Taylor Swift - Midnights

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.)

xp absolutely her top strength imo, and I find it most on display in songs like "Anti-Hero" and "We Are Never Getting Back Together," in which she never changes the chord pattern the entire song - never shifts keys, never changes the order, etc. Just the same four chords for the entire song, verse - pre-chorus - chorus - bridge, yet stitches together often three or four, ahem, indelible melodies. She reuses the same chord patterns over and over again, too, and somehow finds completely new ways into them. She is a great lyricist and storyteller, too, but the songwriting has always been her superpower.

The latest NYT Popcast "Deluxe" episode is a discussion about the film and is worth a listen. One thing JC mentions that I absolutely struggled with as well is the incessant smiling from everyone on stage.

Wait...does JC not know how theatrical presentations and acting and etc work or

I do think it's almost magical how much mileage and diversity she's gotten from a few stock chord progressions.

We have a good friend whose daughter recently switched from private school to public middle school and now doesn't really have any friends. She is a big Swift fan, so got all these bracelets and stuff ready and went to see the movie, hoping to finally connect with some people, and was totally bummed and disappointed that it was all little kids and their moms at the screening. Pretty sad. :( But I guess they got her Tix to see the tour in Toronto, so all is well.

xp his criticism was that the smiling was not always appropriate for the song. My personal aversion to it was more about authenticity. Obviously every step, every hand movement, and every smile was carefully choreographed, but there were moments when the scale tipped to cringe for me.

It really is the nature of a production like that. I mean, how to put this...if you think of it as more of a three hour Broadway style revue/spectacular where everyone is by default meant to be acting as certain way, this is exactly how it is supposed to land. I don't know how you would see it otherwise!

A three hour show where everyone is smiling the entire time sounds like a children's play

It's a concert, not a theater production... The choreography, costumes, sets, acting, etc. should be in service of the music, not distract from it.

One interesting discussion they get into is whether this type of camp and visual amateurism (if you think not just of the show but of her videos, album covers, etc.) is a big part of her mass appeal. It's really just another branch to what J0rdan was arguing about some of her singles.

Incessant smiling does sound annoying, but her album covers seem “normal” to me?

1989 is a Polaroid photo

It wasn't my argument but to play devil's advocate, compare them to, say, Beyonce, who has trended more and more high art in her visuals over time.

xp It's a very self-consciously hip Polaroid photo, not an "amateurish" aesthetic (IMO)

a three hour Broadway style revue/spectacular

sounds like a children's play

let's call the whole thing off

"and I find it most on display in songs like "Anti-Hero" and "We Are Never Getting Back Together," in which she never changes the chord pattern the entire song - never shifts keys, never changes the order, etc. Just the same four chords for the entire song, verse - pre-chorus - chorus - bridge, yet stitches together often three or four, ahem, indelible melodies."

This is not only true for her Midnights material, but also for most contemporary pop/hip-hop/r&b music full stop, and not, notably, country or Olivia Rodrigo's pop-punk. In the first three idioms, it seems like producers make tracks, shop it around to artists (or in Antonoff's case, make it just for TS), the artists add melodies or come up with verses, and thus the chord patterns repeat for three or four minutes, deviating only for 3 or 4 second breaks/full stops. I wonder if the thinking is that changing up a song's structure into distinct verse/choruses/bridges etc as most previous pop music did (in the West, at least) breaks the mood?

When Joni ran out of stock chord progressions, she started inventing new ones

When Taylor ran out, she started liberally using the word “haters” in her lyrics

(I kid, I respect anyone who can make a hundred unique cakes from the same base dough)

British director Sam Wrench - a rock-video pro, having done concert films for Billie Eilish, Luke Bryan, Lizzo, and The Weeknd - transcribes the 20-city Eras tour. But he's no Leni Riefenstahl able to turn the event into an impressive aesthetic spectacle (even though he collapses favorite angles from three shows at the Los Angeles SoFi Arena).

From Armond White's review of The Eras Tour concert film.

Alas, Swift is not bringing the sweeping grandeur of literal Nazi propaganda to her audience.

You can tell some of these songs started out as loops that Antanoff or Dessner wrote and sent to her.

the impression i've gotten is this is how nearly all of her dessner collabs started but a reasonable amount of the antonoff collabs have come from him helping to flesh out her piano/guitar demos, he seems to be her preferred collaborator for when she's already started a song

Xpost what do you think "Bad Blood" is about

Saw it last night! As someone who knows the 1989 album and maybe 6 other Swift songs, the movie was pretty good for being nearly three hours long. Although my ass was ready to leave before it was done. She’s a very good performer and I was impressed by how she balances the “acting” required to sell the songs while still letting the Taylor “aw shucks” thing slip out.

The smiling wasn’t constant or inappropriate to the songs imho. There was certainly a LOT of smiling, and everyone seemed to be in character constantly which made sense, especially if they know it’s being filmed.

I would never watch it again and i’m not sold on the greatness of Taylor, but it was charming and i’m happy my kid likes her. I’m glad that Taylor is huge while pushing for diversity and seemingly being true to herself.

As someone who hasn’t seen a BIG show in…. well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show that big. But I had no idea the stage-as-screen technology had come so far. I’m pretty excited about the Beynce concert movie, which is more my thing.

Yeah, there's something to be said for the spectacle of some of these big shows. I saw a Madonna tour once, maybe behind American Life, that was so cool and literally so many moving parts that the music was almost ancillary.

Swift has released demos in at least some fore before, right? I'm always fascinated when artists give a glimpse of the whole start to finish process, but there are probably contractual/legal restrictions to doing that at this level. Like, what does Max Martin play an act to get their attention? How far along is it? There's that story of all the permutations of Rihanna's "Umbrella," I'd love to hear its step-by-step evolution. The closest I can think is that clip of Timbaland playing Jay-Z a bunch of loops, and seeing him light up when he hears what becomes "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" for the first time. But of course, that essentially *is* a loop, and musically what he hears is not that different from the final track.

Iirc there are some good glimpses of Swift's process in the "Miss Americana" doc. But the story Dessner has told of sending her some some fragments and getting back a completed song, I'd love to hear just what he sent her and just what she sent back.