Taylor Swift - Folklore

yeah the more literal that explanation gets the more limiting the song feels

i did like her explanation of “peace” tho which is a branch off the same tree. but for me there’s also something more deeply felt about that production and vocal performance compared to “mirrorball” that makes it more easily transcend her specific context for it

I had some thoughts:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-coping-44462404

Ned, the Laid analogy is unexpected and apt.

lol now I'm imagining a Swift album produced by Eno.

quite easy!

I'd be down, of course. It might be like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9FW1N2FR_w

I’m imagining one produced by Albini.

I bet a Swift alone with piano or guitar album produced by Albini would sound great.

Better than a Shellac album produced by Eno.

I'm imagining Taylor Swift producing The National.

Swift by Eno could come too close to Surprise.

^^^^ I had the same thought.

had to partially tune out the "mirrorball" convo once i realized swift's interpretation of the song was much... narrower than mine, but i think she did a least a little bit of work to expand that interpretation beyond the limits of her own celebrity by saying it's about "people who have to be on all the time." kinda think that feeds into my idea of the song, which is that it's about a chronic people-pleaser who has no inner resources to fall back on once said people leave. also i think i'm just repeating tim's post, which is otm

Ned, the Laid analogy is unexpected and apt.

Thanks -- a random flash thought the other day that suddenly made a huge kind of sense.

"Swift by Eno could come too close to Surprise."

or one of his boring ass Coldplay albums. he'd be the wrong producer for her (as much as I like his work on that Siberry album)

had to partially tune out the "mirrorball" convo once i realized swift's interpretation of the song was much... narrower than mine, but i think she did a least a little bit of work to expand that interpretation beyond the limits of her own celebrity by saying it's about "people who have to be on all the time." kinda think that feeds into my idea of the song, which is that it's about a chronic people-pleaser who has no inner resources to fall back on once said people leave.

is it too circular to say that this is otm?

jordan's following observations are almost like a meta-version of this:

she alludes to the autobiographical nature of some of the songs (mostly as it pertains to scooter braun or kanye) but so much of her songwriting process seems to be wrapped up in either subverting or bolstering her entire previous history as a songwriter. every song is a puzzle piece in the context of her full discography which sounds exhausting but is sort of clarifying.

The fact that taylor even thinks of her discography in these terms is just another example of her chronic people-pleasing, which is not just about pleasing people but also constantly situating yourself from the perspective of the other, asking "how will this be perceived by (insert)?" Which can be simultaneously selfish and selfless.

And then of course "mirrorball" (or lol even "me!") could be read as meta-commentary on her discography and songwriting approach.

And then of course "mirrorball" (or lol even "me!") could be read as meta-commentary on her discography and songwriting approach.

I think the current re-recording process could actually work out really well if done properly - rather than her just redo the albums I'm imagining a 2-cd album that is effectively a greatest hits collection and draws out different nuances to the older songs. I remember the glassy synthesiser version of "Love Story" (very "You Are In Love") from the 1989 tour was really lovely.

For me the best production job on Folklore (and a lot of the time my favourite song give or take "Peace") is "August", due to the real unity of vocal, emotional and arrangement heft - the sudden hit of the guitars during the second repeat of the second bridge ("second repeat of the second bridge" is such a taylor trick) is both obvious and inspired, and shows an increasing sense on her part and the part of her producers of how to deploy arrangement and production tricks that are very specific to the songs in question and designed to draw out their specific qualities. But yes, I think a fairly obvious "future pathway" for TS is to further explore a kind of gauzy textural vibe, whether it's organic or synthetic or somewhere in between.

Upthread I said I'd enjoy hearing Taylor produced by Jenn Wasner, and I was thinking specifically of Wye Oak's live performance of "We Belong", the sound of which would be a logical next step after Folklore IMO.

I'm warming to the idea of the re-records, as an artistic proposition.

Yeah, is there a precedent for it from someone at her career point? I feel like the ones I can think of were all done when people were older, past commercial prime, etc.

One example that comes to mind is Ani DiFranco with 'Like I Said', which was a re-recording of songs from her first few albums which were effectively demos, though if anything she did it too early, a bare handful or years after the relevant albums and before she had sufficient distance (sonically/production-wise or otherwise) from the original material to make the exercise really interesting (also, I'm not sure if the issues with the first few DiFranco albums are their sparse production, really).

Lucinda Williams re-recorded Sweet Old World a few years back

Car Seat Headrest re-recorded an old album recently; but there's not much analogous there otherwise.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41TGzowBKeL._SX466_.jpg

Didn't know that about Lucinda, I'll have to look for it. I love that album.

Camper Van Beethoven re-recorded some of their Virgin stuff for a couple of comps. ELO re-recorded its greatest hits relatively recently, to get more licensing money.

Squeeze did as well.

Suzanne Vega:

Vega says she always thought re-recording the songs "was something that certain fans would like, 'cause there's always been a lot of discussion about the production of the different albums. It's something that I did particularly for fans that really like the songs and would really like to hear it just in a more simple form, stripping it away from the production."

But another reason for the project was that the major labels for which the songs were recorded now control those recordings.

"If they decide that they never want to release my albums again, they can do that," she says. "So a lot of my albums are going out of print. … So this gives me a physical product to sell at my shows, it means I have the rights to these recordings, I can license them out to television shows or do whatever. I can promote my own recordings."

Apparently Def Leppard has been doing this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATHp6humam8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cXNaCcw_PI

I do love the idea of Def Leppard re-recording one of the most expensive sessions of all time on, I dunno, probably Garageband or something.

Oh man, that "Pour Some Sugar" is ... not painful exactly, but not good. Mutt Lange earned his money for a reason.

And just to nudge the thread back on track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBBCJUNtQ6k

Okay so while my new re-records are NOT done, my friend @VancityReynolds asked me if he could use a snippet of one for a LOLsome commercial he wrote so...here’s a sneak peak of Love Story! Working hard to get the music to you soon!! https://t.co/0vBFXxaRXR

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) December 2, 2020

lmao. Sounds good though it seems the earnest-to-a-fault vibe of her teenage albums is inimitable by a 30-year-old in 2020.

had trouble discerning that it was a rerecording, so my expectations for these are once again nonexistent

she is a much better singer now tho

Or rather I should say, she doesn't seem to be trying to go for that same vibe

The joy of having all these re-recordings drop will be to relive the album releases more so than finding minor improvements in her phrasing or whatever. I will be curious if she decides to dramatically remix any of the tracks. Weren't there multiple versions of "Love Story" created for different radio formats?

Maybe this has already been revealed, but is she gonna press up new physical copies of all this stuff and, like, tell her fans to throw away all the old copies and buy the new ones to stick it to Scooter? That would kind of be amazing.

Ugh, yeah, if she's not going to play around with new arrangements or anything on these, I'm not going to be nearly as interested as I might have been.

If her purpose is to make her old recordings valueless, it would make sense that she's going for as close to the original as possible. If she plays around with new arrangements, her fans will buy the new recordings, but they won't stop streaming the old ones.

I honestly don't see any way she stops fans from streaming the old versions. Those were formative albums for a lot of people and I don't think people everyone would just stop listening to them completely even if her rerecordings are going to be as faithful as possible.

lot of old rappers have done this

Yeah, I don't really see it working, but I think that's what she's going for. The goal isn't just to have recordings of her own work that she owns, it's also to screw over Scooter and anyone connected to him.

so much of it depends on how spotify and apple bend to her will -- there's all sorts of factors like what shows up in search, in algorithms, on playlists, how her discography is displayed on her profile pages, what is highlighted, what isn't, how things are packaged for the user etc that will be conscious decisions made by people at platforms trying to balance the priorities and desires of two diff but very powerful sides. the passive streamers of her music who just click on the first thing that appears in a search result or on her profile page will be a far larger slice of the population than the stans who go out of their way to only stream certain music bcuz they too are invested in screwing over scooter braun

Doesn't Spotify reflect recent plays in addition to total plays? That could help her there, because the re-recordings will get a ton of listens when she first releases them.

Anecdotal data points: My wife and both daughters started the Folklore movie last night but couldn't finish it. My 13-year-old, who has seen Miss Americana more than once, was not interested in the performances and wished there was more documentary. My wife iirc thought it felt too much like watching successful people just hanging out in a beautiful location. she and my older daughter swapped it out for a Harry Styles documentary, which both enjoyed a lot more.

Dunno why it rubbed them all the wrong way, I watched the first 20 minutes or so and it seemed fine to me.

Thought about turning it off bc of way Jack leans forward to play acoustic guitar

I like her songs, but have little to no interest in seeing/watching her perform.

I don’t have Disney + but I watched the bits that are on YouTube, the sitting round the campfire excerpts were cringey but some of the performances were cool, especially the bon iver track (and I’ve resigned myself to realizing I seem to be one of the few people who really loves that song)

It’s my favorite on the album!

I loved the show and was glad it was mostly a concert, not a documentary. I've always appreciated her stripped down live performances. Past couple of albums the stripped doww live versions of her songs have improved on the over-produced album versions, but folklore was always meant to sound like this so I was eager, since its release, to hear how it would translate live, and I liked it and it's clear this is how she sounds the best live, but it doesn't quite gel with her stadium tours.