no seriously the Reputation review is taking so long because the songs are so lyrically dense and triply-layered and #include another song every two measures or so, this is peak kontextmaschinebait

kontextmaschine:

“I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon,” Taylor Swift said with a straight face to an interviewer from Vanity Fair while the magazine was profiling her in 2013.

No, not Taylor Swift. Not the author of songs like “Forever and Always,” written in the wake of her relationship with former boyfriend Joe Jonas, the better-looking Jonas brother, and featuring this lyric: “Did I say something way too honest, made you run and hide like a scared little boy?” Not her, who wrote/sang about her relationship with the actor Jake Gyllenhaal, “Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword/and realizing there’s no right answer.”

Not Taylor, who leaves the impossible-to-crack clues in her liner notes for each song by capitalizing a variety of letters that spell out the subjects in a very essential way: “TAY” for a song about ex-boyfriend Taylor Lautner; “SAG” for the Gyllenhaal one (as in Swift And Gyllenhaal, or that they’re both Sagittarius. I don’t know).

For Taylor Swift to pretend that her entire music career is not a tool of passive aggression toward those who had wronged her is like me pretending I’m not carbon-based: too easy to disprove, laughable at its very suggestion.

Don’t get me wrong—I say all this with utter admiration. Taylor’s career is, in fact, the perfected realization of every writer’s narrowest dream: To get back at those who had wronged us, sharply and loudly, and then to be able to cry innocent that our intentions were anything other than poetic and pure. Most of us can only achieve this with small asides. Taylor not only publicly dates and publicly breaks up, but she then releases an achingly specific song about the relationship—and that song has an unforgettable hook—all the while swearing she won’t talk about relationships that are over. Yes, date Taylor Swift, and not only will she shit on you on her album, but the song will become a single, then a hit, and then you will hear yourself shat upon by an army of young women at Staples Center. And then she’ll deny that she was ever doing anything other than righteously manifesting her art. It’s diabolical, and for a lifelong passive-aggressive like me, it’s made her my hero.

(relevant)

8/23/2015

her albums are dense, recursive two-year reviews of How We White Girl Now, is the thing

white girl pop all depends on strong production of weak voices these days because none of them grow up singing to a room every week/day anymore

Blank Space and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are the only works I can think of to acknowledge that “use Borderline Personality Disorder as an idiom to reconcile our stereotypical flighty mercuriality with our self-image as serious, self-sufficient moral actors” was the next trend in Millennial White Girl

It never really trickled down from the elite though, maybe they assumed that with Obamacare requiring mental health coverage, psychotherapy was going to be A Thing again; maybe they thought that we’d destigmatized craziness enough people would talk about it more

I suppose you could make a case for Gone Girl

Working on a take on the new Tayswift album and listening to her older stuff for connections and I’m just struck by how subtly charming in Speak Now she throws shade on the “lovely bride-to-be” for uninviting from her wedding the girl who is currently planning to steal her fianceé at her wedding

(it’s okay that she does this, as she’s aware she is not the kind of girl who should do the thing - rudely barging in on a white-veil occasion – that she is right now doing)

(or you can read the whole narrative as a daydream if that’s what it takes to maintain your image of her)

micelle:

annleckie:

sonatagreen:

English translations of foreign-language poetry be like

My rival dresses to display her legs,
and her shoes are of an alluring fashion;

but my shoes are comfortable
and my tunic is plain.

She holds the most prestigious position in the women’s dance performance,
while I sit in the audience.

I dream that someday when you awaken
you will know that what you sought was always here.

You and I walk together,
you in the coarse and tattered trousers of a common working man;

we sit on a bench in the park, laughing together,
and nothing seems difficult.

Wait, which #radchaaipopsong is this.

@kontextmaschine

Looks like I don’t even need to do my own #supergenius shapeshifter Taylor Swift content this time around

kontextmaschine:

Listening again to Taylor Swift’s Red, picked up something I hadn’t - “memorize” used in two different songs

In Stay Stay Stay,

you took the time to memorize me
my fears my hopes and dreams
I just like hanging out with you
all the time

and then in Red,

memorizing him was as easy as knowing all the words to your old favorite song

and I thought on it and realize this downright sapiosexual knowledge-as-intimacy theme is pretty important in Tayswift, it’s the load-bearing element of YBWM

I’m the one who makes you laugh
when you know you’re ‘bout to cry
I know your favorite songs
and you tell me bout your dreams
think I know where you belong
think I know it’s with me
can’t you see I’m the one who understands you
been here all along so why can’t you see
you belong with me

it’s even important in negative (which is how interrogators tease personality from pretense) in Red,

forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you never met

thinking about that, and also remembering when her transparent brand strategy was accessibility and fans chosen to meet her would gush about her casually referencing something they mentioned on their tumblr long ago, and it’s like

AWW, she really IS just like us, in that her real output is multilayered invocations of accreted culture but she charms incidental humans by studying up on whatever incidental shit they happen to be and mirroring it back at them

I just want to know you better
know you better
know you better now
I just want to know you
know you
know you

she might save us after all

Listening again to Taylor Swift’s Red, picked up something I hadn’t - “memorize” used in two different songs

In Stay Stay Stay,

you took the time to memorize me
my fears my hopes and dreams
I just like hanging out with you
all the time

and then in Red,

memorizing him was as easy as knowing all the words to your old favorite song

and I thought on it and realize this downright sapiosexual knowledge-as-intimacy theme is pretty important in Tayswift, it’s the load-bearing element of YBWM

I’m the one who makes you laugh
when you know you’re ‘bout to cry
I know your favorite songs
and you tell me bout your dreams
think I know where you belong
think I know it’s with me
can’t you see I’m the one who understands you
been here all along so why can’t you see
you belong with me

it’s even important in negative (which is how interrogators tease personality from pretense) in Red,

forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you never met

thinking about that, and also remembering when her transparent brand strategy was accessibility and fans chosen to meet her would gush about her casually referencing something they mentioned on their tumblr long ago, and it’s like

AWW, she really IS just like us, in that her real output is multilayered invocations of accreted culture but she charms incidental humans by studying up on whatever incidental shit they happen to be and mirroring it back at them

I just want to know you better
know you better
know you better now
I just want to know you
know you
know you

me: ::listening to Taylor Swift's _Red_::
me: Jesus
also me: Jesus
me: remember when this was it?
also me: it wasn't even that, it was like this was the *worst* you could do
me: the bare––
us: the bare minimum
me: like if you somehow didn't become a celebrity oh no, you had this
also me: you had America, who was your waifu

“Hey Kontextmaschine when are we gonna get new Taylor Swift blogging?”

You mean like mentioning how 1983 was the inevitable “this is what it’s like to be famous and successful” album that left zero impression and Carly Rae Jepsen stole her territory of “This Is How We Single White Girl Now” and how she was doing the “it’s #relatable me on tumblr!” thing again a few weeks ago and I don’t know if she’s followed the kids to snapchat or was just totally BTFO by the lack of response

newyorker:

Taylor Swift, who turns 27 today, turned teen angst into a business empire. Read Lizzie Widdicombe’s 2011 Profile of the pop star from her country-music days. Photograph by Katy Grannan. 

probably for the best she sat out the election. can you imagine?

bloodandhedonism:

paranormalthread:

(x)

@kontextmaschine

christ, I forgot about that mullet. *unf*

This is dumb as hell, but hey, it’s kontextmaschinebait. This bit though:

So should we start interpreting “Bad Blood” in a whole new light? Hearing “You Belong With Me” as a secret conversion anthem?

The Tayswift alt-right anthem is Change, for fuck’s sake.

barthel:

Is…is Taylor Swift’s new aesthetic “late 90s Courtney Love”?