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Discussion: Taylor Swift - 'RED' | Metascore: 77/100
Member Since: 11/29/2010
Posts: 19,664
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DEAD@ A.V Club Score. Never ever would have expected that. 
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Member Since: 11/29/2010
Posts: 19,664
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AP.net got counted. Surprising.  Thank God Jason Tate did not try this. 
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Originally posted by RobynYoBank
It looks like NME may not bother reviewing it despite advertising her album all over their news stories for a week.  |
Only read one article where they mentioned Red. Idk about the rest. 
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Originally posted by JakeKills
Hopefully it will be a bit more fair and objective.  |
Girl, Sowing is a Taylor stan.  But the other staffs gave it a 3 to 3.5 tho. No worries.
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Originally posted by Great Username
Am living for all the "22x Platinum" praise and "The Last Crime" shade in these reviews, poor discomonkey.
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I hate you. 
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Member Since: 11/29/2010
Posts: 19,664
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Wow. I never realized that westernherald review was done by AP.net dude as well.
They really go hard for her. 
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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AP.net has been more accepting to Her. It was like living in hell stanning for Taylor there circa 2008. 
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Member Since: 3/19/2012
Posts: 5,155
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Quote:
Originally posted by Great Username
Am living for all the "22x Platinum" praise and "The Last Crime" shade in these reviews, poor discomonkey.
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Oh, so funny
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Member Since: 11/29/2010
Posts: 19,664
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Quote:
Originally posted by thediscomonkey
AP.net has been more accepting to Her. It was like living in hell stanning for Taylor there circa 2008. |
Yeah, i know.  I remember Taylor covered Jimmy Eat World back in the day. They all flipped.  Band is not even punk smh.
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Member Since: 12/5/2009
Posts: 9,974
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Sputnikmusik tried, but the score still unharmed. Her power.
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Quote:
We Will Rock You Bonus Edition: Taylor Swift’s “Red” is Really ****ing Great
by Jon Hunt
There have been a lot of articles written about Taylor Swift’s new album, Red. We’ve discussed her personal life – which famous people she’s dating, who she broke up with, and how, and when. We’ve discussed her skin color – she’s white, by the way – and her looks – she’s pretty in a kind of regular-girl sort of way, we’ve found out; not gorgeous or ****ty but kind of plainly, school-council pretty. We’ve discussed her fame, her fortune, the fact that she sells bucketloads of ****ing albums to teenage girls (mostly, though boys must listen to her too, given the sales numbers) across the country. There’s been all kinds of hand-wringing about how this album’s her pop try, as if the distinctions between pop and pop country actually exist anymore in 2012, or matter (they don’t, by the way, but if we keep repeating it enough, maybe they will again). And we’ve talked about the confessional nature of her lyrics – how the aforementioned famous people feature in her songs, and what they think of it, and whether it’s a good idea or not a good idea for her to be writing about the famous people she dates. Oh, and of course whether pop music as a concept is any good at all, and whether we should even be discussing this pretty, famous, rich, hot-selling pop star in the first place, or whether we should, maybe, be devoting her column inches to indie artists who matter more.
All topics that stand perpendicular, at best, to the actual contents of the album in question (and all topics you wouldn’t bring up with male pop stars, I posit – even ones, like Dave Navarro or Gene Simmons who are on actual reality television shows and whose life is/was literally splayed out in front of you, but that’s not even the point). What never gets talked about – except obliquely, and almost apologetically where it does happen – is whether Red is any damn good as an album, and whether Taylor Swift is any kind of great songwriter or not. We’re sorry we have to bring it up, the articles read, but if you must know, this is disposable pop, no more no less, song doctored within an inch of its life, and not really worthy of your time. Let’s return to discussing her dating habits and whether or not she’s pretty or not, and further down the page is a review of the new Animal Collective record, if you’d care to consider it.
This whole god-damn mess is almost tangential to a larger topic in music these days, and that is: what makes a song good anymore? Time was, critics had many different weights they applied to different types of music; a series of critical measures designed to judge an album or a song’s worth based on a number of different factors. Is the song catchy? Does the song fulfil its function? How does the song sit within its genre, and how does it sit within the framework of rock as a whole? Is the thing pretentious, or phony, or ugly in some way, good or bad? Is there honesty? Or if not honesty, is the shellacked phoniness at least interesting, as with the music of Phil Spector? Can you dance to the damn thing? Would you want to dance to the damn thing at all, or would you want to sit around and listen with your headphones on, stoned out of your gourd and watching your navel retreat into itself?
In other words, depending on the genre of music in question – radio pop (a la the early Beatles, the Ronettes, the Beach Boys), soul music (the Motown artists, the Stax artists), psychedelic music (the Airplane, the Pink Floyd), jazz music (whoever), punk, funk, R&B, dance music, disco, etc. – you would apply a different series of weights and measures to the stuff to decide whether it had worth as a song or an album. There wasn’t really narrowcasting, at least critically speaking – the early rock crits considered everything equally (or mostly did, at least the good ones), and while some stuff was found to be ********, some stuff that is now considered to be ******** was considered to be good. And so it was, for a goodly amount of time. Through the ’80s, in fact, for the most part.
At some point, that all went out the god-damn window, and I’m not even sure when it happened, or how. I know it had something to do with the death of pop radio and the birth of Clear Channel’s narrowcasting. Suddenly, nobody was listening to all types of music as they were from the ’60s through the ’80s. You found yourself pushed into a corner – over here, Alternative Rock Fan, we have a channel for you that plays only Alternative Rock Music. No longer will you have to suffer through Michael Jackson or Madonna any more (Were you suffering? Were you honestly suffering? Christ knows I wasn’t). Now we have only the genre you like, available to you 24/7, with no need to branch out any longer. Suddenly, people were, increasingly, fans of one type of music only. And if you pressed them, they’d tell you: the other **** out there? That **** is ********, man. Pure ********.
And as indie music became more and more oblique and idiosyncratic across the ’90s and the ’00s and now the ’10s, another thought began to ring out loud and clear: hooks are bad. I read a review the other day for a record which shall remain nameless in an online indie-rock publication (which shall also remain nameless) which said, and I paraphrase: “This record is better than their last record, because this record doesn’t rely on cheap tricks, like hooks, to get the point across.” Let us consider this phrase for a second, because it is monumental: cheap tricks, like hooks. The writer is saying that hooks – the very foundation of rock music from the moment of its inception, the very god-damn thing that made rock music stand out from the improvised firmament of jazz – are now bad. A cheap trick, in fact. And why?
Because pop music itself is bad. Because we all know, after twenty-some years of narrowcasted radio, that non-mainstream rock is the sine qua non of modern music, and major label radio pop – hook laden! made by pretty people! manufactured! produced within an inch of its life! – is disposable garbage. Never mind, by the way, that the music in the ’60s that we know and love – think Phil Spector, think The Ronettes; ****, think the god-damn Beatles, who were so ridiculed by R&B and jazz fans in the early ’60s that they were basically their era’s One Direction! – was just as manufactured, just as hook-laden*, just as, often, crassly constructed to appeal to a Teen Demographic as the music nowadays. No – it has been arbitrarily decided by the rock cognoscenti, many of whom aren’t even old enough to remember when **** was different, when radio was a kind of salvation, that hooks are bad, that p0p music itself is bad, and that music which contains hooks or is popular or mainstream cannot, must not, be as good as music not created by the mainstream.
And knowing that, they listen to this music – like Taylor Swift’s new record Red, which is why we’re here — with the foreknowledge that it is going to be garbage. And then they pen reviews like the aforementioned which talk about her hair and her lips and how pretty she is/isn’t and don’t even talk about her music at all because they know full well that it could never possibly be any damn good anyway, and why bother?
But that’s the thing. Taylor Swift’s new record is good. It’s very good. In fact, I’d posit it is, if not the best record of the year, certainly one of the best. It is chock full, from top to bottom, of some of the most hook-laden music this side of the ’60s (which was really the home of the stuff, though that’s changing). Every song possesses at least one – sometimes two or three – really strong hooks. There are at least four, maybe five, gigantic hit singles on this thing. It’s the kind of record – like Michael Jackson’s Thriller, or several Beatles records I could name you – which is really an embarrassment of riches; so heavily laden with brilliant, sparkling radio pop that it almost collapses under the weight of them (but, miraculously, doesn’t).
Furthermore, it shows songwriting growth, which is something I find really interesting. Look. 90% of the time, you don’t get to see pop artists grow. What happens is that they get really staggeringly popular really fast, and then either a) they fall out of favor so quickly, you never get to witness their evolution, or b) they are forced to not evolve by a music industry which prizes sameness over all, or c) they try to evolve, and evolve themselves right out of their audience of teenage music fans who, by then, have moved onto something else entirely. I think the last time we saw a pop artist evolve, for good or for ill, was Michael Jackson in the ’80s, and before him, maybe the Beatles or the Beach Boys. The notion was: they sold so many god-damn records that they had the power to basically do whatever the **** they wanted. And the “whatever the **** the wanted” wasn’t just an uncommercial maturity grab, it was also, perhaps tangentially, a gigantic smash hit. That doesn’t happen real often. That’s basically three sets of variables which have to be true for that to work, and this album, weirdly, has that. It is a lot more mature in terms of songwriting than her last one, which was more mature than the one before. Progression. This ain’t her Pet Sounds or her Sgt. Pepper, really, but it might be her Hard Days Night or her Summer Days, Summer Nights, both albums delightfully full of maturity and hit singles. Pop records to be sure, though. Pure pop.
And what pop! Red contains, amongst its riches, five or six of the best songs of the entire year. Album opener “State of Grace” keeps getting compared to U2 by people who doesn’t listen to music, but what it really sounds like is Rock and Roll-era Ryan Adams (in fact, there are several songs on here that would sit comfortably on Ryan’s albums, or that he’d kill for), all throb and pulse and epic sweep. “Red” is, as I’ve mentioned before, a perfect song with a magnificent chorus (likening emotions to colors – someone needs to ask Taylor if she’s synaesthetic). “22,” my favorite song on the entire album, is one of three Max Martin collaborations and perfectly encapsulates the glee of being young and free and confused within three glorious pop minutes (and isn’t that kind of the purpose of rock and roll if you think about it? At least in its purest form?). I’ve already gone on record as saying “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” is the second-best single of the year (after “Call Me Maybe” – sorry, Taylor!), a piece of pop confection so gloriously catchy I defy you to pry it out of your head after you’ve heard it once or twice. And “Starlight,” buried ignominiously near the end of the album, is the great lost single of the LP, a delicious chorus hung on a propulsive guitar and a feeling of pure bliss.
Not to say the rest of the songs – heatbreak songs, mostly, and gorgeous ones they are – are remotely shabby in comparison. I love the “ah, **** it” vibe of “Treacherous,” the most Ryan Adams-ish song here (though frankly, he’d kill for a focused lyric like this). I love “I Almost Do,” too, a beautiful weeper about being unable to let go of somebody (and we’ve all been there, eh?). I hate Snow Patrol (passionately) but I love her duet with Gary Lightbody, “The Last Time” – his adenoidal falsetto quiver matches her pure alto perfectly. “Sad, Beautiful, Tragic” sounds like nothing so much as “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star (minus the heroin sluggishness, for good or for ill). And the gorgeous, winsome album closer “Begin Again” offers hope and redemption after an album of tragedy, breakup and lost love. Honestly, Red only ever falls short once or twice – the fluffy “Stay Stay Stay” could have probably been skipped over, and I don’t love “I Knew You Were Trouble” as much as the other great singles here (though the world disagrees – it’s already a top ten hit). And that’s pretty good odds for a top ten album, you know?
And what of Taylor’s lyrics? Far too often I’ve heard that they’re “shallow” or “simplistic.” That Taylor writes about one thing, really: herself, and her relationships, that it’s something to lament for some reason despite the fact that it’s always been okay for non-pop songwriters (and, again, male songwriters – sorry, I calls ‘em as I see ‘em) to do the same exact ****ing thing (again, I’m looking at you, Ryan Adams, one of the most delightfully self-absorbed writers in the history of ever – and does he get accused of writing about himself only in the context of the girls he’s dated? No. He doesn’t). First off, let’s address “simplistic.” I know Taylor has, in the past, relied on cliche (goofy fairy tale metaphor, parallel construction like “she does this, while I do this,” etc). But here? Oh sure, occasionally, she falls back on easy, but delicious lines and great turns of phrase abound that point to a larger, evolving talent. From “State of Grace,” I love “You come around and the armor falls, pierce the room like a cannonball” and “just twin fire suns, four blue eyes” and “you were never a saint, and I love the shades of wrong.” I love, from “Treacherous,” “I’ll do anything you say if you say it with your hands.” I love “22″‘s “we’re happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time, it’s miserable and magical” – a better summation of being that age I cannot think of. And “Begin Again” is just flat out great, with lines like “thinking all love ever does is break and burn and end, but on a Wednesday in a cafe I watched it begin again.” And in terms of topic – **** it, you write what you know. And you know why Taylor’s hit big with young girls? Because this is the **** they (and you – come on, admit it, you do, or you’re not human) think about. All the time. It is, to paraphrase Mike Love, **** everybody can relate to. Which — why is that bad?
And let me address for a moment, if I may, the Max Martin Issue. Much has been made of Taylor’s Pop Move, which (basically) involves three songs here which are co-written and produced by “song doctor” (read: producer/songwriter) Max Martin, the man behind two billion number one hits including “Oops, I Did It Again,” “Since U Been Gone,” and Katy Perry’s latest spate of hits (“California Gurls,” “Teenage Dream,” et al). First off: I love Max Martin. Unapologetically. I’ve called him the Phil Spector of the modern era, and I think that’s fair for several reasons – for one, he’s a great damn producer, and knows exactly what plays on the radio and how to engineer **** to perfectly sit in the top ten and stay there and for another, he’s a magnificent song-tweaker, usually working with songwriters and honing their songs to pure perfection. Both roles that Spector played in the ’60s, and things we (rightly) canonize him for. But what he’s doing is adding pop sheen. And pop sheen isn’t what people (read: critics and over-serious music fans) want from Taylor, or from anybody. As mentioned before: pop. bad. Which is a god-damn shame, really, as Martin’s collabs here (well, two of ‘em anyway) are my favorite songs on the album, because the hooks in question are completely indelible and the pop production – yes, quite sheeny! – is magnificent, perfectly engineered, gloriously constructed, just like Spector’s songs were in the ’60s (but throbbing electro-drums and autotune aren’t as hip as cavernous echo – why?). Maybe it just works on me because I let it work on me, you know? Like being a willing subject to hypnotism. A shill, maybe. But **** it – that’s part of what being a music listener is about, being willing to be tricked, fooled, cajoled, caressed by a song and its “cheap tricks.” You know?
Plus: remember when the Beatles** “went psychedelic?” Do you think the Beatles were the first guys to do that? They were certainly not. They were absorbing and spitting out the influences of the day, the **** they were listening to in their spare time, into their own tunes. That’s what Taylor is doing here. She’s listening to, you know, indie rock, and Ryan Adams records (probably) and radio pop produced by Max Martin and whatever else and then spitting it back out into her own ****. It’s not crass so much as it’s just what songwriters do, or should do. When people say pop music sounds dated, I say “well, good – that means it was gloriously of its time rather than just kind of generic.” That’s not a bad thing. That’s the stuff we use as tentpoles in our own life, the music of various eras – their dated-ness helps attach them to time periods in our own lives and attaches meaning to them as well. So if Taylor’s three Max Martin songs sound “dated” in five years, which they might – **** it, good. We’ll indelibly remember “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” as part and parcel of 2012 forever.
The last point I’m going to make is one that people make whenever I defend popular **** (which, apparently, I do a lot – there’s a reason for that, though, and that’s that it galls me when people look at pop music like it’s garbage): Why do we care, though, when there’s plenty of unsung music out there which deserves out attention more?
We care for one reason, and one reason only: because it’s good. Because, as listeners, we should gravitate towards good wherever we find it, whether that means the indiest indie record recorded in somebody’s bedroom or the absolute toppermost of the poppermost. And believe me: Red is very, very good.
*At one point, we assigned great credit to writers who were able to write hooky pop songs. Think about the Brill Building folks like Carole King or Jeff Barry, or the songwriting stable at Motown. This used to be seen as a skill rather than something to be fled from.
**I keep mentioning the Beatles, I know. The reason is that the Beatles were a pop music group. They were hugely popular and their early stuff, which is quite damn revered, and rightly so, was absolutely shallow pop just like the other shallow pop people bitch about (c’mon, “She loves you, yeah yeah yeah?” You’d complain if that lyric was on a One Direction album) and their evolution into artistes was very public and easily trackable and easy to draw parallels with. I’m not (necessarily) saying Taylor Swift is as good as the Beatles (it’s too early to say, dammit, she’s 22 and she’s only made a few records). I’m just drawing easy pop parallels. Dig?
http://www.letoilemagazine.com/2012/...****ing-great/
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Long read, but a well-written article.
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Member Since: 9/16/2011
Posts: 50,981
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Quote:
Originally posted by thediscomonkey
Long read, but a well-written article.
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Ooh. I like him. He can sit with us. 
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Member Since: 12/19/2009
Posts: 10,504
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Quote:
Originally posted by thediscomonkey
Long read, but a well-written article.
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Someone else comparing her to the Beatles I see 
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Quote:
Originally posted by JakeKills
Ooh. I like him. He can sit with us. |
Quote:
Originally posted by CountryFriedChick
Someone else comparing her to the Beatles I see |
The uninformed kids & delusional Beatles worshiper are preparing their rebuttal as we're speaking.
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Member Since: 3/3/2011
Posts: 23,567
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Quote:
Originally posted by thediscomonkey
The uninformed kids & delusional Beatles worshiper are preparing their rebuttal as we're speaking. |
I'll give them a break since they said "early" '60s, but had they just said The Beatles were the One Direction of their time, I would've come screaming. Kworb likes to pretend they weren't acclaimed while active.
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Quote:
Originally posted by RobynYoBank
I'll give them a break since they said "early" '60s, but had they just said The Beatles were the One Direction of their time, I would've come screaming. Kworb likes to pretend they weren't acclaimed while active.
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One Direction are closer to The Monkees instead of Beatles.  I'm not really big on Beatles, but one just got to admit that. 
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Member Since: 3/3/2011
Posts: 23,567
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Quote:
Originally posted by thediscomonkey
One Direction are closer to The Monkees instead of Beatles. I'm not really big on Beatles, but one just got to admit that. |
Some haters like to pretend they were an unacclaimed, embarrassment of a boy band throughout the '60s, unfairly loved by history. But find me another album that received critical acclaim like this upon release:
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Sgt. Pepper's is a decisive moment in the history of Western civilisation
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and 40 years later:
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Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time.
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Sorry for getting off-topic.
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Member Since: 12/19/2009
Posts: 10,504
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Quote:
Originally posted by thediscomonkey
One Direction are closer to The Monkees instead of Beatles. I'm not really big on Beatles, but one just got to admit that. |
I don't like the Beatles either but they were respected more than any other act so to hear people compare Tay to them is good
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Quote:
Originally posted by RobynYoBank
Some haters like to pretend they were an unacclaimed, embarrassment of a boy band throughout the '60s, unfairly loved by history. But find me another album that received critical acclaim like this upon release:
and 40 years later:
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Sorry for getting off-topic. |
That's fine. Completely un-related to Taylor but, Here's a good read for you btw. Seriously if people want to drag boy-band, they should drag Monkees and DC5, not Beatles.
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Originally posted by CountryFriedChick
I don't like the Beatles either but they were respected more than any other act so to hear people compare Tay to them is good |
It truly is an honour. Even tho they are comparing her to Beatles' early days (which were mostly total crap). Still, it's ****ing Beatles ffs.
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Member Since: 12/19/2009
Posts: 10,504
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Quote:
Originally posted by thediscomonkey
That's fine. Completely un-related to Taylor but, Here's a good read for you btw. Seriously if people want to drag boy-band, they should drag Monkees and DC5, not Beatles.
It truly is an honour. Even tho they are comparing her to Beatles' early days (which were mostly total crap). Still, it's ****ing Beatles ffs. |
 I just glanced over it the 1st time I love the Pet sounds love though 
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Member Since: 3/21/2012
Posts: 55,134
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Red is one higher than Rated R go T.Swift on this masterpiece of an alburm
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Member Since: 11/29/2010
Posts: 19,664
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