taylor swift red poll

Ravedeath, 1972

she was actually talking about best coast

like i’m not joking, that’s the real answer

SNL performance was great.

She must just not be my type of performer… I’ve heard great things about her concerts, but whenever I see a TV performance, it leaves me cold.

I loved the way the song *sounded* on SNL but I didn't actually think her expressed facial affect worked with the song

Yeah I feel like that's a perennial thing with her, her lyrics are much more nuanced than her kind of rote, literal physical presentation of them.

(Also why I generally don't like her videos.)

lol peace man

her over-acting is goofy but endearing

I have no problem with her facial expressions but was put off by the music video with its exact visual representation of everything we're being told about in the song lyrics. And also that it looks like a bunch of spliced-together scenes from Gilmore Girls.

Yeah the “short film” playing in the background doesn’t help

That was what I meant; I just felt silly calling it a short film when it's just a longish music video. (It's not even one of those music videos where there's some story playing out unrelated to the song, which could more reasonably be called short films but usually aren't.)

But yeah I meant the part where it was playing behind her and you couldn't look away.

Visually it was distracting but I enjoyed the meta-queen-of-all-media vibe of the whole thing.

She announced a new music video premiering tomorrow, for a different song (she’s actually calling this one a “music video,” ha ha).

i enjoyed the short film, it was less literal than i expected

new music video is for "I Bet You Think About Me"

i hope she pushes "message in a bottle" as a single but probably won't happen

I love the arrangement for the long "All Too Well", the way the muted throb establishes this basic consistency which allows for subtly different emphases as the song progresses, much in the same way that Taylor herself plays with her top line melodies, continually finding new variations on the underlying theme.

I remember thinking even back in 2012 that the fake-lightness of the upward lilt on "now you mail back my things and I walk home alone" felt like a minor milestone in Taylor's songwriting, the way she managed a perfect marriage between a shift in the narrative and a shift in the melodic variation (this is something that she picks up again a lot on the most recent two albums).

That denouement feels even more powerful coming after all the additional details - the age gap, crying at the Hollywood party, her 21st birthday etc (though arguably the descent back into bitterness afterwards (let alone the "just between us" section) then feels more like an add-on than if it had appeared earlier) - Taylor really gives the impression that she could keep on adding verses forever and keep coming up with new variations on the melody. I flashed back to the liner notes for Bjork's Debut where Nellee Hooper talks about having listened to the songs hundreds of times but still loving them - and he says something like "we're so lucky to have Bjork's voice!" I could imagine Taylor's collaborators similarly being knocked out by her melodic generosity - it makes a song like this so much more interesting a proposition than it would be otherwise (relatedly, I love the story from The Long Pond Sessions about Taylor spontaneously adding the second bridge to "August" while they were recording it).

Also I can't quite believe that Taylor has kept "You kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath" in her back pocket for almost a decade. It's almost the archetypal TS lyric.

That the best you can do? Amateur stuff. Here's how it's done: https://rateyourmusic.com/music-review/nostalghia/taylor-swift/all-too-well-the-short-film/160999757

Great post, Pope Tim.

At the time, after Speak Now topped my 2010 best-of list, I dismissed Red as her weakest album. It took this version to undercut my bullshit.

she was actually talking about best coast

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Sunday, November 14, 2021 10:38 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

like i’m not joking, that’s the real answer

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Sunday, November 14, 2021 10:38 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Thank you Brad!

Just read the Fork review and ... it doesn't particularly read like an 8.5/Best New Music. But whatever.

Yeah, the review has an oddly grudging tone.

It’s actually very possible to be into this stuff without being a Swiftie or caring about Swift semiotics (…I’m living proof).

yeah, it’s the swift semiotics that turn me off the whole taylor project even though i greatly respect her as a songwriter and melodist. i almost never want to listen to her because each song comes with a wiki article’s worth of extra-textual baggage

It’s actually very possible to be into this stuff without being a Swiftie or caring about Swift semiotics (…I’m living proof).

― heterologous booster (morrisp),

hi!

Yeah I think as somebody who listens to Swift because my teenage kid does, there is an entire world of pretty normie Swift fandom which has very little extratextual stuff in it, and this world is much bigger than that of the semioticians.

I didn’t even know she dated Jake G, let alone that that song is about him!

i did but it was impossible for me to avoid the discourse at the time. regardless i do not give even the remotest shit that it's about him

she should write a song about gyllenhaal’s character in okja

I find it annoying that the implied choice (not on ILM per se, just in general) is between caring about all the autobiographical detail and not being invested in the songwriting at all. One of the best aspects of the shift in her songwriting in the last two albums (especially on Evermore) is the sense that that binary is no longer applicable. "Ivy" and "Cowboy Like Me" are two of the very best songs she has ever written, and both clearly have nothing to do with her own life.

I was discussing with Brad a while back all the questions I wish TS would get asked in interviews, basically all of which would dig into her songwriting craft. A big question I had coming out of Evermore is whether she feels like, if she is writing from the POV of a fictional character, her lyrical vocabulary changes. Which of course she would never actually be asked by an interviewer.

She doesn't really do many interviews does she?

I'm not really a fan, but I gained a lot of respect for her when I watched her documentary, which reveals a lot of the songwriting process. I wish there was a documentary just about Max Martin and how he writes for and with people. But he's even more locked down (certainly by choice, probably also by NDA) than she is.

Fwiw, I was at the time disappointed she went with Martin, which seemed to be such an easy, lazy choice. But in retrospect, it's afforded her the success and money to do whatever she wants. Though Speak Now, which she wrote entirely herself, of course already proved she needed no ringers.

Maybe pitchfork knew they couldn't really top Brad's previous review.

That the best you can do? Amateur stuff. Here's how it's done: https://rateyourmusic.com/music-review/nostalghia/taylor-swift/all-too-well-the-short-film/160999757

― imago, Monday, 15 November 2021 10:17 (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This writer has really interesting/curious taste actually. Their list of hundreds of great albums has prompted me to finally check out Koopsta Knicca's 'Devil's Playground: Underground Solo'.

Last weekend I discussed with a friend the Sinatra-U2 post-show hangout session where to their surprise he band realized no one much talked to the old man about music. Apparently they delighted him asking those questions. He went into detail explaining Gene Krupa's drum sound, oboes vs bassoons, etc.

I've wanted booklength interviews with Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Taylor Swift like what Zollo did with Tom Petty.

Yeah, if there is one lesson to be learned from that recent Paul McCartney Rick Rubin show it's that even Paul McCartney has a lot more to reveal when asked the right questions.

I think it's tough for some of these superstars to navigate, because in many ways their privacy is a form of currency.

Also: how many journalists want to ask those questions?

I've cited these comments by bassist-to-the-stars Guy Pratt about Madonna's control during the "Like a Prayer" sessions:

"Jonathan, do less of the high-hat in the middle eight, and more of a fill towards the end. Guy, I want duck eggs [semibreves] on the end, and Chester, bring in your guitar on the second verse."

This writer has really interesting/curious taste actually. Their list of hundreds of great albums has prompted me to finally check out Koopsta Knicca's 'Devil's Playground: Underground Solo'.

― Tim F, Monday, 15 November 2021 22:34 (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I may seem antagonistic but this writer is someone I actually 'follow' on RYM owing to a superlative Richard Dawson review, and I shan't dismiss their Taytay raptures even if I mock them semi-fondly

As ever, I will actually listen to the new Swift and begrudgingly accept a measure of merit, even as I abhor the discourse. I really wish she wasn't a marketing genius

xxxpost - The problem is the journalists not the interviewees I think - none of the questions I'd want to ask would really touch on private lives.

If anything, Taylor typically disappoints on this front, because she basically undersells her own craft by offering simplified explanations ready for consumption by the broadest cross-section of fans possible.

Like, "Mirrorball" strikes me a really interesting dissection of the interrelationship between imposter syndrome and an anxious desire for public approval, but according to Taylor in the Long Pond Sessions it's about... not being able to tour.

Also making it clear that I only see Tim F as antagonist insofar as he consistently and eloquently speaks in favour of that which I halt at, and he is clearly a brilliant cornerstone of this entire website and its ethos. But then I am currently drunk, and would not admit so otherwise. EOYs without a Tim influence would not exist

I am *very* drunk. The beer was Belgian, and cheap

Oh god I'm interrupting. Best actually bloody listen to it

Don't many, if not most, artists favor basic answers to "What's that song about?," rather than go into a detailed literary analysis of their own lyrics?

I know some interviewers are skilled at insightful interviews with songwriters, but I think those results tend to be rare (on both ends)...

That Flanagan book is as terrific as Zollo's own book.

Don't many, if not most, artists favor basic answers to "What's that song about?," rather than go into a detailed literary analysis of their own lyrics?

I know some interviewers are skilled at insightful interviews with songwriters, but I think those results tend to be rare (on both ends)...

― heterologous booster (morrisp), Monday, 15 November 2021 23:05 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yep - it's not really surprising, especially absent something asking really specific questions.

(and it's all good imago, enjoy the beer)

It's not so much just what each song is about, it's the nuts and bolts of it, the arrangement, the decisions made, the tempo picked, the previous iterations. All that stuff is super interesting and not always revealed. Like all those versions of Like a Rolling Stone that were eventually released. They nail the final version on the second or third take, but then just kept going, including that one version in waltz time. What made them realize the keeper was the keeper? In Taylor's case, I suppose I'd want to know her editing and refinement process, how different the final versions are from their origins. Stuff like that. Angles like this are why publications like Tape Op are invaluable. Where else are producers going to be interviewed about the tricks of the trade? Or even behind the scenes stuff. They've been witness to countless pivotal moments of history, but rarely is their opinion or experience the center of the discourse, and they have a lot to say. Same with session dudes: God only knows the stuff that Jim Keltner has seen, but where is that interview going to run besides Modern Drummer?