Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a tight end playing in the Super Bowl -- The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift, April 19

SiriusXM is also running a 24/7 "Taylor's Versions" channel that leaned hard into this one once they were allowed to.

I stopped in Target last week for a few minutes; "Out of the Woods" was playing, I was bopping along... then it segued into a somber ballad that sounded like Taylor, but I wasn't entirely sure. I Shazam'd it – turned out to be "The Manuscript" (track 31 of the album!). Guess they programmed a DJ set...

Ross Douthat’s take on the album reinforces my view that the biggest problem with TS’s ubiquity is how people who can’t write well about music feel both empowered and obliged to make an exception in her case.

so she IS like the Beatles after all

I remember when George Will wrote a column about Springsteen.

Taylor has inspired a lot of pieces by non-music writers over the years. In the early days it was often stuff like "She's a bad example for my daughters because all she ever sings about is boys."

Yeah, and there was some fussing about slut-shaming in "Fifteen" (which I continue to think is a serious misreading of the song, and I feel like the subsequent catalog bears that out). More recently of course it's conservatives who worry about the example she's setting by not being normative enough, no husband or kids, no songs about God, etc. In all cases I think her chosen avatar — the pretty blonde who likes pretty dresses — fries some people's circuits so that they can't perceive or understand her as an individual artist.

I thought the slut shaming thing came from Better Than Revenge?

there was slut shaming discourse around both

In “Fifteen,” Swift sings about a girl who fell in love at age fifteen, stating that “Abigail gave everything she had,” her virginity, “to a boy who changed his mind.” I might not be an expert on this situation, but I am sure that Abigail has more to offer as a person than her virginity, and Swift’s placing a woman’s entire value on whether or not she has had sex before is troublesome to me as a woman, especially when the message is coming from someone who identifies as a feminist.

and the "is taylor swift feminist???" discourse prevailed for several years thereafter

Also, "is Taylor Swift the Aryan snow goddess?"

fifteen discourse was fun cuz it was so obviously the critics themselves who could not imagine abigail having something else to offer

wanted to share my friend isabel's piece about the lyrics on this record bc it's one of the better things i've read about taylor swift in a while, the section on "the manuscript" in particular https://wildandunwise.substack.com/p/im-just-a-notch-in-your-bedpost-but

In “Fifteen,” Swift sings about a girl who fell in love at age fifteen, stating that “Abigail gave everything she had,” her virginity, “to a boy who changed his mind.” I might not be an expert on this situation, but I am sure that Abigail has more to offer as a person than her virginity, and Swift’s placing a woman’s entire value on whether or not she has had sex before is troublesome to me as a woman, especially when the message is coming from someone who identifies as a feminist.

― Never fight uphill 'o me, boys! (President Keyes), Tuesday, April 30, 2024 9:58 AM (four hours ago)

who wrote this?

https://blog.washcoll.edu/wordpress/theelm/2013/10/hypocrite-posing-as-good-role-model/

wow that analysis is extremely off-base and i read a lot of college writing (as well as college student essays about TS)
needs revision, try again!

Christian sites seem really hectoring and disapproving about the lyrics to “But Daddy I Love Him”, which is kind of funny to watch.

I haven't read everything written about this album (who could!) but that song in particular I haven't really seen anyone give a socio-political gloss to even though it lends itself to it easily. I know the read on it is it's about her possessive fans, but it could be about plenty of other things.

Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best
Clutching their pearls, sighing "What a mess"
I just learned these people try and save you
... cause they hate you

I think she was inspired by Sarah Brand’s “Red Dress”

i think “loml” is almost of a piece with these songs but it’s got just a little more dimension to it, probably because it’s living as much in the dream of the relationship as in the raw reality of its end. and she sort of does the thing in where in the chorus she’ll turn a phrase around as if it were an object in her hands so the light hits it from different angles, in this case it’s “the love of my life” converting into “the loss of my life”… makes u think…..

― ivy., Friday, April 19, 2024 1:02 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm really taken with this song; it strikes me as the emotional apex of the record and sits roughly 3/4 through, where "Marjorie" did on Evermore. Her singing is worn and pretty. The lyrics are so carefully composed and far less verbose than on many of the other songs. There are some gutting lines, especially in the final verse: "Oh, what a valiant roar/ What a bland goodbye," and "I'm combing through the braids of lies/ 'I'll never leave'." I think it's really smart how she calls the song "loml" but only ever uses that phrase from the perspective of her ex: "You said I'm the love of your life." The only time she actually uses a phrase that follows the "loml" cadence is in the final line when it reveals itself to have a different meaning: "You're the loss of my life."

It also occurred to me listening to this track yesterday that she's doing the "Dear John" trick of writing a song about someone in their own style. (William Bowery was credited for "Exile," "Evermore," and "Sweet Nothings," all plaintive, simple, repetitive piano tracks.) Her vocals sit roughly equally in the mix with the piano, an anomaly on the record that I think is very much intentional. Dessner's production gives her space and the strings add emotional heft.

The more I listen to this album the more I find to like about it. I think if you take the 6 best tracks from Midnights and the 6 best tracks from TTPD, you probably have the best album of her career, which is interesting for what I'm inclined to think of as her two weakest albums.

One interesting trend … imo on each of the last three albums the second half has been significantly better than the first, which has made them all growers for me.

The more I listen to the album the more I suspect that TS had a very deliberate plan for it being about perception and narratives, and the way that one's experience and recollection of events will be bent into shapes in order to wring narrative sense out of them - or, "What if the songwriter of Folklore and Evermore tried to write another Speak Now?"

Taylor has been writing about the relationship between reality and our storytelling version of reality since "Tim McGraw", and you can tie perhaps the majority of her best songs back to that question one way or another, but I don't think her music previously has grappled with what it means to be an unreliable narrator of yr own life as relentlessly as she does here (e.g. the difference between "Guilty As Sin" and "Enchanted").

In different ways the title track and "loml" are the most explicit articulations of that overarching meta-concept - the first in terms of its subject matter and the second in terms of its lyrical structure.

otm she's writing on a really sophisticated level, which can be awkward when it's clumsy but she's playing with perspectives in a complex way. (true story, I got in an argument about this with somebody on NUMTOTs and then immediately quit NUMTOTs because it was like, why am I even here.)

I had numtots with ponzu sauce for dinner!

The lyrics are so carefully composed and far less verbose than on many of the other songs.

I think this it true of more of the album than first appears.

I think of it as relatively lesser song on the original album but on the last listen I was struck by these lyrics from "My Boy..."

There was a litany of reasons why
We could've played for keeps this time
I know I'm just repeating myself
Put me back on my shelf
But first - Pull the string
And I'll tell you that he runs
Because he loves me

So much packed into the above.

now I'm down bad, cryin' at the gym

really enjoy how the first verse of "down bad" likens love and subsequent rejection to being abducted by aliens

"you made the universe feel so big but then you left and everything contracted into something so small and shitty and dull which it maybe was the entire time????"

I don't think her music previously has grappled with what it means to be an unreliable narrator of yr own life as relentlessly as she does here

otm. to me this is the taylor swift album that deals most directly with illusion and disillusion, it is the great throughline of these songs, applying that perspective not only to her romantic relationships but her career ("clara bow") and her craft ("the manuscript")

Beauty is a beast that roars
Down on all fours
Demanding more
Only when your girlish glow
Flickers just so
Do they let you know
It's hell on earth to be heavenly
Them's the breaks
They don't come gently

think this might be the best thing she's ever written

that song in its entirety is very special but when she says "Them's the breaks/ they don't come gently" I melt

My favorite song on here is "The Bolter" (I don't have a deep lyrical analysis, I just like the melody & music).

I like it, too. I like guitars.

"How Did It End" is really nice, too... that one must have slipped by in my initial listens (the piano figure isn't much, it sounds almost like a practice exercise; but I like the song built on top of it).

Swifties are losing their minds on social media at the changes to the Eras setlist in Paris

didn't need the last 9 words

can't believe she isn't doing the title track live

otm. to me this is the taylor swift album that deals most directly with illusion and disillusion, it is the great throughline of these songs, applying that perspective not only to her romantic relationships but her career ("clara bow") and her craft ("the manuscript")

― ivy., Thursday, 9 May 2024 14:15 (eight hours ago) link

Relatedly I like how "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart" is such a clear sequel to "Long Story Short" - a deceptively cheerful song which pokes fun at herself including her penchant for melodrama.

"He said he'd love all his life / But that life was too short". Literally and thematically it echoes "And I fell from the pedestal / Right down the rabbit hole / Long story short, it was a bad time": the idea that even Taylor acknowledges that her songwriting could be accused of belaboring every point.

This would be less obvious on "I Can Do It..." if the song wasn't placed immediately after "loml" ("You said I'm the love of your life / About a million times"); the abruptness with which she now cuts to the point mocking every other extended examination of the same situation.

Also: "I cry a lot but I am so productive, it's an art". You can't persuade me that the person who wrote these lyrics doesn't fully understand the double-meaning here.

I kinda disliked the spoken bit at the end, which felt a bit on the nose, until I realised she was saying "Try and come for my job".

i feel like this album has completely dropped out of public consciousness in record time for a Swift release, but maybe I'm just not paying attention anymore.

Oh yeah it feels like a million years old because of all the Kendrick stuff