Taylor Swift - Midnights

Spelling is fun!

Hey... I enjoy "Look What You Made Me Do"!

"me!" is very trolls-coded, that's the only one i'd really buy that theory about

i grew to love "look what you made me do" but i am a baby tbh

(fwiw, that NYT Magazine piece was one of the ones I was referring to...)

thinking about it, i'd argue "look what you made me do" is the least calculated and most like personal lead t swift single ever maybe, like that shit is her to the bone, creeping sense of secondhand-embarrassment and all

How does one even distinguish between songs that were written and recorded with calculation to court a young audience from those that were written and recorded with sincerity because Taylor Swift is a young woman interested in writing and recording songs for young people/women?

Me!" is one of many throwaway collaborations she's done with male musicians starting with Red that seemed more about cross-pollination fanbases than courting a younger audience.

Why not both?

We need to get all Derrida here and deconstruct this sincerity vs calculation binary, never useful in pop music.

"I believe this wonderful song I'm writing for my teen fans makes a lot of money" is a perfectly honest position.

If it has a Bon Iver feature it's sincere. If it has an Ed Sheeran feature it's calculation.

if it has a G-Eazy feature it's 2014

if it has Aaron Neville you're playing your mom's Linda Ronstadt.

still kind of amazed the shot they chose for the movie poster is one where it appears Taylor is farting into the mic.

(I'm not a Taylor hater, like quite a few of her songs, but it's the only thing I can think of when I see that poster).

Haha, comforted to know I wasn't the only one that thought that.

92.8 million over the weekend. more than Bieber's Never Say Never did in 46 weeks

xp It would sound better than "Me!"... (does she perform that on tour, or does its greatness rely on the vocal stylings of Brendon Urie?)

How does one even distinguish between songs that were written and recorded with calculation to court a young audience from those that were written and recorded with sincerity because Taylor Swift is a young woman interested in writing and recording songs for young people/women?

― Indexed, Tuesday, October 17, 2023 12:38 PM (twenty minutes ago)

so goes the job of the music critic!

but yeah i actually do think there is credence to the theory. there is a noticeable shift in between 'red' and '1989' in terms of how she approached lead singles and those singles relationships to their albums. compare "we are never getting back together" and 'red' vs "shake it off" and '1989' -- the only tether between "shake it off" and the rest of '1989' is the vague notion of it being a "pop" album, otherwise it sticks out like a sore thumb. i would argue "look what you made me do" sticks out similarly & as it was related to the kim/kanye thing it's prob the most calculated single of her career, all the cringe and secondhand embarrassment of the final product aside. i think "me!" fits this theory less so from a sonic perspective in relation to 'lover,' but the songwriting -- that real reaching for the stars skyscraping of the hook -- feels in opposition to the heart of that record, to me.

i also think we know enough about her music to know that when she is interested in writing/recording songs for young women (all the time) she generally has a lot more to offer from a lyrical perspective than she does on "shake it off" or "me!" i'm not criticizing her for making pop singles, but i find it surprising that you guys are bristling so heavily against the idea that taylor swift, who clearly desires global omnipresence, may have thought strategically about how to bridge the gap between generations w/in her fanbase, and how she could build that bridge w/ her lead singles.

to me one of the most foundational taylor swift texts is her self-written elle cover story from the 'lover' era about pop music as an art form. here's some things she says

The fun challenge of writing a pop song is squeezing those evocative details into the catchiest melodic cadence you can possibly think of. I thrive on the challenge of sprinkling personal mementos and shreds of reality into a genre of music that is universally known for being, well, universal.

You’d think that as pop writers, we’re supposed to be writing songs that everyone can sing along to, so you’d assume they would have to be pretty lyrically generic... AND YET the ones I think cut through the most are actually the most detailed, and I don’t mean in a Shakespearean sonnet type of way, although I love Shakespeare as much as the next girl. Obviously. (See “Love Story,” 2008).

We actually do NOT want our pop music to be generic. I think a lot of music lovers want some biographical glimpse into the world of our narrator, a hole in the emotional walls people put up around themselves to survive.

is anyone gonna tell me that "shake it off" or "me!" fit the criteria that she herself has outlined for how to approach pop music? i think it's pretty obvious that she decided she needed to write some sell out songs. even "bad blood" ... does that really hit you as taylor swift-ian songwriting? where are the evocative little details, the "sprinkling of personal mementos"? or did she just surmise that she could make a lot of money if she sung a max martin hook that rhymes "bad blood" with "mad love"? or on "blank space" ... can we think of another taylor swift song w/ a lyric so poorly written/sung that it was completely misunderstood by the entire listening public? that's max martin logic -- melodies over lyrics, universality at all costs. children don't really care about the difference between starbucks lovers and ex-lovers

with 1989 in particular, which is really the key album here in terms of the shift in her career, i think she very clearly sanded down the unique aspects of her songwriting & music in order to make the most broadly appealing, generic pop music that she could muster. idk how you listen to the singles off that album and come away w/ any other conclusion. "shake it off" -- and roping in "me!" here as well -- devolve into bridges that are essentially sesame street songs. i mean, on "me!" brendan urie literally says "hey kids! spelling is fun!" i understand there is irony there but do you not think she is in the most conscious way possible trying to reach actual children with these songs? ones that were not even conceived when "love story" came out? she wrote "me!" when she was 30 years old.

Fwiw, another of those pieces which I (half-)read this morning – apparently by a UK-based (male) music writer and Taylor mega-fan – refers to "Blank Space" as "the best pop song of the 21st Century".

My daughter is 11 and - when I haven't actively tuned out the extensive Taylor Swift related chatter she can produce - I think her favorite two songs are on Folklore and Evermore. So whatever targeting may-or-may-not be going on it has been a complete cosmic fail on her. Though she basically resigned to Taylor Swift fandom based on the power law (though you wouldn't actually know that if I didn't tell you that)

What are her two favorites?

My favorites from those two are Last Great American Whale and Coney Island Baby (featuring the National)

Really? I prefer "Mistrial" ft. Aaron Dessner.

I like "Style It Takes," her song about Harry Styles ("You've got connections and I've got the art /
You like attention and I like your looks"). Actually, I don't think she sung that one...

I’ve got a Brillo Box and I say its art
You get entered in a drawing for free Eras tickets if you spend $500 at Walmart
Cause I’ve got the style it takes

Songs For Lena (Dunham)

One thing that i felt was made very clear by the doco where she performed Folklore live with Dessner and Antonoff (and the Lover piece quotes Jordan cites above) is that all her music is calculated, she very consciously sees her craft as craft, a process of constructing a vast, internally interconnected songbook, where the songs are exploring very deliberate musical, lyrical and thematic ideas. And I get the impression she has an imagined audience for each song. I'm not sure that there's anything necessarily more cynical or less sincere about writing a song whose imagined audience is younger versus writing a song whose imagined audience is older, though that doesn't mean I don't mostly prefer (post-Red) Taylor when she pitches older.

yeah this argument is continually weird to me. An artist who pledges her troth to craft is by nature calculated -- that word is as meaningless a pejorative as "dated." It's like insulting oxygen for being "odorless."

Separately but relatedly, one of the things that came through the Miss Americana doco is that Taylor seems to have a surprisingly broad notion of what "success" looks like. She tends to rise and fall with the quality of her collaborators not so much because she is dependent on them to bring the skill or chops, but because she tends to lean into their vision and shape her own craft to match (which quality she shares a bit with 90s Bjork, though there's few other ways in which I would compare the two).

Alfred otm, same problem I have with “contrived”

or on "blank space" ... can we think of another taylor swift song w/ a lyric so poorly written/sung that it was completely misunderstood by the entire listening public?

It's interesting, j0rdan, I made the same argument about "Wildest Dreams"; pre-1989 Taylor has always been known around my brain as being, among many other things, a peerless "setter of text", she weights her syllables and melodies so smoothly and naturally that it sounded like superpower. Then along comes "Wildest Dreams": "standing in a nice dress", such a decidedly European weighting to put the adjective on the strong beat, and such a milquetoast adjective at that. It's a subtle thing, but my brain screamed "somebody else fucking wrote this" when that song came out.

Yeah “nice dress” bugged me too.

(She also has approx. fifteen hundred different lyrics about “dresses”; she’s gotta make each one really count for it to work….)

I resist applying any cynicism toward anybody attempting to "do something" with a song, whether it's "to light up the country charts", or "to light up the pop charts", or "to write a song that works best in a festival setting", or "to write a song that works best alone, over headphones". Songs are better when the songwriter has a clear thesis, ime. The difference in intention between "country chart" and "pop chart" can be traced to lyrical decisions (in Taylor's case, choosing meme-y or AAVE expressions as lyrical material in "Shake It Off", as opposed to the teen-movie country music signifiers "short shorts/sneakers/cheerleader captain/bleachers" of "You Belong With Me"), to production choices, to, like, everything-- how the snare is mixed, how the track is mastered.

That balance of chart-viability and universally-recognized-truths that Taylor identifies isn't unique to her, I always figured it was/is the quest of most/all lyrical songwriters... whether the "chart" is an actual chart, or some other metric (political change, some modernist concept of pushing an envelope within a genre, music for friends/community). It's when that balance really pops that is when a pop song bowls me over, see: my undying love for Bieber/Sheeran's "Love Yourself", I will never stop stanning for that perfect song.

"Nice" is kind of Swift's aesthetic, though? I've always liked the juxtaposition of "wildest dreams" with the "every instagram post ever" generic image of dress + sunset. See also: Today was a fairytale/ I wore a dress/ You wore a dark gray t-shirt.

Good dress
Cool dress
Okay dress
Pretty dress
So many dress choices

I just used a few Taylor Swift Lyric Search sites (I figured that’d be a thing, and it was) to look for every “dress” lyric, and I guess there are fewer than I thought.

Aaron Dressner

I mean what it conveys to me is "remember me slightly dressed up and in an instagrammable pose," which is sort of pathetic and meant to be, I think. Like, we've just met and I'm dressed up for our date and against a nice backdrop, right now I'm a blandly pretty placeholder person that you can imagine is perfect, so plz keep that incredibly vague but pleasant image in your head after you get to know the real me and we break up.

I def agree that a basic adjective can be evocative in the right context: “with you, I’d dance / In a storm in my best dress, fearless.” That hits for me…

thought it was “white dress” for awhile

I felt like Taylor retrospectively redeemed the “Wildest Dream” chorus somewhat with this passage from “Long Story Short”:

“Actually / I always felt I must look better in the rear view / Missing me / At the golden gates they once held the keys to”

This idea that memory flatters misleadingly, removing imperfections, leaving only sunsets and generically nice dresses.

My wildest dreams are filled with generically nice dresses

Aaron Dressner

Nyce Dressner

What are her two favorites?

Turns out both on Folklore (I mean, they are basically the same album sessions, right?) "cardigan" and "this is me trying".

She likes both albums though. I had her chatting about this last night (not a challenging accomplishment) and she expressed a deep contempt for Bon Iver which confirmed she is definitely my child.

I think most (if not all) of the Evermore tracks were recorded after Folklore was released; but same general folks and studio, yeah

What's the ish with Bon Iver(?)

She was very firm that he ruins the songs. She did a very amusing impression that suggests she finds him a little monotone and droning in voice. I just recognized the light in her eyes being mad at some specific artist.

She is perfectly OK with the National and Haim (though Haim joined Bon Iver on her mangling their names).

Interestingly I believe "Cardigan" was her only #1 cut from the film. Personally I'm not a fan of how stilted its melody is -- sounds like Taylor was overly constrained by Dessner's track v. songs like "dynasty" and "invisible string" that are more fluid, natural marriages.

It's one of her most indelible melodies -- the way the arrangement swells during the chorus too.

I just was advised that Cardigan is actually pretty basic. I was correct on the other and the fact she has made about fifteen cardigan bracelets is more a coincidence.

I'm someone who really loved folklore and evermore when they came out, but I've found they didn't have the staying power for me that I thought they would. I got frustrated listening to both of them last night for a variety of reasons.

but I did think a lot about these songs while listening and clarified, in my mind, what TS is really good at, which is writing melodies. Most of these songs, when you listen to them, the basic instrumentation doesn't do much. There's a bass, drums, and the guitar and keys basically follow the bass; verse, chorus, verse, etc. You can tell some of these songs started out as loops that Antanoff or Dessner wrote and sent to her. The magic is actually from her input; the vocal is typically a counter melody to the music, and it's not always predictable where it will go (invisible string comes to mind) and when it works, which I think it does well over 50% of the time, those melodies are real earworms that don't leave your head. You could say that there is something 'intentional' about this type of songwriting, or maybe even claim it's 'formulaic' (basic track plods along, vocal carries all of the 'tune') but that's unfair IMO, it's a perfectly legitimate way to write a song.

The difference in intention between "country chart" and "pop chart" can be traced to lyrical decisions (in Taylor's case, choosing meme-y or AAVE expressions as lyrical material in "Shake It Off", as opposed to the teen-movie country music signifiers "short shorts/sneakers/cheerleader captain/bleachers" of "You Belong With Me"), to production choices, to, like, everything-- how the snare is mixed, how the track is mastered.

Quoting this from fgti more as an indirect connection but something from the film I remember was how towards the end (not at it, I think) she made a between-song comment thanking the audience for being with her over time as she 'experimented,' and that was the exact word used. I don't quote this as a gotcha or anything against her, more that this is how she appears to see/convey it more than anything else. (And TBF the show/film argues the whole case of this throughout; honestly the smartest move was how she ditched chronological order, not to mention the first album.)