Taylor Swift - Folklore

if I was going to get upset I wouldn't love utterly dissable artists

I know I'm obsessed with The 1975, but the beginning of 'mirrorball' is almost exactly the same as The 1975's 'medicine'.

I want you to know
I'm a mirrorball
I can change everything about me to fit in
You are not like the regulars
The masquerade revelers
Drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten

fuckin slaps!!!!

The overall mood definitely feels Lilith Fair without sounding a lot like anyone in particular, tho the piano production does evoke Sarah Mclachlan (more than Tori, I think, whose piano attack is sharper). Also obviously all the '70s women-piano-pop that Lilith Fair itself evoked, Carole King and Carly Simon etc.

And agreed about the lyrics. One of my FB friends just complimented the gauche/goes slant rhyme. I've always liked the craftsman side of Taylor, the obvious pleasure she gets in putting things together just the way she wants them.

lovely, mature album with especially vivid lyrics for swift. generally liked the Antonoff tracks more than the Dessner ones (and I'm a National fan, though more in the 00s than the 10s). early favorites are "Mirrorball" and "Epiphany" - both have really gauzy, light production that elevate swift in a way that feels like new territory for her, though maybe bits of 1989 sounded like this?

Hmm, I typically can't stand Swift's music but I may check this out based on the Sarah McLachlan comparisons.

"mirrorball" is like a more self-aware "enchanted," like it has all the same totally-gone falling-for-someone swoonings but it's also like "what am i doing, am i losing myself in trying so hard to appeal to this person and reflect their interests?"

though maybe bits of 1989 sounded like this?

― Indexed, Friday, July 24, 2020 7:46 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was expecting this record to sound like "safe & sound" but, surprisingly, "this love" seems to be the actual touchstone

I was gonna say "Clean," but yeah.

it can be both!!!!

every time i look up the lyrics to one of these songs i see a line or a verse that kicks my ass. all of "seven" is amazing, the second verse is i think trying to portray a greater adult darkness as viewed from the eyes of a child, cf. "i think your house is haunted / your dad is always mad and that must be why / and i think you should come live with me / and we can be pirates / then you won't have to cry," which is staggering on its *own*, and then the bridge is

please picture me in the weeds
before i learned civility
i used to scream ferociously
any time i wanted

fuck

Kinda sad about matty because he had come up with the "taylor nebraska" whole thing in an interview and how he would be glad to produce it and now this thing comes up and that box has obviously been ticked now.

"This love" was great

the lyrics of "this is me trying" are very reputation-y (cf. how "adjusting" rhymes with "rusting") but i really love "i was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere / fell behind all my classmates and i ended up here"

ha -- I noted that line/image too.

and i love pretty much every line in "illicit affairs," i think it's just great writing. "what started in beautiful rooms / ends with meetings in parking lots"; "take the words for what they are / a dwindling, mercurial high / a drug that only worked / the first few hundred times"; "and you wanna scream 'don't call me kid, don't call me baby' / look at this godforsaken mess that you made me"

Do any of you know if she is a reader, or if she's ever recommended or mentioned any books she's reading? I'd be curious.

It's obvious her sense of metaphor has expanded in the last decade, which means she no doubt reads or is at least sponging from the right sources.

I think a key thing I like about this album was that it *isn't* a "Taylor Nebraska" thing, or rather, that what I kinda figured might be the case -- some sort of vocal/guitar only thing -- wasn't. (And I know that while his pseudo-Walden days were long ago, the announced presence of Bon Iver also had me wondering.) As I muttered I really don't think about the National at all so if this is what they sound like then I'm perfectly content to listen to this rather than them, honestly. Alfred's point about Taylor's 'lightness of being' strikes me, and could also possibly explain why I'd find this much more interesting a prospect all around than the National straight up or LDR, the truest of blank zones. But to get back to the sense of sound beyond all these other points raised -- it's not a 'return' to a past so much as a comfortable shift, one which underscores the argument I've had (in my head only, maybe) for years that 'roots music' is a fetishized and misunderstood concept, given that our collective memories shift more and more to a point where it's been electronically mediated and supported as much as 'really' played by someone.

xxp She's a fan of Sally Rooney, which makes sense:
https://lithub.com/sally-rooney-is-trending-again-and-this-time-its-because-of-taylor-swift/

Yeah the Rooney connection makes sense. They're both very good at taking stock situations -- boy-girl, misunderstanding, mixed feelings, etc. -- and peeling back clichés to get to the underlying messiness.

I am surprised by how much I'm enjoying this album

And speaking of her metaphors, I was just appreciating this one: "You're a flashback in a film reel on the one screen in my town."

You get this sense of her really working to get to the specifics of the feeling.

t's not a 'return' to a past so much as a comfortable shift, one which underscores the argument I've had (in my head only, maybe) for years that 'roots music' is a fetishized and misunderstood concept, given that our collective memories shift more and more to a point where it's been electronically mediated and supported as much as 'really' played by someone.

This is a great point.

If anything, this album reminds me aesthetically -- not sonically -- of something like Blood on the Tracks, on which a decade of rummaging for cool sounds to complement the increasingly sophisticated songwriting strengthens a suite of ostensibly acoustic tunes. Think also of Tunnel of Love or Sleater-Kinney's No Cities to Love.

a comfortable shift

Yeah, Ned, this that you wrote jumped out at me, too. She adapts so well to this shift it doesn't even sound like an adaptation.

Thanks to you both -- your comparisons there, Alfred, are striking.

Yes to the "This Love" comparison

didn't read this thread but this is a good album, the first one I've liked since 1989 (ok I never really gave the last one a shot)

This is reminding me a lot of the second half of Rilo Kiley's More Adventurous, right down to the unwelcome vocals of a guy on a solitary track

So is there an actual Varg connection or…?

similar love of knitwear?

me after I’ve left the neon lights of the city behind to get back to the land and listen to Folklore, but there’s some part of me that just can’t let go of who I used to be pic.twitter.com/nxzWsgRP0e

— Sam Lansky (@samlansky) July 24, 2020

Do any of you know if she is a reader, or if she's ever recommended or mentioned any books she's reading? I'd be curious.

Still see this poster hanging in public libraries:

https://www.walden.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/taylor-swift-768-1.jpg

can someone shop White Fragility in there

Women like hunting witches too
Doing your dirtiest work for you too

tbh She's in the movie version of "The Giver," so there's a bit of what's good for the goose in there. And to go full tin-hat, that was at the end of the promotional cycle for "Red," and seeing her in a bright red dress with bright red lipstick next to the word "READ" kills a few more birds with one stone too. She's a clever one, that Taylor Swift.

i cannOT stop crying to "mirrorball"

think a key thing I like about this album was that it *isn't* a "Taylor Nebraska" thing

Yeah, it's not really a Taylor Nebraska! But it checks all the marks Healy seemed to suggest when he mentioned the concept.

I'd be interested in seeing more of those pop star library posters. I know the one with Bowie is totally classic.

I had the R.E.M. one for a while:

https://www.hakes.com/Image/MediumRes/96585/1/image.jpg

(mine was not signed, it was taped slightly askew on my door room wall)

xp I remember seeing that Healy comment at the time and thinking, "You can't really produce a Nebraska for someone else; if you want Taylor to make a Nebraska you'll just have to find some way to lock her in her house for a year with a guitar and a harmonica."

Just ordered the vinyl and they were like "this ships in 16 fucking weeks", which is kinda perfect because although yes, this is a melancholy summer album, it will slot in really nicely with my fall and winter and winter favorites as well.

just saw a headline declaring this "the perfect quar album," and now I have a new abbreviation to loathe

idk I think it's kinda cool

weren't Quar the worst band of all time at one point

This Taylort Earth

'fraid of the 'rona, gotta quar

james is totally a girl btw

pretty good album but man, it's kind of a bummer, isn't it? like i'm trying to get ready for the weekend and now i'm kind of sad.