Taylor Swift - RED - October 22

nice!

http://i.imgur.com/6fW3zRb.png

H/t Grimes, & OTM

Xpost: kinda disappointed there's no drop.

I can't decide whether this is her best or Speak Now. Someone help.

it's this

fearless = red > speak now > s/t

tho i admit most of the reason for my preference for fearless is sentimentality.

literally every time she's released a new album my initial response has been "no way is this as good as her previous album(s)" and then a few months down the line i do an about turn and think it's her best to date. i think that's because i get so attached to each album that when she switches things up it takes me some time to get my head around the direction she's taking and really appreciate and love it. and then it makes the earlier albums sound meagre by comparison.

speak now > red > fearless > s/t

though I've boiled the s/t down to a core that I couldn't live without

Speak Now's peaks are higher but Red is more consistent throughout.

I don't know how I feel about her spending more studio time with Max Martin. Inevitable, I suppose. http://instagram.com/p/kcye69DvMH/

I think WANEGBT and IKYWT really good but I can feel she can do a bit better. 22 however, is my jam.
The output could be monumental and it will always be better than the duets off her last album.

Fearless for me, absolutely. One of my favorite albums. It's simply that it hits me emotionally, every line and every piece of melody. I think Fearless is my favorite TS track as well.

TS: On Red I did three songs with Max Martin and Shellback- “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “I Knew You Were Trouble,” and “22.” I think we’ll be doing a lot more than three songs together on the next album. (Laughs)

Not mad, considering WANEGBT/Trouble/22 are all 10/10 flawless and life-affirming. Max/Shellback is a much stronger and more consistent team than the Max/Luke/Cirkut team they're often conflated with (who do most of Katy Perry's productions)

She's also been working with Ryan Tedder, who is far more hit and mess. His melodies can be so trite & grating. LP5 definitely looking like it's gonna push Taylor even further into the pop world!

i've been proselytising quite a bit recently and after me giving a friend a copy of red (she has it on repeat all the time now :D) her first response coming back to me was "she sounds quite country doesn't she?". i hadn't realised that for a lot of ppl, particularly outside the u.s., their awareness of taylor has been mostly informed by those three big pop singles. and if she wants that big international success (and why not? she's in her prime) continuing doing pop with max martin makes the most sense.

Interesting to see what she'll do next because she's clearly in a very delicate position re: the space she occupies between pop and country and who knows how far the country "establishment" will follow her but then again, look at someone like Shania, who IMO went much more pop than even where Taylor is right now and as soon as Shania puts out a new album, country radio will probably lap it up.

country radio's already significantly cooled on her ("begin again" and "red" both underperformed there relative to her old stuff iirc), and i don't think she can bothered to pander to them that much anymore (or at least that's how it appeared during the album campaign - her team could have at least tried sending "stay stay stay" or an edit of "all too well" to country radio). i think unlike shania she probably feels confident enough in her songwriting chops that she can return to country whenever she wants to in the future and find success. but the country and joni-esque stuff that some of her fanbase are calling out for can wait - it's more challenging and fun for her right now in her mid-20s to try and become the biggest pop star in the world.

It seemed to me that the songwriterly parts of Red largely just continued the trend of the same parts of Speak Now, so there's no reason to think that the sequel to Red wouldn't continue in the same vein.

lol, some about-turns happening itt, some people pretending like they were never all "oh, red's her worst album, it's not all that"

literally every time she's released a new album my initial response has been "no way is this as good as her previous album(s)" and then a few months down the line i do an about turn and think it's her best to date. i think that's because i get so attached to each album that when she switches things up it takes me some time to get my head around the direction she's taking and really appreciate and love it. and then it makes the earlier albums sound meagre by comparison.

yeah this really rings true - i'm not sure that each new TS album makes the others seem worse though, so much as each new one overlays the previous one in a weird way, and firmly consigns it to The Past, someone she used to be, is not any more, will never be again. every new album is a definitive break from a past self. that's such a rare thing to come across - i get something similar with the new beyoncé album, and it's her fifth! - and especially for an artist who often gets accused of peddling the same lines over and over again.

Very OTM

she went to a fan's bridal shower.

speak now > red > fearless > s/t

though I've boiled the s/t down to a core that I couldn't live without

― Euler, Friday, 14 February 2014 20:51

While I agree with Lex that each album shows growth and a break from "The Past," I disagree with the implicit conclusion that maturation --> quality. The first two records exude charm for their simplicity, naivety, earnestness, and authenticity. These attitudes define these records for me and SUPPORT their imperfection (the s/t, for sure). The last two records have certainly charted an adroit pivot toward pop radio and stardom, accompanied by better songwriting and production, overall; and while I've enjoyed them both, over time, I've lost a sense of belief that was essential to enjoying those first two albums. These days, I find her more interesting as a person than anything else.

Fearless > s/t = Red > Speak Now

love that t-swizzle's new publicist is called tree paine

source plz

http://nashvillepost.com/blogs/postbusiness/2014/4/11/taylor_swift_hires_new_publicist

https://twitter.com/treepaine

tree paining the skull of a man

treeship's evil twin

From today's AV Club interview with erstwhile Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson:

Taylor Swift, “Treacherous,” (From Red, 2012)

AVC: What’s the process when you’re writing with someone else?

DW: It depends on how they work. With Taylor, we had been kind of circling around, very much aware of each other’s work for a while. We figured out these two days to work together and she came to my studio super excited and said, “I had an idea in the car.” And she sang me the first three or four lines of it and said, “I want to call it ‘Treacherous’ and maybe the chorus can go like this.” And we were writing the song in 10 minutes and she was just so full of excitement.

It’s interesting because I find that she’s very sincere and very what-you-see-is-what-you-get. When you see her on an award show and she wins the award and she looks astonished, that’s how she looks when you’re writing a song and you come up with a good lyric or a good melodic idea. She looks amazed; she’s like, “Whoa!” She’s just like that. She’s also very consistent and a monster songwriter.

AVC: She’s 24 years old. She’s allowed to be sincere.

DW: And that’s the kind of person you’re dealing with. She’s that way from beginning to end.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/e6cafe10d76758df59a90f1f24be5bf0/tumblr_n4g4wpQbLz1qd3quqo1_1280.jpg

totally ready for her ***flawless

lol it actually turned out to be the new york section http://defamer.gawker.com/when-taylor-swift-goes-book-shopping-1566225432 (i wrote that)

unretweeting that second tweet i guess

i don't know who to believe

These attitudes define these records for me and SUPPORT their imperfection (the s/t, for sure).

Name a single imperfection on Fearless.

Name a single imperfection on Fearless.

Some of Chapman's production on the power ballads especially ("White Horse," "You're Not Sorry," "Change") is overwrought and cheesy--the wailing electric guitar solo in the closing bars of the album epitomizes this. They're not technical imperfections, per se, but I think folks like Paul Worley, Frank Liddell, or even a Justin Meldal-Johnsen would have approached these songs differently.

Again: The production works, however, because of the inherent simplicity, naivety, earnestness, and authenticity of Swift and her lyrics. The idea of an 18-year-old closing her 2nd album with a song about overcoming seemingly insurmountable, lifelong struggles of navigating the Music Industrial Complex to succeed is pretty hilarious. It's glam metal -esque, which, I guess, explains that guitar solo...

Oh, I'm scheduled to run a hair metal ballot poll sometime in the near future, so will remain unconvinced by your overwrought guitar solos argument.

I've never really liked "White Horse", which has always struck me as sounding like the product of a "write a Taylor Swift song" school exercise.

how is her set list like? I'd like to know the ratio of songs from each album.

this could be total garbage but two seconds of googling turned up this: http://www.setlist.fm/setlists/taylor-swift-3bd6bc5c.html

Hmm thanks but I think that includes sets from pre-red era.

From London shows in Feb:

State of Grace
Holy Ground
Red
You Belong with Me
The Lucky One
Mean
22
Fearless
Sparks Fly
Next to Me
(Emeli Sandé cover) (with Emeli Sandé)
I Knew You Were Trouble
All Too Well
Love Story
Treacherous
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

9 of 15 off Red, 2 off Speak Now, 3 off Fearless, 1 cover. Nothing off the first album.

Also, cover aside, that is a flawless run of songs.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/for-taylor-swift-the-future-of-music-is-a-love-story-1404763219

There continues to be a bad girl vs. good girl/clean-cut vs. sexy debate, and for as long as those labels exist, I just hope there will be contenders on both sides. Everyone needs someone to relate to.

rich person rallying against piracy yay

In the YouTube generation we live in

great now i can't get "live and let die" out of my head

love the humble bragging throughout that article

Getting to be about time for the album announcement. One of these days.

gotta be coming soon *prayer hands emoji*

NOT WHILE I'M ON HOLIDAY THO

Taylor Swift - RED - October 22 (started by spanky hotel frogstrot (how's life) on board I Love Music on Aug 14, 2012)
Taylor Swift - Speak Now (Oct 2010) - hype, anticipation &c (started by لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend) on board I Love Music on Jul 21, 2010)

ya know? we're right in the sweet spot here.

umm http://popdust.com/2014/07/24/taylor-swift-debut-new-music-iheartradio-festival-september/