Member Since: 10/31/2011
Posts: 16,937
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The thing that's struck me, is how Red has a wonderful reverence running through it: that love may 'break and burn and end', but the moments of love experienced are the 'worthwhile fight', which feels like a more mature perspective from Taylor, who has been more caught up in the extremes of the experience itself than that hindsight appreciation. In State of Grace, and also Holy Ground, you get the same sense of reflection and captured glimpses of the past as many of her other songs (and Lex's interview is great for drawing that out, her intent to capture those fragments in a single song), but while, say, Forever and Always, and Dear John, are very pointed in the specific memory--they're designed as a message, and fuelled by regret and bitterness, and seem concerned with conveying that damage to the man in question--the songs on Red have a much more graceful appreciation of the memory passed, and love shared. Holy Ground is so lovely with the 'hooray' refrain kicking in, and even though we learn this is another failed relationship -- "I guess we fell apart in the usual way" -- there's a gentle nostalgia and sense of joyfulness driving it with those drums instead of acrimony.
All Too Well is my obsession right now, because it's a Dear John (Dear Jake?), but feels directed inwards, rather than to him. It manages to capture that sense of looking back, and having nothing but glimpses of something that is gone so completely, you have to remind yourself it existed at all. "Wind in my hair/I was there/I remember it/All too well," is as much a reassurance for herself as anyone else. I love how her trademark reversal of POV comes in at the end, with the scarf, and still feels like a surprise even after 3 albums-worth of this trope, and it's just such a satisfying narrative closer, it really hits the way Dear John did, with that final 'I took your matches/ before fire could catch us/so don't look now', but here we have 'It reminds you of innocence/and smells like me/ You can't get rid of it/ because you remember all too well'. And of course, that crushing line 'You call me up again/ just to break me like a promise' which is so typically Taylor and succinct, it cuts through just the way 'you made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter' managed to pack a lifetime of relationships into a single line.
Treacherous is the one growing on me fastest, because of the quiet intimacy to it, and the late surge 'get you alone/follow you home' section. "Nothing safe is worth the drive". It really is one of her more intimate/sexual songs, not just with the 'say it with your hands', but the sense of hesitance and decision that comes -- cycling through 'this path is dangerous/but I, I, I like it' to 'I will get you alone' to 'this hope is treacherous' like following an impulse through the late night to the morning after.
I Knew You Were Trouble is a beast, of course; 22 charming, Starlight too, Red requires me to get over the Masarati reference which is about as un-Taylor as a ref to drop as you can get. Begin Again is a wonderfully optimistic note to end on, and I much prefer The Last Time as a Snow Patrol song that happens to have Taylor on it vs the Ed Sheeran one...
But on the Ed note, I do like how Everything Has Changed has that turn on a dime sentiment that comes up again in some of the other songs -- State of Grace's 'I never saw you coming/ and I'll never be the same', Holy Ground's 'took off fast/like a green light, go', and Everything Has Changed with 'I know something now/ something I didn't before' and 'All I know is a newfound grace/ all my days I'll know your face'. It's that wonderful concept of this person -- this person! -- arriving in your life, and it being the start of something irrevocable, the before and after of a meaningful presence, and how those beginnings seem almost miraculous in the simplicity of their change.
So, yes, fall = love of a new Taylor album is right on schedule.
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SUCH A FLAWLESS BIBLE.
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D
(i thought Taylor's part is auto tuned)
