Taylor Swift Album Poll

He never fails to mention what a liar he thinks Tammy Wynette is though.

unperson OTM, absolutely unlistenable show

I really, truly enjoyed the first season of C&R, but when the long-awaited second season finally dropped, I couldn't get into it. Just haven't been in a country mood lately and I think you kinda have to at least be open to it before you're hammered with the immense amount of information that he drops into an episode. Say what you want about the dude and his voice or attitude, but he does a ton of research for the show.

having seen a bunch of shit head racist at a party laughing and dancing to Rated XXX with a loaded hand gun on the coffee table, i can safely say that no one who listens to it sees it as satire

Coe is right that Neil Strauss absolutely found a mislabeled Johnny Rebel song on Napster and then got it published in the New York Times

Hey there's room to find both Coe and Strauss obnoxious as fuck.

And, yep, can absolutely confirm growing up in the middle of Illinois cornfields that absolutely none of the lunkheads playing DAC in their pickups were appreciating the biting satire of those X-rated albums.

Is it also true that none of the material is "homophobic," as Strauss and the Times allege?

lol I would not say that the lyrics to "Fuck Anita Bryant" are not homophobic

I remember liking the C&R ep on the Dixie Chicks and the broader history of females being censured in country and am surprised to see his regressive hot takes on Swift's songwriting.

I suppose the triangulated position is that Taylor's own insistence on being respected as a songwriter who writes her own material (a decent chunk of it by herself), and in particular her own lyrics, inadvertently feeds into a kind of rockist-about-pop mindset which has been very prominent in general for the past five years or so.

My suspicion is that Coe (in a very ham-fisted manner) was suggesting that Taylor is setting up a false dichotomy as between herself and other pop artists whose reliance on professional songwriters is more acknowledged - this might be particularly salient in the context of modern country, where reliance on professional songwriters is much less likely (as far as I can tell) to count as a strike against an artist.

(I don't think she was actually doing that, of course - or certainly not intentionally)

It's interesting to compare the fan/critic treatment of Taylor in this regard with someone like Miranda Lambert, who writes amazing material, sometimes by herself and sometimes in collaboration, and also performs material written by others, and the dividing line between those various categories is basically non-existent from a reception POV (like, it would seem odd to me to distinguish between "We Should Be Friends", which is a solo Lambert credit, and "Pink Sunglasses", on which she doesn't have a writing credit). The idea that Taylor is personally responsible for at least the words of her songs seems like a big part of the swift-enjoyment-machine, whereas with Miranda it seems less directly relevant.

It seems relevant to this discussion that Swift was signed to a songwriting contract at 13, years before she was signed as a performer. She was literally a professional songwriter first.

I *think* something Coe was ultimately getting at (from the complete wrong angle) is that Swift didn't need someone like Max Martin to come up with songs, she needed him to become a pop superstar.

And the main thing I added that I don't think Damon was saying at all is that it's really annoying to me how fans of an artist need to make a bigger deal out of an artist being in the room with Martin than why Martin is there.

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

But he (and Albarn) picked the wrong fight, because *clearly* Swift can write, and *clearly* she can sell millions of copies of songs she wrote. But if his argument is "yeah, but she needed Max Martin to get on pop radio and sell even more," ... join the club, you know? Who gives a shit? Even Coe seems to understand he fucked up and commenced moving the goal posts. Like, just about every singer/songwriter from Dylan and the Beatles on up has producers and musicians to make what they wrote sound better.

Btw, I found a nice clip of her in the studio with Martin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwJ_hHT5vw8

She had two number 1 albums before Max Martin and one of them sold better than the albums that had Max Martin, though. I don't know that there's any amount of divining his point that doesn't resolve to "he's as much of a dumbass as Albarn."

I suppose the triangulated position is that Taylor's own insistence on being respected as a songwriter who writes her own material (a decent chunk of it by herself), and in particular her own lyrics, inadvertently feeds into a kind of rockist-about-pop mindset which has been very prominent in general for the past five years or so.

It's interesting to compare the fan/critic treatment of Taylor in this regard with someone like Miranda Lambert, who writes amazing material, sometimes by herself and sometimes in collaboration, and also performs material written by others, and the dividing line between those various categories is basically non-existent from a reception POV (like, it would seem odd to me to distinguish between "We Should Be Friends", which is a solo Lambert credit, and "Pink Sunglasses", on which she doesn't have a writing credit). The idea that Taylor is personally responsible for at least the words of her songs seems like a big part of the swift-enjoyment-machine, whereas with Miranda it seems less directly relevant.

But there's no counterexample to "Pink Sunglasses" in Swift's catalog (as she writes or co-writes everything)... i.e., she literally is partially responsible for at least the words of her songs, so is it "rockist" for that to be a factor in fan reception of her work?

Not that this should matter, but ... David Allan Coe only had two top 10 country hits. He didn't write or co-write either of them. Taylor Swift has had 25 country top 10s, and wrote or co-wrote all of them.

xpost No I don't think it is, though of course it depends on how the issue is framed. Is Taylor a better artist than Miranda (or whoever) because she at least co-writes everything she sings? No. Should the fact that Taylor writes or at least co-writes all her own material (and is probably 95% responsible for the lyrics) be a precondition to her being taken seriously as an artist? No. I don't think Taylor argues either of those things, though whether her fans do or don't will of course be a case by case question, and at least some of the fan responses to the Albarn quote kinda imply those viewpoints.

Of course I've separately made the case before for the importance of Taylor's lyrics (and her lyrical approach and her growth as a lyricist) to her music both assessed on a song by song basis and as a body of work.

I hear you (though I also wonder how Albarn would have replied if the interviewer had said: "She may not be to your taste, but Miranda Lambert is an excellent songwriter.")

"I don't know her."

xxxpost

in fairness, David Allen Coe was a writer for other artists, including "Would You Lay With Me a Field of Stone" for Tanya Tucker which is a gorgeous song and Take This Job and Shove It for Johnny Paycheck

I think Johnny Cash did a few of his songs

I was talking to my daughter this morning, wondering how Taylor Swift is going to handle her next tour. Her last tour was back in 2018, a big stadium outing. But since then she's released three entirely new albums, and two newly re-recorded versions of her old stuff, which means some 50 or so songs she's never performed, plus new versions of old songs like that 10 minute song, plus I assume at least another new album/re-recorded album by the time she hits stadiums again, assuming summer 2023 at the earliest, at least in America. Multi-night stands with different setlists?

thought this bump would be about the crawdads song coming out tomorrow

mandy moore had the problem of touring for two records at once and her solution was to play songs from both records, i'm sure taylor will figure it out

Medleys...lots and lots of Medleys

Don't know if Mandy Moore is a good comparison.

I guess the Weeknd is essentially touring behind two hit albums for the first time this summer, his first tour since 2016. Let's see how he handles it, though I have no idea if has the deep cut stans that Swift does.

I was thinking about this recently, too. I've never seen her live and certainly wouldn't mind more of a theater tour.

But she can't, can she? I mean, Olivia Rodrigo just did a (large) theatre tour, and Lil Nas X is doing that, too, iirc, but of course even though iirc neither has/had toured before they could have just started at arenas if they wanted to. But someone as popular as Swift, if she played small(er) places I think there would be a huge backlash, unless she did, like, 20 nights in every city.

I tried listening to the new song, but I think I wasn’t in the right headspace for that vibe.

Getting a vaguely mid-90s Tori Amos vibe (specifically stuff like "Bells For Her" or "Sister Named Desire") off "Carolina", though I would be very surprised if that was what Taylor shooting for. Something about the way her voice slides between notes and the lyrics forsake narrative coherence for quasi-coherent allusion - it feels like it wanders down the pathway that "Seven" gestured towards.

It makes me think most of "Safe and Sound" tbh, but that may just be the Southern Goth Lite vibe.