Taylor Swift - Speak Now (Oct 2010) - hype, anticipation &c

it’s entirely possible i’m just hearing things, and i haven’t given every song this close a reading, but going back and forth between “back to december” old and new i feel like the strings are less fanciful & playful on the new version, they seem more mournful to me, letting out long sighs instead of darting around like fireflies. the guitars also sound more prominent in the mix, and heavier — the final chorus after the bridge in particular feels far less disney climax to me and more stadium rock. i don’t know if there is more drama exactly — it’s such a good final flurry regardless — but tonally the arrangement feels more mature & less childlike to me. which i think actually flatters the song! going back to december, as it were, carries even more weight when you’re older imo. it’s such a great song regardless

it also only dawned on me today that one of the key lyrics in "back to december" -- "it turns out freedom ain't nothin but missing you / wishing i realized what i had when you were mine" -- is in direct conversation with my favorite miranda lambert lyric, from "runnin just in case" (which of course came after), when she sings "happiness ain't prison / but there's freedom in a broken heart." playing w/ the same idea, and the same language, but from different sides of the coin

great pick-up

Yeah very well put. The difference in maturity levels is most interesting on this one of the re-recordings so far, I think. The mature adult revisiting the young adult, seeing things they got right or wrong, shifting the emphasis a little here and there. "Back to December" is really probably my favorite song of hers, and she gets to sing it now like it's already a classic.

It fascinates me how Lambert and Swift's public images inform their postures in their most rueful songs yet their hellion images still dominate.

my daughter is 6: she has been very into Robyn, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Kylie, Pink, dua Lipa, ariana grande and Olivia Rodrigo via me, but Taylor is the one she wants to go deep with, to the extent that she wants physical media associated with Taylor… unlike the preceding save for Rodrigo and Lipa, Swift's imperial phase is showing no signs of abating, and my daughter identifies with her in ways that I didn't with an music artist at her age; I guess the Bee Gees were dominant in 1977, but Michael Jackson is the all frequency mass media presence that I think Alfred posited as a useful parallel… I am thrilled that TS is my daughter's choice for who she wants to pursue as an artist, and while she likes what she wears and likes the videos, it's the music she responds to (I am so fucking sick of the lesser songs on Red that it beggars belief; and for that matter, she should upgrade "the Last time," the worst TS song I have heard, by replacing Chris Martin for Gary Lightbody; she couldn't afford the former in 2011 and so she got the bargain basement latter,; now Martin would probly do it for free)…

Yesterday we went to the record store where we picked up Taylor's version CDs of Speak now and Fearless, and I do not know the original other than the singles, alongside Midnights and PJ Harvey's new record…I generally don't want to listen to newly recorded versions of music wrenched from its context… like, a parallel is Jojo, who re-recorded her hits for identical reasons as Swift, and I couldn't take listening to that music defined by its teenage turbulence redone by an adult…but since I don't know this music, and my daughter's enthusiasm, I am looking forward to listening to these records unencumbered by previous impressions…although based on what I've heard, she can't or hasn't done anything to address the difference between her teenage and adult voices…

this is taylor’s most shocking, jaw-dropping, devastatingly-beautiful surprise song performance yet. i wish i was there. 🥺 pic.twitter.com/2IHFVpBSm0

— k.⸆⸉ ✉️ (tortured poet era) (@kiralovestaylor) February 8, 2024