Taylor Swift Album Poll

Did anybody say that?

That's sort of what I took sleeve to be saying; no biggie, I just wouldn't have thought it would be a clear-cut/default choice.

The question is, is Taylor Swift out of her Berlin-era Bowie period?.

@DamonAlbarn I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this. I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really fucked up to try and discredit my writing. WOW. https://t.co/t6GyXBU2Jd

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) January 24, 2022

I totally agree with you. i had a conversation about songwriting and sadly it was reduced to clickbait. I apologise unreservedly and unconditionally. The last thing I would want to do is discredit your songwriting. I hope you understand. - Damon

— Damon Albarn (@Damonalbarn) January 24, 2022

What part of this was reduced to clickbait? You said her songwriting doesn't count as songwriting and then compared her to another female artist with a completely different style.

Don't gaslight and throw someone else under the bus because you never thought she'd call you out. pic.twitter.com/Vjupk6XSyT

— Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) January 24, 2022

Here is a list of songs where Swift is the only songwriter. All of these I consider among the best songs on each respective album:

The Outside
Our Song
Fifteen
Love Story
Hey Stephen
The Best Day
Jump Then Fall
Dear John
Mean
State of Grace
Red
This Love
Lover
Cornelia Street
My Tears Ricochet

You tell him, Tik Tok guy

And even in his cagey response he can't even praise Eilish without making sure her brother is tossed in because surely not even Billie can't do it herself. Gross.

But also Tik Tok guy looks a Joel McHale that didn't finish rendering all the way.

lol, I just wanted to include the screengrab from the article

He looks like a Nick Kroll character, ha ha

(xp - btw, I generally appreciate both the screengrab and the opportunity to laugh at the conversation-jacker)

lol man, Albarn, of all the people to pick a fight with you pick a fight with Taylor Swift ... where have you been, dude?

I don't know how much she does or does not write all by herself - like screenwriting credits and stuff like that, I'm sure it gets political and stays secretive - but I'm not sure it matters, because no matter who contributes what, or helps with what, her songs would not be what they are without her creative input, whatever percent. The flipside question of course is, say, for all his credits and success, would Max Martin be able to write hit songs for himself? And the answer is no.

Taking 1989 as an example, I don't know why they'd credit cowriters for 12 of the 13 songs on the album if she wasn't fully responsible for writing "This Love."

I quickly checked the credits of a few Blur albums; looks like Albarn writes (most of) the lyrics himself, but the music is all credited to the band(?) Is he mainly talking about lyrics here?

she's been pretty open talking about her creative processes in working with varying songwriting partners over the years, none of it's really a secret.

Didn't she even do a documentary about the process for Folklore?

yeah, it was a live-in-studio session where they'd cut to discussions of the songwriting process etc. after each song

I've always assumed TS made a point of filling an entire album with solo credits partly to blunt this kind of thing. But yeah mostly makes Albarn just look out of it. Even casual fans know that she is a capital-S Songwriter.

She obviously likes co-writing too, and she's been smart about who she works with. It may be the most Nashville thing that she's retained from her early years.

I would love to hear a start-to-end document of how some of these pop songs begin and how they make it to their final forms, but that shit is no doubt locked down.

I remember a Rick Beato video where he talks about this one pretty boilerplate (but good!) chord progression, and he pulls up every one of Max Martin's 22 number one hits or something and notes absolutely *none* of them use the boilerplate chord progression *except* the Taylor Swift song, which he surmises is because she insisted he use them. Which isn't a bad thing at all, she knows what she's doing!

Even if she didn't write her own songs (which obv is false), which is this still allowed to scan as a critique in 2021

I would love to hear a start-to-end document of how some of these pop songs begin and how they make it to their final forms, but that shit is no doubt locked down.

as i said this info is very public for a ton of songs - a lot of it's readily available on the wikipedia pages for her albums in varying degrees of detail, and there's other details from interviews that haven't made it there.

I said hear, not read. I would love to hear the earliest glimmers of some of these pop songs and their gradual transition into the finished product.

Have you ever listened to the podcasts Song Exploder or Tape Notes? They can vary from episode to episode, but sometimes they get into the deep-down gritty origins of things. The Carly Rae Jepsen episode of Song Exploder is an example of one where they take you from the raw demos through to the finished song.

https://songexploder.net/carly-rae-jepsen

I don't want to hear it! It's not interesting, and it places burden of proof on her on what is the least interesting part of making pop/country singles. xpost

Swift has released quite a few voice memo demos over the years, you can find them on YouTube and elsewhere. It's obviously not the songs at their very earliest, but they're still pretty gestational. Pretty interesting.

Yeah, I'm not just talking about Swift, I'm talking about lots of songs. I always love learning about the choices artists and producers make, all the different directions they could have gone.

I agree. It's one of the fun things about the Dylan bootleg series, e.g., the way you can hear the songs evolve as he tries different things in the studio.

Dylan didn't write his own songs! Let me tell you about Jacques Levy (sips drink, takes drag from cig)

Is any song ever actually "written"?

The really important thing about this whole exchange is that it brought this fucking asshole out from under his rock:

Damon's right and I don't give a fuck.

Taylor's worst-selling album (before Spotify came along and made that not much of a thing at all) was the one she wrote herself to prove she could do it and that album was immediately followed by her bringing in Max Martin to prove ____?

— Tyler Mahan Coe (@TylerMahanCoe) January 25, 2022

who the fuck is this guy?

I replied b/c I'm bored.

who the fuck is this guy?

He hosts that Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast about country music that music journalists all seem to love.

Ugh, hate to see that. I like some of that show. Meanwhile, the president-elect of Chile is a Swiftie.

Here in Chile you have a huge group of supporters who knows that you write you own songs from the heart. Dont take seriously guys that need to insult or lie to get attention. Hugs from the south Taylor

— Gabriel Boric Font (@gabrielboric) January 25, 2022

lol Coe is an insufferable troll. The podcast rules though.

Has Billie said anything? “Thanks but no thanks?”

Am I allowed to pick neither side in this?

you don't have to be a swift fan to admit albarn was just being wrong & dumb

Oh obviously. He's been an awful cunt for so long it's hard to say if he wasn't always one

taytay's popular-girl 'I used to like you, but WOW. YIKES. You are SO DONE HERE' act (which is also in all her music, and her extremely extensive stan-army twitter presence) manages to grate almost as much as albarn's clueless misogyny though

read the rest of the interview & it's very bad and seems to be almost begging for albarn to say something stupid like this "what did you think of the beatles documentary" "what did you think of boris johnson's lockdown parties" etc

xp I don’t really care for TS but this stupid post puts me firmly on her side

OTM x1000

Albarn always has always struck me as the worst kind of arrogant middle-class English bell end. It still mystifies me that anyone actually cares about his music or are interested in what he has to say. Has he ever actually been seen as a perceptive and interesting individual? Because I must have fucking missed it if the cunt ever said anything worth paying attention to.

xp a thousand? thank you for attempting to simulate the stan army pile-on experience just for me

imagine this being your personality

Albarn always has always struck me as the worst kind of arrogant middle-class English bell end. It still mystifies me that anyone actually cares about his music or are interested in what he has to say. Has he ever actually been seen as a perceptive and interesting individual? Because I must have fucking missed it if the cunt ever said anything worth paying attention to.

well now he looks like an ugly college lecturer in full mid-life crisis!

I'd be interested to hear more about systematic co-writing and if it's ever used to protect an artist's brand. I have no interest or opinion on the particulars in the case of Albarn-Swift and I'm happy to believe the people defending her (lol at Chile's president), but I've still occasionally wondered about this. The case at hand shows it is a sensitive subject, and people here seem to confirm the process is kept secretive and it's not easy to know for sure. Have we somehow gone back to a time when "songwriter" credits are more important than they were previously (50s-60s, 80-90s), when being a pure pop performer was accepted, but now the performer cannot be seen to be separated from the creative team? And co-writing is a convenient way to muddle everything and maintain the illusion? Or maybe not, and it's case by case and several pop stars don't claim any (or minimal) control over the creative process. It still seems like an ingredient of reputability and a marketing value for some though, despite all the discourse to the contrary since, what, 15-20 years that haven't really dispelled the myth of the artist-as-creator. Do we ever get out of that cycle.

he looks as if he worked at the college cafeteria serving warmed over pizza

what I do know is that if she had Antonoff, he had Coxon

Winners all round baby

Just came here to show Taylor solidarity and found @gabrielboric. Love that international socialist Swiftie power! 🌹✨

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) January 25, 2022