argumate:

nanavn said: Omg, Xi finally has his squad just like TSwift *squee*

reminder not to wear your “TS 1989” hoodie in China

You know it is a great treatment for imposter syndrome to see how in Cats 2019, Taylor Swift, master lyricist Americana storyteller, is just not that good at writing in the post-Sondheim singing-about-yourself Broadway musical tradition, that her performances are highly based on mimicry but her sense of the stuff to be mimicked is still at a band-geek-in-YBWM’s level of Cats fan, that her sense of role is clearly leaning on Grizabella – a character already in this exact musical! – and wherever the scene is not specifically catering to her, her sense of stage is that of a freshman that doesn’t get a part

the-grey-tribe:

kontextmaschine:

the-grey-tribe:

Free Britney

I have been filtering every tumblr post that says “Taylor Swift”, but I am stopping this for a bit in case somebody replies something interesting.

I have notices that people on tumblr and twitter really don’t like to separate art from the artist, for example the artist Adele, or Taylor Swift. Everything has to be about the person Taylor Swift, and the kabbalistic implications of pieces of the lyrics. It’s not enough for people to like or not like her music. It’s all about Taylor Swift existing in the public eye, criticism is criticism of her person, her life.

When Adele lost weight, the twitter meltdowns were at least fun to point and laugh at.

With Taylor Swift, even the posts that criticise the way the media exploit or paint Taylor Swift feel painfully parasocial. Taylor Swift is this persona, this media product, and somehow every time a new song or album comes out, her fans defend Taylor Swift, the misunderstood all-American girl, the brave lesbian, or whatever she is now. Her songs are so catchy, everybody just reads the lyrics on genius.com and posts them to tumblr for deep exegesis. Why don’t you just upload mp3s or embed YouTube videos like a normal person?

The whole “Free Britney” movement creeped me the hell out, too. There was a group of people that followed Britney Spears and her fight to get out of the public eye again. Like, didn’t you guys see the irony? Did you feel conflicted? Did you say yes, it is with a heavy heart, yada yada…

Or did you think you were one fo the good ones?

So anyway: I didn’t watch Blonde. I am not going to. It’s on Netflix. But what turned me off were all the rave reviews. It’s a biopic, not a documentary, but everybody is playing fast and loose with historicity. It’s fictionalised. It’s heightened reality. Fuck you!

You can’t have it both ways! You can’t make a movie about how Marilyn Monroe was exploited and had no privacy, and then make a fictionalised movie about Marilyn Monroe that re-enacts those moments. Own your voyeurism, or don’t. I don’t need a movie to show Marilyn Monroe sucking JFK’s dick, and I definitely don’t need a film review telling me how stunning and brave this director is for including that. Or maybe the dick sucking was implied. I didn’t watch Blonde.

I don’t need a movie about the personal life of some superstar, but I definitely don’t need dishonest fans, promoters, late night hosts, and film reviewers to tell me I am empowering, you are exploiting, he is The Male Gaze.

I’d rather watch Some Like It Hot again. It’s good.

Taylor Swift is

• A lyricist
• A maestro
• A celebrity
• A singer

In approximately that order. She isn’t really an instrumentalist – does she even still play guitar? – and was never an instrumental arranger, but coming back to that “maestro” bit her introduction to the media world was through a Nashville tradition that never really bought into a rockist valorization of completely self-made music, but one where all the same the buck ultimately stopped with the star’s team. Which doesn’t always mean the star themselves – this was effectively what the Colonel was to Elvis – but all indications are that she herself serves this role in ultimately being the one to decide on her co-writers, collaborators, media relations people, stylists, etc.

Taylor Swift the actual human is very much the author of Taylor Swift the celebrity. Judging by her lyrics she indeed has some issues arising from all this, but all indications are in her capacity as a maestro she arranges things to make this manageable in her capacity as a celebrity/singer, learning from mentors and the experience of forerunners – she takes morale breaks in the course of tours to relax and touch base with the network of allies and peers she’s cultivated, etc.

@flakmaniak

Are you proud of yourself? He dodged the question. No mention of the music. Just more of the same exact shit I was describing there.

Well if that’s too meta and not object-level enough for you I’ve sure talked plenty about the lyricism in it’s own right, if between those it’s not… what question do you even want answered here? Why I don’t upload the videos? No one needs me to introduce Taylor Swift’s current singles to them.

the-grey-tribe:

Free Britney

I have been filtering every tumblr post that says “Taylor Swift”, but I am stopping this for a bit in case somebody replies something interesting.

I have notices that people on tumblr and twitter really don’t like to separate art from the artist, for example the artist Adele, or Taylor Swift. Everything has to be about the person Taylor Swift, and the kabbalistic implications of pieces of the lyrics. It’s not enough for people to like or not like her music. It’s all about Taylor Swift existing in the public eye, criticism is criticism of her person, her life.

When Adele lost weight, the twitter meltdowns were at least fun to point and laugh at.

With Taylor Swift, even the posts that criticise the way the media exploit or paint Taylor Swift feel painfully parasocial. Taylor Swift is this persona, this media product, and somehow every time a new song or album comes out, her fans defend Taylor Swift, the misunderstood all-American girl, the brave lesbian, or whatever she is now. Her songs are so catchy, everybody just reads the lyrics on genius.com and posts them to tumblr for deep exegesis. Why don’t you just upload mp3s or embed YouTube videos like a normal person?

The whole “Free Britney” movement creeped me the hell out, too. There was a group of people that followed Britney Spears and her fight to get out of the public eye again. Like, didn’t you guys see the irony? Did you feel conflicted? Did you say yes, it is with a heavy heart, yada yada…

Or did you think you were one fo the good ones?

So anyway: I didn’t watch Blonde. I am not going to. It’s on Netflix. But what turned me off were all the rave reviews. It’s a biopic, not a documentary, but everybody is playing fast and loose with historicity. It’s fictionalised. It’s heightened reality. Fuck you!

You can’t have it both ways! You can’t make a movie about how Marilyn Monroe was exploited and had no privacy, and then make a fictionalised movie about Marilyn Monroe that re-enacts those moments. Own your voyeurism, or don’t. I don’t need a movie to show Marilyn Monroe sucking JFK’s dick, and I definitely don’t need a film review telling me how stunning and brave this director is for including that. Or maybe the dick sucking was implied. I didn’t watch Blonde.

I don’t need a movie about the personal life of some superstar, but I definitely don’t need dishonest fans, promoters, late night hosts, and film reviewers to tell me I am empowering, you are exploiting, he is The Male Gaze.

I’d rather watch Some Like It Hot again. It’s good.

Taylor Swift is

• A lyricist
• A maestro
• A celebrity
• A singer

In approximately that order. She isn’t really an instrumentalist – does she even still play guitar? – and was never an instrumental arranger, but coming back to that “maestro” bit her introduction to the media world was through a Nashville tradition that never really bought into a rockist valorization of completely self-made music, but one where all the same the buck ultimately stopped with the star’s team. Which doesn’t always mean the star themselves – this was effectively what the Colonel was to Elvis – but all indications are that she herself serves this role in ultimately being the one to decide on her co-writers, collaborators, media relations people, stylists, etc.

Taylor Swift the actual human is very much the author of Taylor Swift the media property. Judging by her lyrics she indeed has some issues arising from all this, but all indications are in her capacity as a maestro she arranges things to make this manageable in her capacity as a celebrity/singer, learning from mentors and the experience of forerunners – she schedules morale breaks in the course of tours to relax and touch base with the network of allies and peers she’s cultivated rather than burn out on the road, etc.

Me: you know, I’m starting go get a sense we’re in for a *psychedelic* comeback in the next decade

Also Me: oh?

Me: Yeah, the Oregon shamanic lodges initiative, this microdosing stuff – it would just be odd for it to stop there.

Also Me: Hm

Me: In the 90s there was ecstasy, and I guess shrooms and acid were _around_, then it was mail-order “research chemicals”, but nothing that really *broke through*, you know

Also Me: so how does this track with your observation that country-raised Taylor Swift closely tracks the zeitgeist to put into her work?

Me: holy SHIT, the psychedelic album is gonna be AMAZING

So in the creative weirdo dorm at Cornell we had this concept “unkatunk”, so if you and B had made out, and B had hooked up with C you and C were unkatunk, if C got with D then you were second-degree unkatunk and so on

And anyway, this girl I made out with once had had her first kiss with Jake Gyllenhaal at their private school in LA, so it’s an amusing bit of trivia that I’m second-degree unkatunk to Taylor Swift.

What I just realized is that also means is that one of the things about her is she’s second-degree unkatunk to me

Funny how Midnights is setting the songs in the context of previous albums’ vibes, and Evermore was 3 fictional cycles, because Taylor Swift is known for drawing material from her life and for emotionally intense conflict yet when she tries to draw from her modern life it’s about like, finding stability in a mature relationship and learning to better handle BPD

Taylor Swift Makes History as First Artist With Entire Top 10 on Billboard Hot 100, Led by ‘Anti-Hero’ at No. 1

Huh, I guess now on streaming a whole album of tracks starts earning position at once, unlike radio with staggered singles

“sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes” is an amazing turn of phrase, really

Like the thing about Midnights is every time I listen to it I hear something else that’s a callback to earlier stuff in like the timing of a sweep or the precise pitch of a completely different stab

The funny thing about Taylor Swift is that a girl coming up through Nashville country to become the biggest celebrity in America through astute media and public relations plays and songs that sound omni-relatable through semantic overloading, laced with encrypted intertextuality, would’ve made perfect sense to like, a Media Studies professor in 1992

New Taylor Swift tour schedule out. “The Eras Tour”, wonder how that goes with her traditional biyearly album/new look cycles. Guess I should see her live at least once in my life, and it’s not like it ever won’t be a stadium tour.

Coming to the conclusion Midnights is Taylor Swift Gaiden

Yeah no when you relisten you realize Taylor is acknowledging like 4 of her previous songs and somehow 2 70s classics in the first 6 bars of everything on Midnights

Reedie girls at this barcade really getting into Anti-Hero

So apparently off Taylor Swift’s “Mastermind” TikTok girls have been posting stories of the the schemes they pulled to pull a man

and honestly, “normalize femdom girl-gets-the-boy dynamics in popular culture” is not at all something I would put past Taylor Swift as a conscious goal

kontextmaschine:

Taylor Swift Albums, Ranked

(No EPs, Taylor’s Versions or deluxe editions. “New Romantics” woulda lifted 1989 over Fearless.)

1. Lover
2. Red
3. Fearless
4. 1989
5. Folklore
6. Speak Now
7. Taylor Swift
8. Evermore
9. Reputation

Midnights is below Red but above Speak Now, still triangulating

Memories

This is another, lighter album where the music draws the lyrics behind it like 1989 or Reputation, but she’s figured how to hit that balance better. With the lyrics bearing less weight she can play whimsically with the vocal line while constantly wandering into that thing she does where she’ll invoke one of her earlier songs in rhythm of intonation, or gauzily underdescribe a scenario or characters in a way that they vibe like she’s borrowing from ones she established before

Snow on the Beach, the song with Lana del Rey, is like the fourth most Lana del Rey song Taylor Swift ever released

You’re On Your Own, Kid is another subtle case of her invoking Jenny Lewis

Is still kind of sad the Lover era got rained out by COVID, there were some real anthems in there, and it introduced new like, lore about her attitude to like, men and herself. I suppose one role of this album is to reestablish that stuff with a light touch while not being redundant

Both Midnights and Folklore each feel like plausible follow-ups to Lover, wandering off in directly opposite directions (Evermore felt like a b-sides and outtakes collection)

The aesthetic for this album is definitely early 80s, her dress and hair and eyeshadow in the promo shots established it and yeah, the music is chime sweeps and horns and digital beeps and 808 drums as embellishments but it’s honestly less defining than 1989’s periodizing, which was not even that heavy

Think I bought the deluxe edition but I don’t know which ones are the “bonus” tracks

Oh, they’re on the cover, that’s nice

Paris tossing off a bit about the two meanings of “shade” is a callback to You Need To Calm Down

High Infidelity suffers from the way that her unmarked-plausibly-Taylor-as-narrator stuff lately has been so about healthy relationships and relationship skills that it can’t switch smoothly to be about relationship conflict of any weight. Folklore she very much rendered her narrators as third-party characters

Honestly might be the first Taylor Swift album you could put on while you do something and enjoy even without paying any attention to the lyrics