taylor swift iridescent smoke bombs thread 2019 - lover

finally listened to the title track since everyone was comparing it to mazzy star, am now convinced I've been listening to an entirely different mazzy star

lol

Maybe they were thinking of the Cowboy Junkies (it sounds nothing like Mazzy Star)

melodically it reminds me a lot of “crazy” by aerosmith

well, that's a ringing endorsement.

“False God” is a standout... it reminds me a little of something from the first Eleanor Friedberger album.

This comparison is probably a stretch but the pitch-shifted vocal sample that plays throughout False God kind of reminds me of the Junior Boys or Caribou circa-Our Love

“crazy” is a great song!

The Mazzy Star thing is pretty much exclusively in her delivery of the first line of each of the two verses, and the guitar too I guess though I agree the guitar is closer to cowboy junkies

I’m slowly coming around to the album. I forgot how great it feels to fall in love with a Taylor Swift song.

I'm finding there's a lot more to this album than "London Boy".

it's a very good record imo. i kinda missed the extreme dynamics of reputation but i'm adjusting to this as a refinement of both that record and 1989 (a lot of tracks here melodically feel like sequels to "king of my heart" and i'm not complaining). taylor in ldr mode never works for me ("so it goes" >>>> "wildest dreams" > "miss americana and the heartbreak prince") but the rest of it is good-to-great outside of "me!" (my worst take is that "you need to calm down" is good as hell). but the material i live for is the between-worlds stuff like "cornelia street," "the archer," "paper rings," "lover" etc. these all remind me of the songwriter who wrote red. "soon you'll get better" is so "the old taylor is back from the dead" that i should feel pandered to but it feels so natural. weirdly my favorite song is probably "death by a thousand cuts" which doesn't sound like any previous taylor swift song, the phasing piano line is a really wonderful touch

yeah I have deleted "Me!" but think the rest is very good and I look forward to getting lost in it and coming out its, well, lover.

I thought I did not like the "Lover" bridge but the line "I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover" has been stuck in my head for days so I guess I fell for this one already.

“Need to Calm Down” is great, and sequenced at just the right spot on the album.

I think a lot of pop tracks these days (not just by Swift) suffer from pre-release (as singles or otherwise) — when they’re picked apart / agonized over — and then they end up sounding much better in context of the full LP.

(^not the case for “Me!,” sadly – it still stinks in context)

I walked into it with worry, which has been pretty much the standard since Red and those misleading first singles, but still. And of course Need to Calm Down and Me are far from her best, but in the context of the album they're much...tolerable? I think would be a way to put it... just as WANEGBT, Look what you made me do and Shake it off were back in their respective days. It does sound like a kind of refinement of 1989/Rep, which somehow brings her full circle to her Red-era songwriting; Cornelia in particular takes me back to All Too Well: her vocals, the classic-Taylor confessional approach, and how it sounds like the emotional backbone of the album. I wonder what would have happened had it been chosen as first single instead. It wouldn't have made it to #1, but a lot of the pre-release thrashing would have been avoided.

I rate albums by their peaks, and the best stuff here is pretty good. Cornelia, Paper Rings, Lover, Archer, Soon, Afterglow, that's too many good songs to make a bad album, I think. I haven't paid attention to the lyrics yet, though.

The middle stretch is her best since Red if I tie "London Boy" to a stake and burn it alive.

i resequenced it for my own purposes and may end up only listening to this version lol

1. the archer
2. cruel summer
3. i think he knows
4. the man
5. cornelia street
6. soon you'll get better
7. it's nice to have a friend
8. lover
9. paper rings
10. death by a thousand cuts
11. false god
12. afterglow
13. daylight

I wish Taylor Swift had covered the Killers' "The Man."

Fuck me if this lump in the throat I get from "Cornelia Street" doesn't get bigger every time.

haven't messed with sequencing but my abridged version is almost the exact same song selection (just minus the man) xxp

"the man" has been stuck in my head since friday i think it's undeniable

the verses & bridge on the man don't really work for me :/ at least not yet

Having trouble tracking the political metaphor in “Miss Americana...”. Who exactly is the “Heartbreak Prince” – is it, like, America itself?

HE LOOKS UP, GRINNING LIKE A DEVIL

Re: Miss Americana, that one confuses me too. It seems to switch back and forth between being about America - "crazier for you than I was at sixteen," "I think you should come home" - and being about someone specific - "you are the only one who seems to care."

I like that she calls herself "Miss Americana," though, it's clever.

“Daylight” kind of uses the same closing-track trick as “Clean” (from 1989)... it’s a good song, though, I like the bridge with that warbly background vocal.

Some of these songs reach for the same “refined ‘80s pop” sound as 1989, maybe even to better results. I can’t get over how good “False God” is, both the music and lyric — it’s like the coolest song playing in a late-night, uptown NYC sushi bar / disco in the late Eighties.

the chorus melody of "the man" sounds like it was thought up by danielle haim. that's about its only redeeming feature.

"i think he knows" would've been my pick for the first single, but i think "false god" is my firm favourite. a subtle sophistipop song possibly about cunnilingus on a taylor swift album? loving that concept!

also really like "it's nice to have a friend"

"paper rings" is perfect imo

i just caught the line "i used to think love would be burning red" in "daylight" and got v emotional

the 80s pop sound was way better on 1989, like 1989 wasn't the best sounding pop album or anything but it still has much richer sounding production than this album

1989 had the benefit of Martin/Shellback; but it also didn’t have anything like “False God.”

"you are in love" wasn't too far off and better at the specific thing it does than "false god" is at its sophisti sound

not enough love for "Soon You'll Get Better" and "Death by a Thousand Cuts."

"you are in love" wasn't too far off and better at the specific thing it does than "false god" is at its sophisti sound

― ufo, Monday, August 26, 2019 6:31 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

"you are in love" sounds like "secret garden" by bruce springsteen, i think they're different targets

"death by a thousand cuts" may be my favorite pop taylor swift song, feels like she mastered something there

the slightly off-rhythm guitar!

not enough love for "Soon You'll Get Better" and "Death by a Thousand Cuts."

"Soon You'll Get Better" is well done, but a little hard to discuss/evaluate (due to lyrical content).

on the contrary it's for her a model of restraint, even the Jesus mention

"Death By A Thousand Cuts" is mostly v good but the bit about getting lost in a "haunted club" (?) and "our songs, our films, united we stand" etc is very odd to me

Something for everyone I guess, Miss Americana might actually be my favorite. Best lyric on the whole album: “You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes”

the chorus melody of "the man" sounds like it was thought up by danielle haim. that's about its only redeeming feature.

^^

i uniformly hate the joel little songs on here... me, you need to calm down, miss americana, the man... all terrible. there's something really chintzy and cloying in all those productions. if i'm cutting ones i'm starting there.

"it's nice to have a friend" makes me wonder what the frank dukes/louis bell sessions sounded like when they weren't doing stuff bland spotify pop like "i forgot that you existed"

i need to see if i can get into "afterglow" and "daylight"... it feels like there's one too many songs on this album that remind me of "wildest dreams"

if i'm recutting this album i'm going

1. lover
2. cruel summer
3. the archer
4. i think he knows
5. paper rings
6. cornelia street
7. death by a thousand cuts
8. soon you'll get better
9. false god
10. it's nice to have a friend

still a little too short to be called a properly good album by her standards... maybe if i come around on those other two songs tho

I’ve taken my own stab at an ideal alternate sequence:

1. The Archer
2. Death By A Thousand Cuts
3. I Think He Knows
4. Cruel Summer
5. Cornelia Street
6. False God
7. Soon You’ll Get Better (ft. Dixie Chicks)
8. Daylight
9. Lover

It’s pretty leaned out, but all in all, you have a dreamier, moodier, more focused and more potent record. There’s the Dixie Chicks track cutting through the fog, and then there’s “Lover” serving as the closer that brings everything back down to blissful reality.

“Afterglow” would be the B-side

I'm listening to this album now and i have news:

it's good

extremely benoit & sergio vibes from much of it!

subscribe to my blog for further sneak previews

i mean this as the highest compliment: “afterglow” would be a killer amy grant album track

I'm finding "I forgot that you existed" somewhat hard to swallow. It's probably her weakest album opener to date... I suppose I've never been a fan of WANEGBT.

But everything from Cruel Summer up to Afterglow really rolls; "London Boy" and "You Need to Calm Down" just a couple bumps in the road. I'd even defend "London Boy" as a kind of companion to "Welcome to NY", another widely ridiculed song portraying a rose-tinted view of a big city. But it's a feeling me, as a tourist, can really relate to. And Xgau pretty much nailed it for me in his 1989 review; all he said about "Welcome" there kind of applies here, to me (though I can concede "London" is weaker than "Welcome")

"The Man" is much better than I expected it to be, and "I Think He Knows" is really great, though it's somewhat buried among the other standouts in a first listen. And "Paper Rings", is it "Stay Stay Stay" part 2?

Production's probably not as...resourceful? than in 1989/Rep. In the sense that it's very clear Antonoff's is not the provider of ideas than Max Martin was. He's less of a source. But he does seem to provide a lot more room for her songwriting to breath here. I've always considered "Speak Now" her strongest and I'm always hoping she, at some point, will go back to fully writing on herself (as she is obviously a better songwriter than all the partners she's had), so this is a welcome change.