taylor swift iridescent smoke bombs thread 2019 - lover

a post of a London boy

man i love the "death by a thousand cuts" bridge(/lyrics overall) sooo much haha. goosebumps every time.

i guess i have always liked the impressionistic side of her lyrical approach, so i don't mind that she's leaning on it so heavily on the last few albums, and perhaps even becoming more imprecise in how/where she deploys it.

You guys, I want to be defined by the things I love, not the things I hate. (I’d be happy to provide a detailed list of things in each category, to facilitate your definitions of me — just lmk)

For example, please do not define me by this — but one thing I recently discovered that I hate are the vocal stylings of a certain “Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco.”

^^ you need to calm down

I don't know if "It's Nice to Have a Friend" is my favorite song on this album, but it stands out as the most unique-sounding song on any of her albums. Kind of like Sade's "Turn My Back on You" looms in her discography. It's not that the Swift & Sade tunes sound exactly alike but they seem to share a haunting, almost ineffable sonic world. Or maybe I played them too close together and it's affecting my opinion. Still, "Friend" should be the last song on here, or followed by the title tune.

“daylight” pretty much has to be the closer i think

Lyrically, it's a logical closer. Just doesn't hit me the way a few others do. However, anything but "I Forgot That You Existed"--thematic kiss-off to her last LP or not--should be the opener. It may be her weakest opener ever (as someone else mentioned above) although "Welcome to New York" would be an acceptable alternate choice re: weakest opener.

I think “I Forgot...” is a great opener!

“i forgot that you existed” is 100000x better than “welcome to new york,” a bad song i made myself like

"Death by a Thousand Cuts" & "Afterglow" are two of my three favorite songs here ("It's Nice to Have a Friend" being the other). The second half is soooo good aside from "London Boy" & "ME!"

They were mentioned together in a previous post but which is worse: "London Boy" or "Welcome to New York"?

"london boy" is worse lyrically, "welcome to new york" worse musically and probably overall

Welcome To New York. London Boy isn't as bad as people are saying it is, and if anything TS seems to know even less about how NY really works on "Welcome..."

It perhaps wouldn't work well as an opener but "New Romantics" basically rendered "Welcome..." entirely redundant in the "I just moved to NY and it feels so liberating to live in this city and have a shitload of money" stakes.

"new romantics" has been the opener on my edited 1989 tracklist since release

I think experiencing "Welcome to New York" in concert made me like it more than I should. Hearing 60,000 or so people sing along to it in a Boston suburb was a real treat. "New Romantics" would've been an excellent opener! Hate that it was relegated to the bonus tracks.

It at least could have replaced “I Know Places" (that album’s bum track).

Remove both tracks and add in "You Are In Love".

London Boy isn't as bad as people are saying it is

otm

The "London Boy (A to Zedd Remix)" is gonna be ace!

She could have at least got J Hus to jump on there or something

There's still time.

I've tried liking "Daylight," and while it's nice it feels as if she and Antonoff put it at the end because it's slow enough to feel like a closer or something instead of a retread.

^The bridge is terrific though; it makes the song! (Don’t know why so much bridge tawk for this album...)

Oh fuck I love tracks 2-15 so much I haven't been able to get to the end of this album for days.

she has become very good at singing "darling"

her performance of "Lover" at the VMAs was really quite something. I know the crowd was full of fellow celebs but it was still pretty powerful to see so many people at an awards show vibing on the same thing in a seemingly genuine way, especially for a song that hadn't been out two weeks but that everyone was already treating like a staple.

I’ve never been a huge Taylor fan, but I’m really liking the sadder/more anxious songs on this album. I like how under all the candy-colored happiness there’s this consistent undercurrent of fear that she’s going to screw it up and it’s all going to go away.

i love this album

Yeah I’m in deep too

Currently obsessed with “I Think He Knows”. By 16th Avenue does she mean Music Row or is that some significant New York or London reference?

she's a big fan of the nuttery
https://thenutteryny.com/about-us

"cornelia street" might be the best version of the breathy synthy kinda song she's started writing since 1989

‘i forgot that you existed’ is my #breakupgoals

i agree that ‘if i was a man, id be the man’ is a bad lyric... but it’s also otm

‘calm down’ and ‘ME!’ are 2 of the worst songs on here, and prob some of the worst of her career imo. ‘lover’ is fantastic, such a great chorus

I’m at that point I reach with Taylor Swift albums, where some songs still sound awesome to me, but others have suddenly become skippable (“The Man,” “The Archer”...).

Archer must be skipped unless you want to spend the next 20 minutes staring out the nearest rain-streaked window

"cornelia street" might be the best version of the breathy synthy kinda song she's started writing since 1989

Yeah, it kind of is. It's like she finally managed to marry those vibes with the diaristic/narrative idiosyncrasy that was so integral to classic-TS.

so "Holy Ground"

Live Lounge:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07m7pwb

1 London Boy
2 Lover
3 Can't Stop Loving You (Phil Collins cover)
4 Holy Ground
5 The Archer
6 You Need to Calm Down

yess holy ground.

I think at this point I can swallow this album from beginning to end. Which is more than I can say for most.

I can even somewhat enjoy "Me!" here? Am I going too far? Possibly. But it feels so much more earned at Track #16 than as first single. It's like the shallow/simplistic first couple of singles are now part of a more complex whole?

Can't believe she's making a cover version from a Phil Collins 34-point Metacritic album. That's gutsy.

yesss I hope she plays "Holy Ground" at the show here next week

I am really into "Afterglow" and "I Think He Knows" now.

"Death By A Thousand Cuts" sounds she's adapting the Imogen Heap sounds of "Clean" to a poppier song.

I think at this point I can swallow this album from beginning to end. Which is more than I can say for most.

I can even somewhat enjoy "Me!" here? Am I going too far? Possibly.

same on all counts but this was so inevitable for me that i’m suspicious of it. same thing happened with red, i had my own edit and discovered i preferred the sprawl. “me” is a bad song but it’s just kinda this cloud-skipping detour in sequence and it’s fine. i guess, unlike “bad blood,” which i still struggle through, at least it didn’t exactly become a world-blanketing hit

even though I like "You Need To Calm Down" and "London Boy" fine enough, I'm enjoying my edit without them (and without "Me!" obviously). I also cut "It's Nice to Have a Friend" because it and "Daylight" are good but seem unnecessary & then I can just start the album over again a little faster.

had a real moment with “daylight” yesterday

also i was talking to a friend about how i’m confused about what i’m supposed to think the verse and chorus are on “death by a thousand cuts.” obv “saying goodbye is etc.” is the chorus but the rest of the song doesn’t feel like verses, just more distorted and desperate unfoldings of the chorus. my friend then made the point that the song’s more like three incredible bridges strung together

that sounds right! it's an excellent song

I do like "Daylight" but I'll treat it like a b-side and only indulge periodically, whereas I'm mainlining the rest

Her lyrics can still be, I guess, endearingly clumsy (“Running through rose thorns / I saw the scoreboard / And ran for my life”).

And I like “Paper Rings,” but the details of the relationship don’t track — in the verses, they’re a couple who met on a night out, she was instantly obsessed, and they played “cat and mouse” for a few months before falling hard for each other; and in the chorus, they’re a pair of friends who “accidentally” became lovers?