Taylor Swift - Tortured Poets Department
- Thread starter ISUCyclones2015
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My wife had two songs playing today while we’re preparing dinner. First had a Bleachers vibe and the second an Indigo Girls vibe. I can dig that.
You had me at “we’re preparing dinner.”
My husband prepares dinner by eating stuff before it’s done.
Well, when the next double album focuses on golf and boner pills she’ll kill in that demographic.
Was on a college visit in Madison with my wife and daughter last spring and Indigo Girls were playing at the Orpheum the day after we were leaving. Tried to stay an extra day to catch them but I got outvoted.
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They are both rich enough that money probably has very little factor in their relationship. If they are happy more power to them. Two highly successful 30 somethings that like each other. No skin off of my back.
I fully realize TSwift had WAY more but neither one is wondering how to keep the lights on. TSwift garnered a lot of karma credits from me when I learned how well she tipped out the road crew on her Eras tour. Damn she payed out well on top of already agreed upon rates
I know one woman who considers herself a "plant mom" and posts her plant stories all over instagram, she also happens to be one of the hottest women I've ever known.
Look, I appreciate the effort but women can tell you they still have relationship issues with men 20 yrs in. YOYOK and Bigger than the whole sky are probably my faves off the last one. Anti Hero was fun - I didn't interpret those as romantic relationship songs. And at the end of the day...relationships are a pretty universal experience. This particular critique isually coupled with the ever present comments about the number of romantic relationships has always smelled bad to me. Plus it seems she's largely been coded as teen girl adjacent so she gets the pumpkin spice treatment of "anything girls like is to be mocked and belittled." Not that she's immune from criticism. I can agree with some of what you said and have my own as well.I consider myself a (male) Swifty. I'm increasingly slouching into middle age (37 later this year).
I'm in it less for her music than her personality, though. She seems like a genuinely nice, good, and generous person, which is hard to be with her level of fame and wealth. In terms of having a celebrity role model that girls and young women can look up to, I don't know if you can do better than Taylor Swift.
Her cats are adorable, too. Definitely in it for the world's most famous cat lady.
Her music is... okay. High floor, low ceiling. It's product, not art. A lot of the problems with Taylor Swift's music are just problems with modern pop music in general. She has an ear for pop catchiness. The production and backing musicians are always top notch. She works with some of the most talented songwriters in the music business (usually men, but increasingly women like Phoebe Bridgers and Florence Welch).
Taylor doesn't seem to have an ego about her that her music is anything more than "good" if meaningful for her fans. She certainly honors what comes before her. She reveres Stevie Nicks, for instance.
The complaints her songs/albums all sound the same has some merit, though. Something like 95% of her songs use the same two chord sequences (like most pop songs nowadays). She works with a very limited harmonic palette and doesn't play in very many keys. Her production is slick and professional but ultimately embody whatever is the "standard" for pop songs at the time. Nearly all of her songs are structured in standard verse/chorus/verse/chorus format with the occasional bridge thrown in there. She isn't in a band with multiple lead singers and her songs don't really have much for instrumental features, and thus they end up sounding repetitive.
Switching vocalists between songs and dropping in a guitar solo one song and a Hammond organ solo the next one helps break things up and keep it fresh. She doesn't have that advantage.
She also deals with a relatively limited scope of topics in her lyrics. They're almost all boy/girl love songs of some nature: either love going well ("London Boy") or going terrible (most of her songs really). I can see why that resonates with a large audience of young women cursed with the terrible fate of trying to date and form meaningful relationships with knucklehead boys/immature men in their teens and 20s.
It just gets old after a while when that is all you do. She's 34. She's ~20 years into her recording career and has released 11 studio albums. I give her a lot of credit for Folklore and Evermore where she tried to mix in more metaphor and storytelling in her lyrics, but most of that catalog is just her talking as herself in simple terms about what she feels about her latest relationship... for almost two decades now.
I'm not asking her to be like one of the weirder songwriters of yore (e.g., Bowie, Björk, Zappa, or to put together some weird prog song with yodeling in its hook, etc.). Just get a little weird for us.
But all this is okay. I'll still listen to her when I want to bop along.
Like clearly what she's doing career wise is working and no one is in her universe for the parasocial game - which is really probably the secret sauce.
Don’t worry. I still have the same cave man tendencies. Eating over the sink is like a drug. Men gonna man.You had me at “we’re preparing dinner.”
My husband prepares dinner by eating stuff before it’s done.
I take the lead on dinner for the family. I enjoy cooking and my wife is right there in the mix. When she is in charge I try to be as much help as I can. While the kids are out playing it’s weirdly a great time to be together.
After spending the last 5 nights on a couch in the hospital with our youngest, I appreciated her taking the lead. She’s a fantastic woman and I am glad she’s exposed me to the TS music. Can’t wait til this fall when we overpay for tix and I awkwardly go out to the bathroom during a song that I don’t care about but everyone else in the stadium thinks is the best.
At least there’s no line for the men’s room. Or the beer line.
“You Need to Calm Down” is the song you’re referring to. (And IMO, it’s a fun song!)
You had me at “we’re preparing dinner.”
My husband prepares dinner by eating stuff before it’s done.
That's called quality control checks
May need something about TV or grill specs to really lock them in.
Well, awesome of course except for that out of state tuition!
She wants to go to med school and got a big scholarship at Ohio State and can go to the school on the eastern side of Iowa for next to nothing.
But barring a big Scholly from UW it’s probably not happening. She’s accepted but they haven’t sent a financial package yet. Highly doubt they will give enough.
UW is awesome, but tOSU, and yes even EIU are great places for health science stuff. Wish I was rich and could send her to UW.
The song is “So High School”, come on I can do it with a broken heart
Oh man nailed it.
Don’t forget a song about how hard it is to park your four door Silverado that’s never hauled anything.
Maybe another about pissing around for 30 minutes getting your snowblower out to throw snow you could scoop in 15 mins.
There you go. I also remember the “never be another like Me” song.
I don’t dislike it or anything, it’s just not for me, and no one else in my fam is into it, so I just don’t hear that much.
