Voicenotes is an album I refer to as "six time album of the year winner"
My only spare thought on TTPD is that she has gotten poisoned by "the vault tracks are good" (some of them are good, many were cut for good reasons) and decided to release an entire double album of vault tracks.
If you Venmo Fran from Fran Magazine $35 I will clue you in on the details and evidence for the real Swift conspiracy: that she is a clone of Anton LaVey’s daughter Xeena
love this point you make: "Okay, lol, but I think where something like TTPD feels most disappointing is that it’s alienating to people who wanna just vibe with the music. She’s making everyone do too much work here, and for what? These aren’t really songs, mostly, and if they are, they aren’t new ones."
because yes! that's my biggest gripe with the album -- it feels like i need to be on Taylor Swift Twitter to fully participate or enjoy the songs. as Grace Spelman aptly paraphrased: "music is not a puzzle to be solved" !!! https://twitter.com/GraceSpelman/status/1781487952566378992
like everyone dunks on the Cruel Summer chorus for rhyming Cruel Summer with like ooooh ah ah which - LMAO! I guess - but that song SOUNDS FUN and DOES SLAP and I didn't even realize into two years of listening that she didn't bother to come up with a rhyme for the name of the track itself. & yes - great tweet!
I have the brain problem where I can't not enjoy a Taylor album, even when I'm not liking it all that much, so I've been listening to all of the songs, pretending they are about Lionel Messi leaving Barcelona. I don't know if this suggestion will help or harm anyone, but it making me enjoy a lot of them.
Also currently hung up on the lyric about someone looking like a finance guy, since none of them really do!
So insightful and genius, as always ogmg!! I wonder if she's hyper-aware of her ability to encapsulate universal expressions of all-encompassing emotion into hyper-specific glimpses, and has conflated her singular talent with a need to filter all her songs through a lens of "extremely literary, overwritten and overwrought symbolism" when her talent comes from her ability to distill the grand into the tangible, and she's reversed the process that makes her music sing!
thank you so much! I think that gets very close to it - the localization of all that went into this one doesn't really branch outwards, and while specificity is key in any good writing, it feels like either either getting close (and the music itself doesn't sustain) or it's missing the mark entirely
HOT TTPD TAKE INCOMING!!! Here I go pearl clutching...
You should not say "...you told Lucy you'd kill yourself if I ever leave/And I had said that to Jack about you so I felt seen..." no matter how much you deconstruct/reflect upon that idea later, when you are every child and teen's role model and people are going to hear it without that context. IMO these are among the only words in the english language with potential to cause genuine harm.
Fight me about Taylor's Responsibility As A Public Figure(TM) below
I won't fight you! I think this is like, her least kids bop adjacent album yet... not to even say that I think it's a mature work, but I have no idea what anyone under 15 gets out of anything here... I get the sense that she rejects these fans and therefore makes music that she assumes they won't get/relate to/listen to (a friend of a friend's teen daughter said she stopped listening partway thru because she got bored) ... I guess I just don't really have any thoughts on what an album should/should not have but it's clear she does not want kids involved in this one.. they're stuck being bejeweled.
i do feel it fits with the "fuck you" interpretation of the work as a whole, to be like "well it wasn't for you to begin with." But moreover i feel that while her young fans can and absolutely still will get into this, ushering in the Gen Z emo era, she is perpetuating language that people of all ages use especially online and I Don't Like It. IYKYK but certain people will hear phrases like this differently from anyone else
Also the line about trying to buy pills after someone has talked about their struggle with sobriety…from heroin if not other substances. I can’t believe T. Allison has me out here defending Matthew but here I am!
i do think charlie puth should be a bigger artist. HOWEVER!! there are a LOT of songs about marriage and domestic bliss on this album (fresh out the slammer, but daddy i love him, title track) that undercut the fuck-you gesture she's trying to make. i could probably get behind this album if it were a more confident fuck you to the fans. (i would definitely read an essay putting this in conversation with recent pop girlie fuck yous: solar power, happier than ever, eternal sunshine...)
that's true... I guess I see But Daddy I Love Him & Fresh out the Slammer as both being like, I can't believe I didn't get married/what if my rebound actually works this time... in general I don't think any of her prison metaphors (lol) have worked since Ready for It? I also wish she did more of a fuck-you... it's like the main thing I like about the new Ariana album.
i may just be insane (very possible) but i felt like only maybe four songs on the album were lore dependent… the title track, so long london… uh i can't remember the other two but they'll come to me. i unfortunately love this album and have been listening to it since it came out even though it's making me Mentally Ill. agreed about the "new aesthetic" line however.
the one song i just don't like and that has grown zero on me is "the alchemy." (to a lesser extent, "cassandra") which is too bad bc i love the opening verse of the alchemy.
I still can't get thru the second half of the album in one fell swoop... I get too bored and walk away... I do like the new album but I do think it's kinda bad/worst in a minute (but I say this as someone who only started reappraising Midnights like 3 months ago so I'm sure I'll have a whole other tune by the end of the summer).
imo both loml, smallest man, alchemy (the worst song on it??), guilty as sin? along with the first two you named (and maybe also Florida!!!) are all kind of lore reliant, maybe, rather than lore dependent... but it's possible I'm just in deeper than I've been in the past
I feel like I am in the bad insane swiftie camp (get personally invested in her relationships in the form of hostility towards all her exes, am still kind of mad she's not dating an eagle, believe I have a mysterious psychic connection with her due to being from pennsylvania) but I don't actually know that much lore comparatively speaking......I do not have the attention span and I know if I really want to know bdm can explain it to me. But I guess I love a lot of the songs on this album not because they give insights into her life although that can be fun but because they feel like they're about MY life. (acquitted on swiftie charges by pleading guilty to 2nd degree narcissism).
I was saying to bdm the other day I feel like even more than the right producer, and much more than almost anyone else in the industry, Taylor could ascend by working with the right editor---her work is so much about the writing. Taylor if you are reading this I'm sorry, I would never presume to tell you whom to date but I do want what's best for you as a writer and I know some very talented people please get in touch. also read kristin lavransdatter and release a country album.
yeah i think that's totally true... it all comes down to like 10 min all too well... did we need TEN MIN ALL TO WELL?? it's totally fine as is...
I wish this one hit for me but I guess the flipside is that I am one of four people who like Lover lol... I think if like 3.5 things were going different in my life right now this album could have really locked into my brain but I just feel a bizarre disengagement from it
Down Fran crying at the gym! Now THAT is a great title. “Snubbing Joe Alwyn out of sadness and respect”. That was such a beautiful way to put it Fran, and I agree. If I listen to a new TS output at the start and I love it or I hate it, I usually just have to give it time. Wait for the noise to die down and then revisit it. That’s how I fell in love with Reputation, a few months after it first came out.
I still have songs on each of her albums that I skip, so I like your approach to any artist’s body of work. For Rep, I skip any “revenge” songs and go right to the “falling in love and lust” songs. Folklore and evermore are nice background music (except for when I’m depressed and they make me cry) so I can just put those albums on and let them be. Your newsletter is an island of normalcy that’s most welcome Fran. I saw The First Omen…maybe it’s the end of MY brave era, then listened to the first part of the album alone and basically lost my mind. I was like OH I can relate to feeling like an overgrown circus freak, snarling behind the bars. But alas! I am not rich. And so I must go to my job even when I’m depressed. Most people do. Anyway I’d love to hear a Taylor album or song edited by Fran.
Voicenotes is an album I refer to as "six time album of the year winner"
My only spare thought on TTPD is that she has gotten poisoned by "the vault tracks are good" (some of them are good, many were cut for good reasons) and decided to release an entire double album of vault tracks.
ya very well put, I haven't even heard most of the vault tracks, that's beyond my level of gaf
If you Venmo Fran from Fran Magazine $35 I will clue you in on the details and evidence for the real Swift conspiracy: that she is a clone of Anton LaVey’s daughter Xeena
I hope this happens... I love having $35
MFA in poetry here 🫡 it's a slant rhyme
molto thankie
love this point you make: "Okay, lol, but I think where something like TTPD feels most disappointing is that it’s alienating to people who wanna just vibe with the music. She’s making everyone do too much work here, and for what? These aren’t really songs, mostly, and if they are, they aren’t new ones."
because yes! that's my biggest gripe with the album -- it feels like i need to be on Taylor Swift Twitter to fully participate or enjoy the songs. as Grace Spelman aptly paraphrased: "music is not a puzzle to be solved" !!! https://twitter.com/GraceSpelman/status/1781487952566378992
like everyone dunks on the Cruel Summer chorus for rhyming Cruel Summer with like ooooh ah ah which - LMAO! I guess - but that song SOUNDS FUN and DOES SLAP and I didn't even realize into two years of listening that she didn't bother to come up with a rhyme for the name of the track itself. & yes - great tweet!
This essay is so brave
I have the brain problem where I can't not enjoy a Taylor album, even when I'm not liking it all that much, so I've been listening to all of the songs, pretending they are about Lionel Messi leaving Barcelona. I don't know if this suggestion will help or harm anyone, but it making me enjoy a lot of them.
Also currently hung up on the lyric about someone looking like a finance guy, since none of them really do!
I guess Joe???? but not really even!!!
as a Taylor Swift Agnostic I really enjoyed reading this!
thank you!
spot-on and feeling validating by your firm declaration as 1989 as her best. Calling him “The Souvenir Part II’s Joe Alwyn” is soooo funny
well it's true!
So insightful and genius, as always ogmg!! I wonder if she's hyper-aware of her ability to encapsulate universal expressions of all-encompassing emotion into hyper-specific glimpses, and has conflated her singular talent with a need to filter all her songs through a lens of "extremely literary, overwritten and overwrought symbolism" when her talent comes from her ability to distill the grand into the tangible, and she's reversed the process that makes her music sing!
thank you so much! I think that gets very close to it - the localization of all that went into this one doesn't really branch outwards, and while specificity is key in any good writing, it feels like either either getting close (and the music itself doesn't sustain) or it's missing the mark entirely
the song is called "you belong with me"
she wears short skirts I wear sneakers
this
HOT TTPD TAKE INCOMING!!! Here I go pearl clutching...
You should not say "...you told Lucy you'd kill yourself if I ever leave/And I had said that to Jack about you so I felt seen..." no matter how much you deconstruct/reflect upon that idea later, when you are every child and teen's role model and people are going to hear it without that context. IMO these are among the only words in the english language with potential to cause genuine harm.
Fight me about Taylor's Responsibility As A Public Figure(TM) below
I won't fight you! I think this is like, her least kids bop adjacent album yet... not to even say that I think it's a mature work, but I have no idea what anyone under 15 gets out of anything here... I get the sense that she rejects these fans and therefore makes music that she assumes they won't get/relate to/listen to (a friend of a friend's teen daughter said she stopped listening partway thru because she got bored) ... I guess I just don't really have any thoughts on what an album should/should not have but it's clear she does not want kids involved in this one.. they're stuck being bejeweled.
i do feel it fits with the "fuck you" interpretation of the work as a whole, to be like "well it wasn't for you to begin with." But moreover i feel that while her young fans can and absolutely still will get into this, ushering in the Gen Z emo era, she is perpetuating language that people of all ages use especially online and I Don't Like It. IYKYK but certain people will hear phrases like this differently from anyone else
Also the line about trying to buy pills after someone has talked about their struggle with sobriety…from heroin if not other substances. I can’t believe T. Allison has me out here defending Matthew but here I am!
I also love that scene in Ladybird. But they're the greatest!!!
she spilled w that one
i never cheated, deleted everyone cuz they made you uncomfortable nuh uh uh baby no - Joe
THIS
i do think charlie puth should be a bigger artist. HOWEVER!! there are a LOT of songs about marriage and domestic bliss on this album (fresh out the slammer, but daddy i love him, title track) that undercut the fuck-you gesture she's trying to make. i could probably get behind this album if it were a more confident fuck you to the fans. (i would definitely read an essay putting this in conversation with recent pop girlie fuck yous: solar power, happier than ever, eternal sunshine...)
that's true... I guess I see But Daddy I Love Him & Fresh out the Slammer as both being like, I can't believe I didn't get married/what if my rebound actually works this time... in general I don't think any of her prison metaphors (lol) have worked since Ready for It? I also wish she did more of a fuck-you... it's like the main thing I like about the new Ariana album.
i may just be insane (very possible) but i felt like only maybe four songs on the album were lore dependent… the title track, so long london… uh i can't remember the other two but they'll come to me. i unfortunately love this album and have been listening to it since it came out even though it's making me Mentally Ill. agreed about the "new aesthetic" line however.
the one song i just don't like and that has grown zero on me is "the alchemy." (to a lesser extent, "cassandra") which is too bad bc i love the opening verse of the alchemy.
I still can't get thru the second half of the album in one fell swoop... I get too bored and walk away... I do like the new album but I do think it's kinda bad/worst in a minute (but I say this as someone who only started reappraising Midnights like 3 months ago so I'm sure I'll have a whole other tune by the end of the summer).
imo both loml, smallest man, alchemy (the worst song on it??), guilty as sin? along with the first two you named (and maybe also Florida!!!) are all kind of lore reliant, maybe, rather than lore dependent... but it's possible I'm just in deeper than I've been in the past
I feel like I am in the bad insane swiftie camp (get personally invested in her relationships in the form of hostility towards all her exes, am still kind of mad she's not dating an eagle, believe I have a mysterious psychic connection with her due to being from pennsylvania) but I don't actually know that much lore comparatively speaking......I do not have the attention span and I know if I really want to know bdm can explain it to me. But I guess I love a lot of the songs on this album not because they give insights into her life although that can be fun but because they feel like they're about MY life. (acquitted on swiftie charges by pleading guilty to 2nd degree narcissism).
I was saying to bdm the other day I feel like even more than the right producer, and much more than almost anyone else in the industry, Taylor could ascend by working with the right editor---her work is so much about the writing. Taylor if you are reading this I'm sorry, I would never presume to tell you whom to date but I do want what's best for you as a writer and I know some very talented people please get in touch. also read kristin lavransdatter and release a country album.
yeah i think that's totally true... it all comes down to like 10 min all too well... did we need TEN MIN ALL TO WELL?? it's totally fine as is...
I wish this one hit for me but I guess the flipside is that I am one of four people who like Lover lol... I think if like 3.5 things were going different in my life right now this album could have really locked into my brain but I just feel a bizarre disengagement from it
sorry in advance to link to A Youtube Video but i enjoyed it on the lore question (he is lukewarm on the album) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06HU_FPrAPY
Down Fran crying at the gym! Now THAT is a great title. “Snubbing Joe Alwyn out of sadness and respect”. That was such a beautiful way to put it Fran, and I agree. If I listen to a new TS output at the start and I love it or I hate it, I usually just have to give it time. Wait for the noise to die down and then revisit it. That’s how I fell in love with Reputation, a few months after it first came out.
I still have songs on each of her albums that I skip, so I like your approach to any artist’s body of work. For Rep, I skip any “revenge” songs and go right to the “falling in love and lust” songs. Folklore and evermore are nice background music (except for when I’m depressed and they make me cry) so I can just put those albums on and let them be. Your newsletter is an island of normalcy that’s most welcome Fran. I saw The First Omen…maybe it’s the end of MY brave era, then listened to the first part of the album alone and basically lost my mind. I was like OH I can relate to feeling like an overgrown circus freak, snarling behind the bars. But alas! I am not rich. And so I must go to my job even when I’m depressed. Most people do. Anyway I’d love to hear a Taylor album or song edited by Fran.