Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a tight end playing in the Super Bowl -- The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift, April 19

Don't want to contribute to a "backlash," cause artists need space to fail - but - production seems fair game. And the album sounds like demos to me till the very last track (Clara Bow), when a group of musicians finally get a crack at one tune...

— Damon K 🎤 (@dada_drummer) April 20, 2024

thread

it sure is!!! that's what being a woman in your mid-to-late-30s is all about

― ivy., Saturday, April 20, 2024 2:39 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

In retrospect Lover does seem to be a solid black demarcating line between both her 20s and 30s (literally) and the type of art she was motivated to make in those stages of her life. Covid lockdowns probably accelerated the transition. I wonder if we'll ever get another effervescent smash like "Cruel Summer" again? It must be thrilling as an artist to see your fans, the critical community (mostly), and the public broadly embrace you after taking such dramatic artistic shifts in just a few years' time.

xp I don't know how a person could hear some of these songs before Clara Bow and say they sound like demos.

Loved «  so high school » immediately.

I thought it was silly that ppl predicted a link w the movie Dead Poets Society, but apparently two of its stars appear in the video (so joke’s on me).

ok so i think i understand why i’ve always been underwhelmed by antonoff’s production for taylor in the past: there is a lot of swelling and pulsating, but not a lot of unique and memorable underlicks or melodic instrumental moments that you can sing. no riffs, licks, fills, or other moments of musical personality (this is also prob why damon k thinks these songs “feel like demos”). i also think that’s why some taylor fans like it—it puts the focus entirely on her voice and lyrics, sets the mood and doesn’t get in the way. but to a listener like me, who is not invested in her personal life or the grand narrative of her career, everything just washes over me and all that stands out are the show-offy lyrical moments, which clunk more than they connect. it puts an undue pressure on taylor to deliver an “anti-hero”-level melody, which she can obviously not do every time!

there were a few songs on this one that grabbed me with musical moments: the plaintive piano intro on “loml,” the chamber choir of “so long, london,” the mournful acoustic guitar figure from “clara bow.” guess what? those are all dessner’s!

still haven’t listened to evermore, maybe i should check that one

I hear so many production touches in these songs. I understand fatigue with this set of producers and things not catching ones ear, but "like demos" is a provably bad label for why that might be.

there are plenty of interesting textural and percussive touches in the production, but nearly all of the melody comes from her voice

Yeah that’s a great observation, vc. There’s a definite contrast with Jack A’s work for, say, LDR.

i understand the complaint bc antonoff's whole approach to producing a taylor swift song is primarily rhythmic, been the case since 1989, the drums are usually the lead and the synths are usually oscillating arpeggios. i also think... almost all of her arrangements are musical echoes and deconstructions of the melody she's providing? martin would occasionally interrupt her with some kind of subatomic drop i guess, and i was listening to "enchanted" the other day and missing when her music was allowed to have guitar solos. but dessner really broke open the formula

a song can have a guitar solo or 1 million words in it - it can't have both!

they made their choice. "Demos" implies choices left unmade.

can't engage with damon k's point bc i don't think i've ever agreed with him about music. i support his tirades against spotify

xpost Or the common people of Ancient Greece

i don’t agree with damon that they sound like demos, but his criticism of the lack of space left for instruments besides her voice is otm to me

vc otm about the lack of riffs in the music itself. "Fortnight" is a prime example, with the album beginning on a mere three ascending softly played notes before the pulsing synths and Taylor enter. There are little musical flourishes added throughout and Post Malone's vocals add some depth but truly the entire song hangs on her vocal melodies. "The Tortured Poet's Department" similarly begins simply, 4 bars of the beat, with a meager synth swell before Taylor comes in. Thinking back on Lover and Midnights it's very much the same, with only "You Need to Calm Down" and "Bejeweled" coming to mind as Antonoff tunes with an instrumental identity that stands shoulder to shoulder with Taylor.

And that's fine! She should be the feature, after all. But I think that's exactly what Damon means by: "The insularity of the Antonoff tracks is stifling, the sound of one man with DAW keyboard shortcuts. I mean, cello too? Let someone besides the vocalist make an instrument sing once in a while..."

I have decided that my fantasy next-Taylor-album is with someone like Jack White producing, bringing in some alt-Nashville cowriters like Maren Morris or Brandy Clark or Allison Russell. I want her to make a rock-ish Americana album, something like that.

A Tom Petty album! She should co-write with Mike Campbell.

I nominate Frank Liddell.

She needs to quadruple down, remove more melodies and other people. Make her Ricky Music.

ha i was actually thinking about the petty listening thread and how there was always a little hook from campbell or tench to latch onto even in the weaker tracks.

maybe she should get a heartbreakers for her next era? or at least a 400 unit

Why can't she keep a man (to play riffs and underlicks)?

the smallest man who ever riffed

a tattooed golden riff player

Even my Swiftie friend said that he thinks a “loud rock album” would be great. It seems like such a no-brainer move… cycle back to that Red sound… triangulate the Swiftie dads (or whatever)…

She can rock pretty well! "All Too Well" is basically a heartland rock song, and it's her epic.

Roffle

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5_q6PGu4Vl/

Even my Swiftie friend said that he thinks a “loud rock album” would be great.

I keep saying Beyonce's third album in her trilogy needs to be hard rock or metal so there you go -- joint album, three hours long.

duetting on a cover of "Station to Station"

The return of the thin black tie white noise duke
Throwing tweets
In pathetic eyes

“Strangers When We Meet” is basically a Taylor song

but not in her current mode

(Tim F, I know what you're doing and it won't work!)

Oh yeah it wouldn’t fit on this album!

Actually the combination of this album dropping and finalising my ballot for the NIN poll makes me want TS to follow Halsey and get Reznor and Ross on production.

https://www.tmz.com/2024/04/21/taylor-swift-writer-name-removed-article-threats-violence-ttpd/

I really wanted to buy a subscription to "Taylor Swift Magazine" until I finally parsed the headline

I figured it reviewed boyfriends

The Paste review is pretty badly written for a review about how badly written the album is. I wouldn't put my name on it either!

Tim F that is an inspired thought tbh

No byline fear at Pitchfork (I like the review, fwiw… I think it’s measured).

Her melodies feel staid, like they are made to fit the music, rather than the other way around.

I thought we all agreed the music was built entirely around her dominant vocal melodies to a fault

we fucking wished the vocals played off a riff or underlick 5 minutes ago

Well the music is also "staid," that's part of the problem (IMO). But it's the lyrics that feel "dominant" to me, served up on lukewarm beds of production, without her typical attention to (knockout) melodies.

Perhaps she’s after a sort of text painting—an effort to reflect the all-consuming, uncontainable nature of her sordid affair in the shape of the music itself.

^like, this is another line that connects w/me – and again, it can be read as not necessarily (wholly) negative, but as an interesting thing for an artist to try.

I don’t know what I expected from that review, but … this is just a day I never thought would come. A 6.6!

Is this a New Jersey?

Midnights would probably be the New Jersey in this scenario?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5_q6PGu4Vl