taylor swift red poll

1. holy ground
2. wanegbt
3. bonus track demo version of state of grace

feel like most people i know do not agree with me that wanegbt was the best single from this

starlight is the one i've played when in doldrums at work this year. and it has never failed to knock my socks off and put me in the right mood again. i adore nearly every song on this but that got my vote

― making plans for nyquil (outdoor_miner)

^^^ this. I'm glad she never released it as a single. It'll remain a "secret" highlight for fans.

I'm pretty much in sync with Tim. "Holy Ground" would have been my top pick the first few weeks of listening, and "Treacherous" at first just registered as a nice tune with some good lines, but after a while it became the song I wanted to hear again. I think I said this on the Red thread, but "Treacherous" has her best-ever singing imo -- the restrained excitement of the verse/chorus and the explosive desire of the bridge.

"State of Grace" and "I Almost Do" would be my underdog picks. (If Bono's got any sense left, there'll be a U2 cover of "State of Grace" as a bonus track on the new album.)

http://vine.co/v/hveOe3hLJE3

wow i thought i was the only person who would have "enchanted" in their tswift top 3

it has one of Taylor's most magical, moving, "camera pans out and reveals we're working on a much more expansive and nuanced emotional terrain than previously realised" middle-eights.

It occurs to me that this or similar is a feature of nearly all my favourite Taylor tunes.

"State of Grace" is the most overlooked track on this record

Starlight
Holy Ground
Stay Stay Stay

that's all I've kept. The rest I still hear on the radio.

wow i thought i was the only person who would have "enchanted" in their tswift top 3

*raises hand*

this is still "holy ground" btw but everyone otm about "treacherous"

On a whole-of-song basis I would be very tempted to go for "Holy Ground". If I was doling out awards it probably should win "Best Song", but then "Treacherous" would scoop the balance of the prize pool: "Most affecting vocals in a Taylor song"; "Greatest second chorus in a Taylor song"; "Most arresting and perceptive lyrics in a Taylor song" etc.

The fact that Alfred hasn't retained it marks him out as incorrigibly glib and heartless.

all too well

enchanted is definitely top 10 or maybe even top 5, and treacherous is a perfectly serviceable song, but to put the two even in the same circle

man

Imagine Swift songs called:

Incorrigle
Incorrigibly Glib
Heartless

I Knew You Were Incorrigible When You Logged In

This album has so many pleasing little lyrical flourishes, like the shift in "Stay, Stay, Stay" from "I've been loving you for quite some time" to "I'll be loving you for quite some time".

Voted "Red" here over "Begin Again"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Just noticed how great "All Too Well" is the other day. Wide screen narrative.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Ah, OK, I had no idea "All Too Well" was such a favorite!

Surprised state of grace didn't get more love

I'm glad I put in a vote for "Begin Again", just so it charts. But yeah, there's tons of great tracks on here.

Poor "I Almost Do" :'-(

excellent results apart from the bizarre "starlight" overrating and presumably the joke "everything has changed" vote

"everything has changed" isn't that bad. but then again i may have been brainwashed by all the play it is getting on my local hot ac station. i like it better than "stay stay stay" which sounds like an unpleasant spotify commercial.

7. "I Almost Do" 0

yeah this is crazy; and it hits so hard & w/ pinpoint accuracy after a breakup :{

listened to this album for the first time in a while tonight...so completely killer. i even like the duets OK, esp. the Sheeran one. i don't hate the Lightbody one, but then i kinda like the one Snow Patrol CD I have (Final Straw).

still, when the Lightbody duet and Sad Beautiful Tragic are the worst songs on a 16-track album, you've put together something pretty special, I'd say.

sad beautiful tragic is seriously magical

what an album

today i am seriously vibing with "the lucky one"

I had forgotten that "Treacherous" actually won this poll.

where she fell off

Listened to this for the first time in years yesterday and wow it's even better than i remember it. Begin Again is such a heartbreaker

"where she fell off" = crying laughing emoji

this album is really frustrating to me because i think it might be her best album if those terrible duets weren't on it, and neither were the martin/shellback tracks which aren't bad but are all a little underwritten and feel like they're from a completely different album. removing those brings it down to 11 tracks which is a much more manageable length too.

the highs among the remaining tracks are so high though! like "red", "treacherous", "all too well", "holy ground", "starlight", "begin again" - all incredible

only recently came across "Ronan"; my favorite Red-era songs are probably that and "Girl At Home". Swap those with the lame duets.

as i said upthread i think, no one rates "the moment i knew" but i do and i wish it were in "the last time"'s place, and "girl at home" rules

but then "the last time" has pretty great strings, and honestly "everything has changed" is a good song that happens to have ed sheeran on it

so it's still my favorite taylor album

love this album... its songs range from v. good to great, IMO.

i do think the duets are among the weakest tracks on this album, but they're not *terrible* ... if i was gonna trim, i'd start with Sad Beautiful Tragic and The Last Time

imo there are like 7-8 songs here that i could vote for for #1 but i'm guessing i chose between the amazing "Red" and the also amazing "All Too Well"

this is peak TS and one of the best albums of the 21st century so far

ok actually fuck y’all i love “the last time”

still adore "Starlight"

well, you need love in an increasingly terrifying world

“the lucky one” is a rilo kiley song

oh my
what a marvelous tune

honestly "everything has changed" is a good song that happens to have ed sheeran on it

an accurate statement of underacknowledged truth

the beginning with 'state of grace' kills me everytime.

Since we've been talking so much about Taylor Swift's lyrics, and there doesn't seem to be a Taylor Swift: Classic or Dud thread, I thought I'd come in here and say how much I like the song "Begin Again." I have mixed feelings about Swift's work, and I'm not crazy about her last two albums, but this is one song where I think all the Swifty details - the high heels, the James Taylor records, the general upper-class-ness of the whole cafe scene - add up to something intensely perceptive about the human experience.

"On a Wednesday/in a cafe/I watched it begin again" is such a beautiful line on its own; there's something very appealing to me about that that contrast between the mundane, the ordinary, and that unexpected sense of life renewing itself. The word "watched" is a nice detail, with the way it puts her outside of herself, watching herself come back to life; it's like she's at a place where she can see it more than she can feel it. It reminds me of John Prine singing "And I find it real surprising/for myself to hear me say/that everything is cool/everything's okay."

But this is also a really nuanced portrait of what seems like mild PTSD from a toxic, borderline abusive relationship. This is where I think all the biographical stuff that surrounded this album really got in the way. If you forget all that, and just think of this as a song about someone getting out of a relationship where her interests, her personality and her general worth were constantly dismissed, it becomes a really beautiful "this is your brain on PTSD" character sketch: her passionate gratitude for basic politeness; her intense surprise that someone could find her funny, the way every interaction with her new date sends her brain circling back to the ex and how he saw her, so that even as she's giving us this charming image of her date laughing, her interior monologue keeps making it into a reflection of everything that was missing in her old relationship. And then that moment at the end when the new guy is carrying on a perfectly ordinary conversation about movies, and you realize this is the first time she's been able to stop thinking for long enough to actually hear him. I don't think I would have to know anything about the biographical details behind this to know that this new relationship isn't going to last; this isn't really a love song so much as it's a song about slowly coming back to a sense of your own self-worth. And there are a million songs about that out there, and many of them suck, but this one rings true to me.

It's funny that I like this song so much, because Taylor's tendency to always cast herself as the victim and her ex as the bad guy is one of the things I find frustrating about her early work, and I like Lover in part because it's a shift away from that. But hey, sometimes there really is a bad guy and a victim, and I think this is a perceptive and beautiful song about the aftermath of a relationship like that.

that's a really great analysis!!! i sometimes forget how much i love that song and reading that totally put me back in touch with it

that's typically a sound quality thing i think?

I assume it's sound quality + they could fit the 16 album tracks on two discs and the bonus tracks on the other two. They would have needed 3 LP's anyway at 33, because it's over 2 hours long.

Man, I bet that vinyl sounds awesome

(when played at 45, lol)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ujcUumou9c

idk from experience i do not think taylor swift's team cares about vinyl pressing

the records of hers i have on vinyl sound extremely not awesome

And you would hide away and find your peace of mind
With some indie record that's pressed much better than mine

Well they sure care about CD sound quality (have I mentioned it sounds awesome?)

It occurred to me today that even after hearing, as ambience, "Blank Check" and "Wildest Dreams" and so on some thousands of times over the past seven years, I still so strongly associate Taylor with "You Belong With Me" and "Love Story" and "Fifteen" and all of Speak Now

And yet, "We Are Never Getting Back Together" is chronologically, at this point, mid-period-- six years after her debut, nine years ago.

"Blank Check" --> "Blank Space"? Ha ha (I like yr title, tho)

Ha lol whoops. I never listened to 1989 through Lover for pleasure, just research I guess

https://www.stereogum.com/2167771/taylor-swift-iheartradio-taylors-version/news/

“Whenever Taylor re-records a new track, we immediately replace the old versions. Our stations will always deliver songs that artists are eager to share and fans want to hear,” said Tom Poleman, Chief Programming Officer for iHeartMedia. “Listeners have made it known that they cannot wait to hear Taylor’s Version of each track. We are thrilled to provide a platform to share those with them, as well as the stories behind the songs from Taylor herself.”

She and iHeartRadio are pretty sympatico.

I find it annoying that the implied choice (not on ILM per se, just in general) is between caring about all the autobiographical detail and not being invested in the songwriting at all. One of the best aspects of the shift in her songwriting in the last two albums (especially on Evermore) is the sense that that binary is no longer applicable. "Ivy" and "Cowboy Like Me" are two of the very best songs she has ever written, and both clearly have nothing to do with her own life.

I was discussing with Brad a while back all the questions I wish TS would get asked in interviews, basically all of which would dig into her songwriting craft. A big question I had coming out of Evermore is whether she feels like, if she is writing from the POV of a fictional character, her lyrical vocabulary changes. Which of course she would never actually be asked by an interviewer.

― Tim F, Monday, November 15, 2021 4:10 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

"Ronan" may be the saddest song I've ever heard.

it's been pretty funny/cute seeing my 12yo niece "discover" Taylor Swift

don't think she was really into music much before this

https://www.twitter.com/bloodbuzz/status/1460047771537494018

"Holy Ground" should've done better.

Agreed, but I feel like the really underrated deep cut on this album is “I Almost Do”, which I think is also secretly really sharp songwriting.