Medialoper

Certain Songs #2648: Ted Nugent – “Stranglehold”

July 11, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Ted Nugent
Year: 1975

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So let’s us get the obvious out in the open first. While I’m pretty sure I didn’t know it in the 70s, 80’s or maybe even the 1990s — time has proven Ted Nugent to be one of the worst human beings to ever walk the planet, a sack of enough shit that I was tempted to not even write about him at all. But, of course, Ted Nugent is neither the first nor last garbage person I’ve written about, and the blog is called “Certain Songs,” not “Certain Artists,” so let us discuss for a few minutes the greatest song the man ever wrote, the opening track to his eponymous debut album, “Stranglehold.”

Certain Songs #2647: T-Bone Burnett – “The Sixties”

July 10, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Proof Through The Night
Year: 1983

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A lot of people don’t know or remember this, but before he became a Grammy-winning producer — and a leading candidate (along with Rick Rubin) — for Taylor Swift’s next “authenticity” move, T-Bone Burnett was a well regarded musician, who played on Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, as well as released solo records starting in 1980 that were well-regarded until they weren’t.

For me, the only one that ever broke through was 1983’s Proof Through The Night, which featured the closet thing T-Bone ever had to a hit, “The Murder Weapon,” and when I say “closet thing T-Bone ever had to a hit, I mean “I think I remember seeing the video on MTV a couple times.”

Certain Songs #2646: Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version) – “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault)”

June 30, 2023 by Jim Connelly

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.

Certain Songs #2645: Taylor Swift – “Red (Taylor’s Version)”

June 29, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Red (Taylor’s Version)
Year: 2021

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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.)

Certain Songs #2644: Taylor Swift – “State of Grace (Taylor’s Version)”

June 28, 2023 by Jim Connelly

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.

Certain Songs #2643: Taylor Swift – “’tis the damn season”

June 27, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: evermore
Year: 2020

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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.

Certain Songs #2642: Taylor Swift – “champagne problems”

June 26, 2023 by Jim Connelly

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.

Certain Songs #2641: Taylor Swift – “mirrorball (long pond studio sessions)”

June 22, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: folklore: the long pond studio sessions
Year: 2020

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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?

Certain Songs #2640: Taylor Swift – “betty”

June 21, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: folklore
year: 2020

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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.

Certain Songs #2639: Taylor Swift – “this is me trying”

June 20, 2023 by Jim Connelly

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.