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Ok I'd Admit: Taylor Swift

That new Tay Tay song goes hard in the paint. It gives me echoes of Prince meets Kate Bush.

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by Anonymousreply 58March 18, 2023 11:34 PM

This is one of the more danceable tracks from the album

by Anonymousreply 1February 11, 2023 6:08 AM

I'd rather listen to Prince and Kate Bush!

by Anonymousreply 2February 11, 2023 6:08 AM

I've always disliked her voice. It seems like a computer-generated blend of popular young white female voices. Icy, robotic, lifeless.

by Anonymousreply 3February 11, 2023 6:12 AM

Kate Bush??? I don't think so OP.

by Anonymousreply 4February 11, 2023 6:34 AM

Kate Bush? Prince? Never.

by Anonymousreply 5February 11, 2023 6:44 AM

She still looks like a rodent.

by Anonymousreply 6February 11, 2023 6:48 AM

I like the song, but Prince and Kate Bush? No, not at all.

by Anonymousreply 7February 11, 2023 8:44 AM

I like Lavender Haze but the video is meh.

by Anonymousreply 8February 11, 2023 9:53 AM

Garbage, this old woman can't sing.

by Anonymousreply 9February 11, 2023 10:15 AM

Can't stand her.....I really don't know why either.

by Anonymousreply 10February 11, 2023 11:45 AM

She's hot though.

by Anonymousreply 11February 11, 2023 11:59 AM

Most fans of hers seem like conservatives. She's white, blonde, nonsexual and makes formulaic music about hetero suburban problems. I don't know what her political views are and I know she called out Trump. But the fact she's a darling among MAGAt and racist types leaves a bad taste.

by Anonymousreply 12February 13, 2023 1:38 AM

R12 She is liberal as fuck. And outspoken about it. You know typical Hollywood leftie.

by Anonymousreply 13February 13, 2023 1:40 AM

R12 She can't help it that they like that sound of music. She makes pop music. Half the country is republican.

by Anonymousreply 14February 13, 2023 1:41 AM

R13 R14 I'm not blaming her and I'm glad she's not a MAGAt. It's really odd that right-wing conservatives still like her. I guess they project that onto her because she looks like they're ideal of a woman

by Anonymousreply 15February 13, 2023 1:47 AM

R15 I don't think you have it right. Most of her audience are young people and millenials her age. Yeah she might have more Maga fans than the typical popstar but I doubt most of her fans are repubs. She is so mainstream though, and there is a lot of repubs in this nayion.

by Anonymousreply 16February 13, 2023 1:50 AM

r14 less than half.

by Anonymousreply 17February 13, 2023 1:56 AM

R11 is she? Not saying Taylor's ugly but she can't pull off being sexy or hot to save her life.

by Anonymousreply 18February 13, 2023 2:52 AM

Every single time I listen to one of her songs, I think, is that it? She's really mastered the formula, but it's the most boring formula ever. Every song is forgettable.

by Anonymousreply 19February 13, 2023 3:00 AM

I gotta say, she has a very butch movements here.

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by Anonymousreply 20February 26, 2023 8:45 AM

Lately, many artists — and their record companies — have been trying to game the system of ranking musical hits by including free downloads of new albums with sales of concert tickets, clothing and other merchandise. It’s a widespread practice, and the result is some confusion about what, exactly, the weekly charts are measuring. Of the 39 titles that went to No. 1 last year, at least 18 were sold as part of ticket or merchandise deals.

The next big bundler may be Taylor Swift. While her new album has no announced release date, her website is already accepting advance orders for it as part of deals for a hoodie ($65), a T-shirt ($40) and a smartphone stand (a bargain at $20), in hopes of its hitting No. 1 once it comes out.

That has made bundling more appealing than ever to artists — even superstars like Ms. Swift, who could once reliably count on millions of CD sales. Not that she is new to bundling. In 2012, she had a deal with Papa John’s Pizza to sell her album “Red” with a large one-topping pie for $22.

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by Anonymousreply 21February 26, 2023 1:39 PM

What is this song even about? Her other songs are pretty straight forward. I do not follow the word play here

by Anonymousreply 22February 26, 2023 1:58 PM

Is this song about clam slamming? Smoking weed?

Spell it out for me.

by Anonymousreply 23February 26, 2023 2:00 PM

"they're ideal of a woman " R15

Oh, dear!

by Anonymousreply 24February 26, 2023 2:06 PM

R22 Taylor said Lavender Haze is a Mad Men reference.

by Anonymousreply 25February 26, 2023 11:32 PM

Always though she was straight, but she's really butch in that video R20

by Anonymousreply 26March 5, 2023 1:51 PM

[quote]goes hard in the paint

You're a special kind of tard, aren't you.

by Anonymousreply 27March 5, 2023 2:05 PM

I like her music a lot. I love Lavender Haze but I don't really like the video.

It took me a while to admit it, but she is a masterful songwriter. My only problem with her songs is that the vast majority are romance or breakup-and-revenge songs and they usually have a YA-fiction sort of feel. But her writing is really lovely and while she's not the deepest well out there, she's thoughtful, and especially by the standards of pop music today.

I love this song, You're on Your Own, Kid.

Most of the songs on the album have really won me over, sometimes for different reasons. I like the writing of the one below, Mastermind and Antihero, the overall effects of Lavender Haze and others, the moods of Labyrinth and The Great War.

She says she heard the term 'Lavender Haze' in Mad Men and she looked it up and found it was an expression in the 1950s that referred to the hazy effect of being infatuated and she liked the feel of it.

[quote] “I guess theoretically when you’re in the lavender haze, you’ll do anything to stay there and not let people bring you down off of that cloud. I think a lot of people have to deal with this now … because we live in the era of social media and if the world finds out you’re in love with somebody, they’re gonna weigh in on it. Like my relationship for six years, we’ve had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff and we just ignore it,” shared Swift. “So this song is about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff.”

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by Anonymousreply 28March 5, 2023 2:06 PM

She dumbs herself down because it sells and she wants money. She's an extremely cynical and narcissistic businesswoman. She'd be a CEO in an alternate universe. She never makes "art for arts sake" because she's too image-conscious and money-hungry to take risks and alienate her base. Many people know she's talented but dislike her because she chooses to make music for the lowest common denominator.

by Anonymousreply 29March 5, 2023 2:21 PM

Like Bey (and Madonna before them), any decent tracks from Tay Tay were bought from her latest producer/writer du jour.

by Anonymousreply 30March 5, 2023 2:26 PM

R15 Right wing conservatives basically like the same things that everyone does. I mean, they go watch the same movies lefties do, buy the same music, watch the same TV shows. Social media will make you believe we're so different from each other that we must not agree on anything, but people from red states visit blue states all the time and from my experience, are enamored with California.

by Anonymousreply 31March 5, 2023 2:34 PM

R29 I'm not sure about all of that. She was a child star and I have a feeling she may be in arrested emotional development and may have an eternal adolescent obsession with infatuation rather than consciously 'dumbing herself down.'

I feel like she's a lot like Jewel Kilcher, except Taylor is a more sophisticated songwriter at the line and structure level but shallower thinker, and Jewel is a better singer but had inferior producers who didn't do her any favors.

by Anonymousreply 32March 5, 2023 3:18 PM

Kate Bush is a unique original, she never wrote generic pablum pop for the masses. She had actual passion. Ms. Swift's songs all sound the same.

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by Anonymousreply 33March 5, 2023 3:47 PM

R32 That's a good write-up. The biggest reason I can't get into Swift is her song lyrics are very immature and petty. They reflect that of an intelligent and well-read but still entitled and pretentious suburban teenage girl who fancies herself better than everyone (think a teenage Peggy from King of the Hill). Actually being from a small town, TS does get that mindset well and probably a big reason she endured in popularity. Also she's a woman and makes music for young girls and women that is arguably empowering. I'm not her demographic but I can see she's good at what she does.

by Anonymousreply 34March 8, 2023 9:21 AM

[Quote] Also she's a woman and makes music for young girls and women that is arguably empowering.

Not always.

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by Anonymousreply 35March 8, 2023 9:25 AM

R34 Yes, this song from her newest album exemplifies both points you make.

She astutely presents two different versions of a small town, the perspective of a guy who she grew up with and to whom 'it was paradise,' but to her it 'was a wasteland, full of cages, full of fences, pageant queens and big pretenders.'

The song ultimately is about how they were incompatible because he was already comfortable where he was and she saw it as a prison and jad to get out, and they went on and lived their lives, only occasionally thinking about one another—he remembers her when he sees her on TV and she remembers him in the middle of the night when she is writing songs.

And in the song, she basically presents herself as a cold villainesque person—"I broke his heart 'cause he was nice," but also presents relatable imagery: "It came like a postcard, picture perfect shiny family, holiday peppermint candy, but for him it was every day." She says "I needed that pain, taking my own name, chasing that fame."

It all sounds good, but it's too good, too sweet, too much of a good thing.

It's not her best song on the album at all but I think it shows both what she is good at and what her big pitfalls are, or at least what the barriers are for a lot of people being able to get into her music.

She seems to almost inevitably go back to adolescent romance. Not always, but so often on any given album that the whole album takes on a young-adult romance fiction feel. That's her genre and that's fine but I find it off putting.

Other songs of hers that don't go there are really nice songs that I like a lot, but as soon as she presents these images of jocks in letterman jackets, prom dresses, the school gym, bleachers, drinking at house parties while parents are away, all those teen movie tropes, I just think WHY? She's 33 years old now. 17 was half a lifetime ago. If I were her creative writing instructor, my challenge to her would be to make a list of every high school movie trope she could think of and avoid mentioning or alluding to any of them in anything she writes going forward.

I think her music can be astute and insightful. I am just put off by being intrigued by a couple of songs and then reminded by the next one in the lineup that she's writing all these songs with 14-year-old girls in mind as her listeners.

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by Anonymousreply 36March 8, 2023 11:00 AM

Everything I blabbered above at R36 just reminded me that Joni Mitchell wrote 'Both Sides Now' at 23, Tori Amos was 27 or 28 when she wrote 'Winter,' Laura Nyro was 17 when she wrote 'And When I Die.'

Such far-reaching views of the stages of life and death for young people to consider, and Taylor in her 30s is still considering smoochies in the backs of cars and under bleachers. It just seems a bit weird.

by Anonymousreply 37March 8, 2023 11:06 AM

I wonder if Taylor is afraid of writing songs with more maturity because it would leave such a huge swath of her fan base (and potential fan base) behind. She’s not exactly embraced by older people.

by Anonymousreply 38March 8, 2023 11:19 AM

I don't know. I really don't think it's 'fair' to condemn Taylor for writing YA fiction as long as we can openly admit that's what it is. I mean, from Judy Blume to Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games) and Stephenie Meyer (Twilight), there are plenty of authors who write YA novels throughout their entire careers. It's their genre, their market, their perspective, and there's nothing wrong with it.

It takes adults to write Twilight and The Hunger Games and Divergent, not teenagers—they're just about teenagers.

So Taylor Swift does the same thing. So be it. She does it well.

It's just that there's no music genre that restricts itself to young people. Pop ultimately is for young people but it's blandly all purpose, and Taylor's a better-than-average writer because she includes just enough specifics to seem more like a singer-songwriter than a pop starlet, and so we expect greater sophistication.

But maybe she is just a singing Judy Blume. Is anything inherently wrong with that?

I don't think so. My only issue with it is that a couple of years ago, Buzzfeed published a "Shakespeare or Taylor Swift lyrics?" quiz and people buzzed on Twitter that she is today's Shakespeare, which made me cough up my coffee. I tweeted that she is a singing YA fiction author and I was swarmed by her fanatical fans, who even tracked me down on Instagram and began to troll my photos and tell me she is an even better writer than Shakespeare. It was supremely weird. And no, she's not. However, I guess I get the inclination to be that fanatical. I regard Tori Amos as having something in common with Shakespeare, which is that both address a hugely broad spanse of being human, including sex, violence, self-harm, all states of mood disorder, politics, religion and spirituality, language, ancient cultures, pure fantasy, etc., but I certainly don't kid myself into thinking her writing compares with his at the line level. Cmon.

by Anonymousreply 39March 8, 2023 11:35 AM

She’s OK, but I still don’t get how she’s an absolute superstar. My young co-workers travel across the country to see her concerts. I guess every generation needs contemporary artists to get excited about, but the music is pretty generic to my elderly ears.

by Anonymousreply 40March 8, 2023 12:31 PM

R40 She's the closest I know of to a songwriting artist, at least in mainstream pop, today.

Adele's lyrics are entirely generic. There is nothing personal or distinctive at all.

Lana Del Ray is good at what she does, but her songs are ultimately boring as hell.

I know most people here hate her, but I like Billie Eilish, but she still seems more pop than songwriter-y.

Taylor Swift is the closest I know of today to the abundant singer-songwriter women of the 90s, which is my era. She's a little Jewel, a little Sarah, a little Tori, but blended together and then run through a sieve to take out all the grit and texture, with some preservatives and pink food coloring added to appeal to the masses.

by Anonymousreply 41March 8, 2023 12:34 PM

“Goes hard in the paint,” OP?

by Anonymousreply 42March 8, 2023 12:35 PM

R42 I wanted to ask, too, but I googled it and saw it's from some rap song.

I have never really loved slang expressions that are totally unintelligible, but I guess 'goes hard in the paint' isn't a lot more nonsensical than ' the bee's knees.'

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by Anonymousreply 43March 8, 2023 12:40 PM

R41's comment is brilliant.

by Anonymousreply 44March 12, 2023 4:14 PM

I love the song Antihero. I’ve had it stuck in my head for days.

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by Anonymousreply 45March 12, 2023 6:05 PM

It’s very catchy.

by Anonymousreply 46March 13, 2023 12:05 AM

I know that I will hear MARY, but her love letter song to her mother is one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen,

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by Anonymousreply 47March 13, 2023 2:16 AM

Kate Bush??? I still don't think so OP.

by Anonymousreply 48March 13, 2023 2:19 AM

Thanks, r47.

This one, especially the bridge, always hurts me. Anyone who ever had and lost a great set of grandparents, or anyone else they wished they had more time with can relate.

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by Anonymousreply 49March 13, 2023 4:42 AM

No idea what 'hard in the paint' means and don't care to Google. Plus, I can't stand Taylor Swift.

by Anonymousreply 50March 13, 2023 6:41 AM

[quote]No idea what 'hard in the paint' means

It means OP is pulling is wee cock, nothing more.

The audio of the song is so synthetically filtered and pushed, like many Dolby productions these days, I find it painful on the ear drums.

by Anonymousreply 51March 13, 2023 6:56 AM

All the audio engineering of her songs is excessive: they're all sonically pushed to maximum, like someone turning the Contrast setting in Photoshop to the absolute limit: the natural softness of the human voice is completely absent, making her voice purely hard-edged, cut-through synthetic, and very wearisome. It's a reflection of her desire to turn out the equivalent of sugary junk rather than fulfilling art.

by Anonymousreply 52March 13, 2023 7:03 AM

What does her closet case of a BF do for a living while she breaks her neck at concerts? The kept man?

by Anonymousreply 53March 18, 2023 7:03 PM

Never chose to Taylor Swift once of my own volition. She’s always forced on me. I don’t want her. Make her go away.

by Anonymousreply 54March 18, 2023 7:15 PM

Isn’t this the name of a popular brand of weed? Is she entering her druggy phase?

by Anonymousreply 55March 18, 2023 7:29 PM

Isn’t she rich and doesn’t she buy all her songs?

by Anonymousreply 56March 18, 2023 7:31 PM

R53 Give it up

by Anonymousreply 57March 18, 2023 7:42 PM

R57 What? It's the first time I've ever asked this question 😳

by Anonymousreply 58March 18, 2023 11:34 PM
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