We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Red (Taylor’s Version)
Year: 2021
. . .
Not having an advanced degree — or even an undergraduate degree (though I’ve taken a couple of online classes from the University of Sheffield) — in Swiftology, I’m not going to be much use in deciphering this song for y’all, and I’m sure as shit not going to go through all of the lyrics, which even I know are about her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal.
Album: Red (Taylor’s Version)
Year: 2021
. . .
After the stadium rock anthem of “State of Grace (Taylor’s Version)“,” the opening of “Red (Taylor’s Version)” offers a bit of a misdirect, as it opens with Taylor singing the opening verse over a kickdrum and bouzouki (and maybe a banjo or at least a ganjo, though they’re not listed in the credits.)
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2645: Taylor Swift – “Red (Taylor’s Version)”
Album: Red (Taylor’s Version)
Year: 2021
. . .
So, if you want to read all about the controversy that caused Taylor Swift to decide to re-record her first six studio albums, then I will direct you to the Taylor Swift masters controversy Wikipedia page, but for our purposes, I’ll distill it down to this: some assholes spent a shitton of money to get the masters of those albums, and Taylor was all “lol fuck you, I’ll just re-record those songs” assuming that in the long term, her re-recordings would become the canonical versions, thereby depriving the assholes from making money on songs she wrote or co-wrote.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2644: Taylor Swift – “State of Grace (Taylor’s Version)”
Album: evermore
Year: 2020
. . .
evermore, released just two weeks before lockdown Christmas 2020, was styled as a year-end gift from Swift to her fanbase, who had started the year looking forward to seeing her in concert and ended the year not seeing pretty much anybody at all.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2643: Taylor Swift – “’tis the damn season”
Album: evermore
Year: 2020
I can’t remember if evermore was more or less of a surprise that folklore initially was. And while nobody suspected Taylor Swift of going all Robert Pollard on us, it was still unprecedented for her to release two albums in two years, much less two albums in six months. But that was 2020: the most unprecedented year of any of our lives.
And while folklore was basically split between collabs with pop gun for hire Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner, evermore was pretty much all songs Swift worked on with Dessner, because it clearly got good for her.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2642: Taylor Swift – “champagne problems”
Album: folklore: the long pond studio sessions
Year: 2020
. . .
In September of 2020, Taylor Swift and her co-conspirators on the folklore project, Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, all got together in upstate New York to play the folklore songs in the same room, with the result was released on Disney+ in late November, as well as a live soundtrack of those sessions.
Which was, of course, a luxury most of us who were collaborating on songs over the internet didn’t have. So when Sedan Delivery pitched Disney+ on all of us getting together at Parkwood Studios in Madera to play the songs we’d been working on for the Exile on Messenger project, they just said, who?
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2641: Taylor Swift – “mirrorball (long pond studio sessions)”
Album: folklore
year: 2020
. . .
Both a throwback to Taylor Swift’s pre-Red country roots but also far less produced than those records, “betty” was one folklore’s most enduring songs as she slipped into character yet again, this time as a 17-year-old boy named James, who is singing the song to the titular Betty. It’s basically one long apology letter, as James tries to own his cheating on her.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2640: Taylor Swift – “betty”
Album: folklore
Year: 2020
. . .
I guess if there is one song on folklore that takes me straight back to the long, hot, smokey, scary-ass summer of 2020, it would be the quietly desperate “this is me trying,” an orchestral slice of simmering shimmer that reminds me of a deep Bob Dylan cut. Not a random deep Bob Dylan cut, but a specific deep Bob Dylan cut: “Something’s Burning Baby” from 1985’s Empire Burlesque.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2639: Taylor Swift – “this is me trying”
Album: folklore
year: 2020
In February 2020, a musical artist was ready to go to the next phase of their career, a phase which had been in the works for months.
That artist, of course was my band Sedan Delivery. We had completed our first album, and was just about to get it mastered and released, after which we’d planned to play some shows and even sell a few copies. But you know what happened next: the pandemic, which trashed everything we’d hoped to achieve.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2638: Taylor Swift – “the last great american dynasty”
Album: Lover
Year: 2019
. . .
Had Taylor Swift kept to her 2010s schedule and released Reputation in 2016, thereby helping the San Francisco Giants continue their even-year bullshit with a fourth World Series title, I might have liked it better. But NOOOOO, it didn’t come out for a whole nother year, and by that time, the spell was broken.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2637: Taylor Swift – “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince”