Taylor Swift Glitchy Snake Gifs thread 2017 - Reputation

I like Ann Powers' take on this album. I think Swift's made an album that she wanted to make, in sync with her tastes, and I'm happy for her. I don't know how much I love it yet but as ever I'll live in the album for a while before I settle on anything.

"so it goes" is.... extremely mediocre

"Dress" uses her falsetto to better effect than "Wildest Dreams" did.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, November 11, 2017 10:05 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol when i first listened to it i thought "well this is the version of 'wildest dreams' that probably won't irritate me if it makes it to radio"

ready for it
end game
i did something bad
don't blame me
delicate
getaway car
king of my heart
dancing with our hands tied
dress
call it what you want
new year's day

she's never put out an album this short but if the tracklist just ran like this i would put it above all of her albums except red & fearless. in its actual form i think i rate it next to speak now as her very good but ultimately flawed albums.

but i'm gonna listen to this way more than 1989 in reality bcuz i'll just listen to it the way i just outlined. it's kinda how i rate beyonce's 4 very high because i take out the 3 bad songs and tack on the much superior bonus tracks in my head.

ha yeah otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE7JvEsCGkc

i really love this performance (and her performance of "new year's day" on fallon)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8QV5fa7xa4

halfway through this album, it's really generic and dull, not a patch on 1989. These songs are so forgettable. I'm sure it'll be a monster hit.

there'er some good songs but prob id call it her worst album? most of that is how great her other records were and still are

yes not a patch on red or 1989. it's just not memorable at all and it seems weird to have made this move; it's like, moving intentionally into a kind of pop music that is rapidly losing relevance. wish she'd doubled down on her strengths. oh well I'm sure it'll be successful and she'll do another great thing at some point.

what kind of pop that's losing relevance is she moving into on this record? genuinely curious, i haven't heard the record & don't know how to define the pop of the singles

that fallon performance is fantastic

yeah i'm okay with that

maybe it's cause i'm old™ but these unplugged arrangements are so nice, it's like i can actually hear the songs now

On Loving Taylor Swift While Being Brown

"what kind of pop that's losing relevance is she moving into on this record" pop of the katy perry ilk, which just seems to be falling out of favor these days, partly, I felt, due to the continued success of 1989 which seemed to buckle down on strong songwriting overall rather than over-reliance on one hook repeated ad nauseum.

"pop of the katy perry ilk" doesn't mean anything, though. In 2011 it meant Dr. Luke and Bonnie McKee. Around "Prism" it meant fake trap-pop and a bunch of singles that did nothing. No one is sure what it means now, including Katy Perry.

Can you describe the qualities of the "pop that's falling out of favor" i'm genuinely curious. sonically, lyrically, compositionally, what?

Two-chord cheerleader-chant boilerplate? I know my guitar teacher feels really bad when kids bring him stuff like Taylor Swift or Katy Perry, and he's just got nothing to offer.

ah yes, the number one hit "be aggressive, be, be aggressive, b-e, a-g-g, r-e-s-s-i-v-e"

(less snarkily: there are very few Katy Perry songs that resemble cheerleader chants -- probably more for Taylor Swift -- and if her discography is "boilerplate," after Teenage Dream it would have to be at least six separate kinds of boilerplate. "Rise" sounds nothing like "Birthday," which sounds nothing like "Chained to the Rhythm," which sounds nothing like "Swish Swish," etc.)

it wouldn’t be an ilm Taylor Swift thread without condescending nonsense; katherine otm

I mean, it's not just ILM but virtually everywhere. if I could go back in time I'd probably pick a different hill to die on, but unfortunately I am here, fallen on the hill of pop music not actually sounding the same

I didn't say all her songs sound the same. I haven't heard anything from the new album besides the first single, but I felt like the last two were really hedgy, with some glimmers of personality but lots of sort of generic Big Pop built to sell above all else. Product. If there is any sort of prevalent style perhaps falling from prominence, it's music strictly as off the rack product. Maybe? Maybe not.

many of the tracks sound like retreads of her own material, not other people's.

"generic Big Pop" is also meaningless. so is "product" -- literally every piece of music that one can pay money for is a product.

Sure. Everyone wants a hit. But the Max Martin school what I might call "generic Big Pop" - it's about selling sort of prefab hits designed to be, generically, hits. It's like something Robyn told me in an interview once:

Max Martin is an interesting example. He's one of the people that I grew up around, in the studio. He's still someone that I'm in touch with. I really admire him, and even though we do different things now, he's still someone I call when I don't know what to do with a song. He has a very particular way of looking at songs. He is a hit machine. (laughs) That's his specialty. But that's what he does. He writes songs. He's not an artist. He doesn't have the need for expressing his personal thoughts in a song. For him, it's about the melody. It's about cracking a code, being as efficient as possible.

That's sort of a what, rockist view? I assume Max Martin is pretty rockist, in his way. But I'm also reminded of Jay-Z's retirement doc. There's a scene where he is meeting with Timbaland, and Timbaland (as I remember it) is just playing him various tracks at various price points. Better/bigger the hook, the higher the price. Jay-Z picked "Dirt Off your Shoulder," but I remember some of the other tracks ending up smaller hits for other acts. That's what I meant by off the rack.

Anyway, the reason I think that sort of big pop stuff might be fading is that more radio stuff (to my limited exposure) seems to be driven increasingly by grassroots/street-level trends, from mixtape rap or Bjorky R&B. (The fact that so many singers are citing Bjork at all is part of this). Sort of like when hip-hop shifted from samples to original or at least stranger homegrown music, maybe some pop stars might be hitting a ceiling with the Max Martin style? I dunno, you guys are much better versed in and enthusiastic about this stuff than I am.

generic Big Post

designing a record to sell, vs. making the best music you can (in whatever genre) that hopefully will sell.

dude, c'mon – you KNOW this isn't a binary. I think Swift enter the studio making the best music she can and hoping it sells.

Maybe? I was just weirded out by the way she sort of willed herself into being a big pop star. Like, she had written plenty of hits herself, but followed it up by hiring literally the biggest hitmakers in the world to make her even bigger. Maybe she's making the best music she can, but whether or not she is she sure knows it's going to sell.

I dunno, I'll readily concede that maybe it just isn't my thing. But there are plenty of acts I'm not necessarily super into - like Rihanna or Beyonce, say - who I (casually) feel are digging for new or good producers/ ideas, like Madonna used to do, maybe. Vs. just going a safer route that might even sell more.

you don't become a big pop star by accident you will yourself into that situation AND hire the biggest hitmakers in the world

the "Max Martin style" is also something that has evolved tremendously over the years -- Solid HarmoniE's "I Want You to Want Me" is different from Britney Spears' "Oops! I Did It Again," both of which are MARKEDLY different from Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone," which is markedly different from Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl," which is markedly different from Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," which is markedly different from Ariana Grande's "Problem," which is markedly different from the Weeknd's "Can't Feel My Face," and so forth. some of this is Martin working with different co-producers and co-writers, but not all.

I posted this elsewhere but people talk about Max Martin the way Republicans talk about George Soros.

That's funny. Well, he must be doing something right, right?

In not totally unrelated news, my older daughter (who just turned 13 - bat mitzvah next week!) was really into Swift c. Speak Now and maybe Red but didn't get into 1989 and has shown no interest in the new stuff. But my younger daughter, who is now 10, never really seemed to be into Swift but wants me to get her the new record.

It’s precisely because Max Martin has no interest in maintaining some kind of authentic sonic or songwriterly brand that it’s very difficult to identify a “generic” Max Martin sound, even on a point-in-time basis.

Fair enough.

Maximalist EDM pop doesn't feel even close to falling out of favour right now.

enh, you kind of can -- Cheiron circa the late '90s has a very specific sound, in the percussion and backing vocals, for instance.

" I think Swift enter the studio making the best music she can and hoping it sells" generally yes, but with this album I'm not so convinced.

"He writes songs. He's not an artist. He doesn't have the need for expressing his personal thoughts in a song. For him, it's about the melody."

So...lyrics, and specifically personal lyrics, are art, but melodies aren't?

I miss Geir.

xpost Make of that what you will, but that was direct quote from Robyn, who not only knows him but had a hit with one of his songs.

let noone say anything negative about max in the swift thread

I mean this is the same person who signed with a nothing indie record label because RCA wouldn't let her write her own songs and who once released an album of music in which she was the sole credited songwriter on all songs.

enh, you kind of can -- Cheiron circa the late '90s has a very specific sound, in the percussion and backing vocals, for instance.

― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Tuesday, 21 November 2017 21:44 (yesterday) Permalink

Oh totally - I should have specified that more as "since the mid-00s", basically since he and his team have had several successful sub-brands they have had to juggle and a wider variety of successful artists to work with. On the one hand there's a long tail effect - just because pop got over the 2004 guitar rock moment after a couple of years doesn't mean Kelly Clarkson or Pink or Avril Lavigne were going to unceremoniously dump that style, and Max was hardly going to refuse to meet them at least halfway just because he was trying a different style with Britney or Kesha. On the other hand there's a gravitational pull such that the long tails tend to arc towards each other a bit (i.e. "Raise Your Glass" still sounds a bit closer to Kesha than most earlier Pink), though to what extent that's due to specific production techniques, versus the general influence of broader trends, versus perhaps the artists consciously moving their sounds towards a perceived emerging norm, is difficult to say.

robyn had two max martin hits! (she could have had three if she had released "time machine" as a single during the body talk promo cycle imo.)

i asked my 7yo Red/1989-loving neice if she had heard the new Swift and she really doesn't like it lol. said she watched a music video and it was all trying to be dark and zombie and she was unconvinced.

Chart Nerd Talk: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/11/21/565761702/first-week-sales-of-taylor-swifts-reputation-vary-widely-depending-who-you-ask

Interesting Detail:

Reputation is the year's best-selling album by a landslide. The second-best, Ed Sheeran's ÷, sold 931,000 from its release date in March, through Nov. 16. At least, according to Nielsen.

Depending on how many units Sheeran moves before Xmas, Reputation could very likely be the only album released this year to go Platinum this year.

people talk about Max Martin the way Republicans talk about George Soros.

I thought it was just me who did this

"I Did Something Bad" is enormous and I love it so much already. The chorus into the "ratatatatata" part (which I guess is her voice all doctored up?): super massive. It's my favorite song on the album & easily one of the best things she's ever done.

I think I like this album as much as 1989 and more than Red, which I think puts me out of line with ILM's leanings. Speak Now > 1989 > Reputation >= Fearless > Red > debut fwiw