter it down to a story that could work in the form of a song.'

want the 10-minute version so badly

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).

Support for my theory: Taylor's cat is named after Meredith Grey.