Taylor Swift - Midnights

I can't help but think the production's 'modernity' is hurting it

This is referring to the new one, obv

xp no I don't think so? I love "Ivy" so much tho

illicit affairs is one of my favorites, i love the sneaky quiet build into that chorus - repeat it twice, hits like a brick then boom, out, done. it’s like a heist of feels!

also invisible string which adheres to brad’s theory that she should always write songs abt colors

one of my students wrote a fantastic essay about "ivy"

Some days Taylor’s finest song.

ivy is beautiful it is true

One of the upshots of Folklore and Evermore’s focus on telling stories about others is that you can hear Taylor really thinking about how to tell a complete, self-contained narrative within the constraints of the song format. “Ivy” for example is very effective at evoking the basic contours of an archetypal love triangle situation but very economically: “so tell me to run, or dare to sit and watch what will become / and drink my husband’s wine” - that final line telling so much about the state of the marriage with a single detail.

By contrast. when Taylor relies on her own life to fill in the blanks it can allow her to become a bit lazy at times (only at times) - I feel like a song like “Lavender Haze” is a bit weak in part because its narrative implicitly relies on what “we” already know about Taylor’s life to enable us to make sense of it (it’s also just one of the less interesting songs on the album) - so in some ways there is less “at stake” in the songwriting.

This is a good piece:

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/taylor-swift-midnights-jack-antonoff-criticism/671911/

Yeah even if you think the album has problems and Antonoff is one of them, he's there because she wants him to be. Blaming him for anything is falling into "TS can't fail, she can only be failed" thinking.

also invisible string which adheres to brad’s theory that she should always write songs abt colors

Hahaha this is so true

It's interesting to me that the respective "contentious collaborators" in Joni and Taylor's mid-30s output (Jaco and Jack) are about as aesthetically dissimilar as could be possible

What I do like about this album is the sense, more so than on others, that she's sharing half-formed, almost garbled thoughts, one-liners, and broken conversations; the homogeneity of the production makes it seem as if we're overhearing her confiding to a friend over Zoom.

That Atlantic piece implies there’s a significant movement afoot to blame Antonoff for the album’s mediocrity, but it quotes one Buzzfeed review (which doesn’t really say that), and links to one (clearly deranged, from the description) TikTok. Feels kinda strawmanny.

felt the same, altho damon albarn did eventually ride to its rescue

(out of the past)

I don't believe she has, could be interesting, although I fear 40 minutes of Marc being all defensive about why he never listened to her music.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, October 28, 2022 12:23 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Look, I'm not *against* it. I'm just an old guy. I can't keep up. Can you keep up? It's hard, right? Now, Jack's an interesting dude. He's been in here. What's it like working with *that guy*?

Cosign "Ivy" being among her best songs.

The NYT Popcast on this is worth a listen with a number of insightful discussions on the production, lyrics, process, criticism, etc. Roundtable with Joe Coscarelli, Jon Pareles, Lindsay Zoladz, and Caryn Ganz.

My daughters are of course psyched about the tour announcement, but I'm trying to temper their expectations a tad knowing that the dynamic pricing will inevitably lead to expensive disappointment.

I’m enchanted to announce my next tour: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour, a journey through the musical eras of my career (past & present!) The first leg of the tour will be in stadiums across the US, with international dates to be announced as soon as we can!https://t.co/KFuqvrhSGo pic.twitter.com/eVyTcuW8sK

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) November 1, 2022

that's sure a lot of ground to cover. i was expecting she'd just focus on the last four albums since she has yet to be able to tour any of them & she's previously tended to just do latest album + a few older hits + maybe one or two deeper cuts acoustic

.@taylorswift13 scores one of the most historic weeks in @billboardcharts history, as she becomes the first artist to claim the #Hot100’s entire top 10 in a single week. https://t.co/kMVGrXx7xq

— billboard (@billboard) October 31, 2022

So many great openers for this tour... just not really in Chicago. Would love to see Paramore open for her though, wow.

I know :(

She has three of the top 4 in the UK this week but that's just next level xps

Every song on this album gets an older song of hers stuck in my head for a day.

am I tripping or does 'willow' off evermore make you think of 'slow burn' by kacey musgraves

Fans apparently crashed Ticketmaster - surprising no one but Ticketmaster, I guess - so they paused sales and are apparently trying to get their shit together. One of my kids had a friend with one person left ahead of them in the queue when it went down.

Elon Musk use whatever remains of your fortune to buy Tickemaster challenge

That would be rad, he should waste his money on that.

My daughter managed to get 6 tix, around $300 a pop. Her roommate paid around $400 each for floor. That's insane to me. I went to Seatgeek to see what secondary markets were asking and was immediately put in a general queue, because I guess Seatgeek is the official vendor of several stadiums. Looked at Stubhub instead and nosebleeds were going for $500+.

if I emailed @taylorswift13 like democrats email me:

Subj: Taylor, I'm begging.

Taylor, I've signed up for Verified Fan. I've checked my spam. I've refreshed Ticketmaster, and yet STILL I'm waitlisted at this crucial time.

Can you RUSH a presale code to me by 10AM tomorrow?

— Amy Farley (@amyfarley) November 15, 2022

It tooks me 5 hours 'in the queue' to eventually buy tickets

It took my daughter around that long to get her tickets, and after spending over $2000 or whatever the bank sent her an automatic fraud notification flagging the purchase and saying it would be cancelled if she did not confirm the purchase. Which she did and ... the bank cancelled it anyway. In a panic she called my wife, who called the bank, pissed, basically asking, you know, what the fuck? It got sorted in the end, though.

Other kid told me that she has lots of friends that didn't even get a shot at tix. Floor seats on stubhub are over in the thousands right now, lol. I saw Row 1/field tix being sold for $45,000. Good luck with that.

You're on your own, kid

This is what the monoculture looks like:

Current parenthood situation. Getting a full dose of the Taylor Swift concert @Ticketmaster presale fiasco. Going on hour four! pic.twitter.com/ZpBHkVoU4S

— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) November 15, 2022

Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in.

Break them up.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 15, 2022

The Queue Has Been Temporarily Paused
2000+ People Ahead Of You pic.twitter.com/2L5h1VWTwF

— Texas A&M University (@TAMU) November 15, 2022

What's more stressful...registering for classes or trying to buy tickets to Taylor Swift's #TSTheErasTour? pic.twitter.com/1Dx0NYMfRr

— UGA (@universityofga) November 15, 2022

The Taylor Swift eras tour ticketmaster waiting room pic.twitter.com/Y5YBh9UWhQ

— Vulture (@vulture) November 15, 2022

Your kid is rich

lol years of babysitting, man. Anyway, it's a credit card, she's only ("only") on the hook for $300 of that.

more seriously i went through this (ended up saying fuck off to the whole thing) with springsteen and this whole business of big time concerts in 2022 is incredibly dispiriting. i get that things change but this is just obscene

Coworker started queueing just before 10 and said she finally got her tickets at quarter past three. Her husband never did manage to get through.

Reading reports that the ticket prices started out fairly reasonable (at least as far as these mega stadium shows go), but that the dynamic pricing model might have kicked in later?

My kid says dynamic pricing was indeed a thing.

xpost I did the same with Springsteen. I was, like, I love Springsteen, got verified fan code, waited in the queue and in the end said fuck this, too.

What I don't get, beyond the obvious explanation that Ticketmaster is a terrible garbage company, is how they claimed to be overwhelmed by the demand and not expecting this many people. But... didn't they set the number of verified presale slots "approved"? Shouldn't they have had a pretty good fucking idea of how many people would be trying to buy tickets?

I do not want to play devil's advocate, but I would not rule out them being overwhelmed by hackers and scalpers and other shitheads on a huge scale. Maybe the equivalent in terms of scale to a DOS attack. Should have been ready for that, too, though.

Ticket prices here in Kansas City MO seemed static this afternoon ($109 was what mine were), but maybe they became dynamic later. Service charges were like another 30-40% of the ticket price, though, plus another $50 for parking at a venue where you need a car to get there.

My kid says dynamic pricing was indeed a thing.

Not trying to single you or your kid out Josh, but I'm genuinely unclear on if there was dynamic pricing at play yesterday or not. I've seen absolute insistences on both sides that there was absolutely not dynamic pricing involved because Taylor wouldn't allow it, while others are absolutely swearing their was dynamic pricing going on.

I was just talking to someone about this today. It is pretty unclear, afaict. Were the tickets just expensive, or were they being dynamically inflated in real time? I'm pretty sure my kid said four of her six tickets, all in the same row, were one price, but the other two she bought (again, same row, same purchasing session, right next to the other four) were a little more expensive. That seems suspicious to me. Anyway, the idea that anyone would claim Taylor Swift "wouldn't allow it" is hilarious, because she sure allowed the sale of a whole lot of "VIP" tickets larded with merch, and besides, everyone else is doing it. There's no way Taylor Swift is going to be the righteous voice of reason when even Springsteen bought in.

FWIW, five VIP packages, ranging from I think $199 to $899 a ticket. Plus fees:

https://www.ticketmaster.com/promo/fxqil5

Go big or go home, I guess.

C'mon I don't think it would be out of character for Taylor to sell VIP packages but also want to make sure there was no dynamic pricing for the lower priced tickets. I don't think having the former necessarily means she'd be fine with the later. She's smart and savvy, I'm sure she saw the blowback Springsteen got for it and hoped to avoid it.

Maybe! Springsteen got blowback, but he still sold out the tour, and never said a word about it publicly, let alone reversed his position. I think it's here to stay, and in fact has been in effect for a couple of years already. If anything, if Taylor Swift went out of her way not to have dynamic pricing her people would probably have said something about it.

Yeah, if anything I'm wondering if it's just going to end up another thing Ticketmaster forces on the artists. "Oh, you don't like dynamic pricing? Good luck with all those other venues!"

Someone in my office posted on Slack, for those buying tickets (which doesn't include me): "Use your phone/cellular, and not our work Wifi, or else everyone will get flagged by Ticketmaster for being on the same network... they’ll boot you out of the queue because you’ll be flagged as a potential bot"

So word to the wise, I guess.

Everything I have ever heard about this stuff is that Ticketmaster in a sense exists to take the heat off artists. The number one reason ticket prices are high is because artists ok higher prices, to make more money. If they wanted prices to be lower, prices would be lower; we can thank the Eagles for recognizing there's a lot more money to be wrung out of fans. At the same time, a big stage spectacular like Taylor Swift puts on costs a lot of money, so I have no idea what the minimum ticket price would be for her to even break even, let alone make hundreds of millions of dollars.

The number one reason ticket prices are high is because artists ok higher prices

That.... seems to be really at odds with statements from artists recently about the difficulties of touring right now precisely BECAUSE they don't want to raise tickets. I mean obviously the Taylor Swifts of the world operate at an entirely different level, but I think putting most of the blame on high ticket prices on the artists is disingenuous at best.