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Fan Base: Archived: Taylor Swift (#1)
Member Since: 8/26/2011
Posts: 15,572
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Originally posted by thediscomonkey
Someone ask this to Scott pls.  |
They just announced IKYWT as a single and it just went for adds. No way they already picked a single to go after, it'd take away attention for IKYWT
....unless..... 22 is the next country single 
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Member Since: 4/9/2012
Posts: 1,916
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Taylor Swift Breaks Down “Red”
She did it again––and there’s no oops about it. With Red, her fourth album, Taylor Swift notched her third consecutive No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200, selling more than 1.2 million copies––the best since The Eminem Show in 2002––and setting a variety of landmarks: the only female artist to ever sell more than a million first-week albums with two consecutive releases; the highest ever iTunes first-week sales (565,545 copies); the top one-week sales ever by a country artist; and the best single-week sales for Target.
Swift also racked up sales by releasing four tracks, one each week, via iTunes before Red’s release, with each reaching No. 1 in short order. It adds to a tally that includes more than 22 million albums sold worldwide and more than 51 million digital downloads in the US, but the 22-year-old Swift hastens to point out there’s some artistic ch-ching going on here, too. Unlike 2010’s Speak Now, for which Swift wrote everything herself, the distinctively pop-focused Red finds her collaboration with the hit-making likes of Jeff Bhasker, Butch Walker, Max Martin, Shellback and Dan Wilson, as well as previous pal Dann Huff. She also duets with Ed Sheeran on “Everything Has Changed” and Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody on “The Last Time.”
Red is an album whose ambitions are as big as its sales, and Swift––who again filled the set with songs drawn directly from her personal life––is counting on fans to know the material from to back when she returns to the road March 13 for the first North American leg of a planned world tour.
Music Connection: Your album had a huge debut. A great iTunes countdown roll-out of the songs. It’s not foreign for you to come out of the gate this strong, of course. Do you get used to it, or have to fight getting used to it?
Taylor Swift: I never get used to that. I don’t naturally feel like I am entitled to win. I don’t naturally feel like if I put out a song it will go to number one in hours. It’s like I got so used to having to fight to get the song up the charts and having to wait and having to hope that people would hear it, that’s kind of where my mind stayed. And so when we have something like this album, where all the songs that we put out on the iTunes countdown have gone to number one, it is absolutely mind-blowing to me that the fans are that reactive and that they’re that fast and that there are that many of them who are so clued-in. It’s something that I’m never going to get used to. I can’t imagine getting used to it.
MC: The iTunes countdown for the new songs was an interesting way to roll things out. What was it like to watch it happen?
Swift: It’s so exciting to reveal, track by track, songs that are so different from each other and kind of keep people on their toes about what could possibly be coming next.
MC: Red is your fourth album. You’ve been through the big debut, the follow-up to show it was no fluke and then the third one. What does a fourth album mean?
Swift: Actually, the way I kind of categorize them is like the first one came out and some people noticed and we were really lucky and it sold millions of copies, but I hadn’t had anything cross over. So the second album, for me, felt like a breakthrough, and then it felt like the third album was to prove that it wasn’t a fluke.
MC: Which makes this one…?
Swift: This one is for the sake of adventure. I think I try to veer away from whatever comfort zone I developed in making my last record, and for my last record, Speak Now, my comfort zone became writing songs alone. It just became what I fell back on and what I always did and just kind of felt like what I naturally gravitated towards.
This time I wanted to challenge myself as a writer. I wanted to challenge myself as an artist. So I called up a bunch of people that I admired in the songwriting-producing artists world, and I just wanted to see if they would work with me and collaborate. It was such an educational and amazing, adventurous experience being in the studio with people who I had always admired and people who make music that’s different from the kind of music I make, so you have a blending of two worlds.
MC: Did you have a hit list? What was the criteria for the kind of folks you wanted to work with?
Swift: Well, I would come up with an idea and I’d think, “What do I want the production for this to sound like?” and a name would just pop into my head. I’d come up with like a partial idea for a song and I’d think Dan Wilson. Or, “Jeff Bhasker would nail the drums on this.” Or, “Max Martin would kill this.” And I’d bring them those ideas, and that’s kind of how it worked. I had a short list of people that I’ve been admiring for years, not only because of being a fan of what they do but being a fan of their ability to adapt and change. Jack Bhasker produces fun., but he also has done some amazing stuff for Alicia Keys, and it’s all different sounding––the same way that Max really reinvents himself all the time.
MC: Let’s hear about the Swedish adventure with Max and Shellback, since we heard “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” right out of the box. What was it like working with those guys?
Swift: Working with Max and Shellback was such an exhilarating experience as a writer, because they’re so in the moment and they’re so present and they’re so excited, and that’s exactly how I am. So you get us all in a room and it’s just like an immediate green light. We just start writing and we don’t stop and we would write several songs a day. I love to work fast, and I love to work with people who love making music. When there’s that level of excitement in the room it makes me so excited to get up and go in the studio with them the next day. It’s just like, “What are we going to do tomorrow?!”
MC: How early did you nail “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” with them?
Swift: We wrote a few songs before that, and that was the song that we really kind of realized, “We’re on to something here.” And from that point we wrote two other songs that ended up making the record.
MC: Tell me about one of those, “I Knew You Were Trouble.”
Swift: The song is about an experience where I knew that this guy was going to be bad news the first time I saw him, and I had all these red flags pop up and I ignored all of them and I believed him anyway and fell for and ended up brokenhearted like I knew I was going to. But instead of thinking, “Shame on you, you broke my heart,” I actually ended up feeling like “shame on ME, I let you break my heart. I knew you were gonna do that!” You know? It’s kind of an interesting feeling when you realize that you’ve already learned this lesson and you just ignored all of the common sense that you’ve gathered up to this point.
MC: You’ve never been shy about taking care of the guys who done you wrong in song, have you?
Swift: Writing about my life…helps me figure out how I feel about things sometimes. Emotions can be so messy and all over the place, and you can feel so many different emotions about one thing. So when I write a song on how I feel about that certain thing, it becomes simple and I can really process it and I can feel like whatever pain that situation may have brought me in my life was worthwhile and justified because it was supposed to come out in a song.
MC: So what are you going to do when you land “the one,” the one that lasts for a long time? What’s going to happen to the songwriting?
Swift: (laughs) I don’t know. I mean, I think that there’s no emotion that’s simple, not even an everlasting emotion. Not even unconditional love. There are undertones to every emotion. I’ve learned that. I think that one thing I tend to do is go back to a feeling––something I used to feel or something I felt for someone who I don’t know anymore and kind of the sadness of it––and revisit it. At the same time I get inspired by seeing my friends’ relationships. I get inspired by watching movies and thinking, “What kind of soundtrack would this moment have?” So I don’t quite know what will happen if I end up actually reaching the state of general happiness when it comes to love, but I hope that I can draw inspiration from all sorts of places.
MC: You of course write personally. Do you find this time out that you found yourself writing personally in a different way? What do you find in the evolution and the creative growth of mining those emotions and turning them into songs?
Swift: For me what comes a little easier now is the first thing that you get when you get an idea for a song, the first little fragment. It’s like a puzzle piece, right? And you have to then choose where it’s going to go in the grand scheme of the song: “Okay, this idea I just got, is it a pre-chorus? Is it a post hook? Is it a first line?” And I think that what the craft of songwriting teaches you how to do is to take that spurt of inspiration and figure out where that puzzle piece goes and how to build out from it and create the rest of the puzzle to be as interesting as that initial idea.”
MC: How did you wind up with Ed Sheeran on “Everything Has Changed”?
Swift: Ed and I became fast friends as soon as we wrote together. We have very similar processes; we both love to grab a guitar and ad lib, and whatever comes out some of it ends up in the song and you go back and re-evaluate it and look at every lyric and edit it. I really love working with someone who writes in a similar way. And he’s also just really cool to hang out with. My friends and I love him, and he is someone that I’m so honored to have on the record. The song is a duet, so hearing his voice come on my album it feels really special.
MC: He’s a little kooky, though, isn’t he?
Swift: Well…aren’t we all? With him it’s childlike. There’s this kind of childlike energy about Ed, because he’s got such an amazing imagination, and that’s so fun to be around.
MC: What do you consider to be the general tenor of the album? It seems to take you into more of a mainstream pop direction than you’ve gone before.
Swift: The album has 16 songs on it, and to say that it’s eclectic would be pretty dead-on because track-to-track there’s nothing that sounds like anything else on the record. It was definitely an opportunity for me to push the limits and paint with different colors. I try to operate on an emotional basis, which to me meant taking the general emotion I was feeling, writing lyrics that I felt depicted it and choosing production that I felt painted the picture even more.
So if you are dealing with a really chaotic emotion, like “I Knew You Were Trouble,” I wanted it to be a chaotic, intense, emotional sounding song. I wanted it to match the lyric.
MC: Is there anything that felt completely left field to you on Red?
Swift: I think that there are so many influences that I have. I am such a music fan, and that’s why you see me doing collaborations with B.o.B. and then the next month doing a collaboration with the Civil Wars and T-Bone Burnett for The Hunger Games soundtrack. I love getting to be a part of this musical world where it’s possible to learn from people like that or from, say, Max Martin or Dann Huff. I feel like, at 22, I’m still very much a student of music and on my way to where I’m going to end up someday. But along the way it’s really fun to take risks because you look at some careers and you see people make the same album twice, and I never want to do that.
MC: You have a tour coming up in 2013. How are you approaching that?
Swift: I am so excited to see what songs the fans like the most because that’s the first step. We always see which songs are really the passionate songs and the ones the fans are freaking out over the most, and those are the ones that are definitely in the set list. And, of course, you know the tour will be a big representation of this record. But you know it will be really amazing to see which ones jump to the forefront.
MC: You’re mixing up arenas and stadiums again. Do you have a preference?
Swift: Well, I like for it to be big––as big as possible. I just want to be able, in this economy, to make a show that will be entertaining enough to warrant the fans leaving their house, spending their evening with me, parking their car, waiting in line, maybe buy a T-shirt. I want them to be so happy that they decided to spend their time with me––I think that’s my biggest objective. And the element of surprise is still really important in a concert, and showing scenes and images and visuals that are magical. I really like to take people to a different world and change things up constantly, never showing them too much of the same thing too many times in a row.
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http://musicconnection.com/taylor-sw...eaks-down-red/
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Member Since: 8/26/2011
Posts: 15,572
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MC: Red is your fourth album. You’ve been through the big debut, the follow-up to show it was no fluke and then the third one. What does a fourth album mean?
So TS is the big debut, Fearless is the one to show it wasn't a fluke, and they refer to SN as "the third one" 
Poor Peak Now 
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Member Since: 8/5/2012
Posts: 546
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the same way that Max really reinvents himself all the time.
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ROTF. Gurl, please. Don't try to rationalize it as some big experiment, just be like "I needed some ****ing radio hits and Nathan's ratchet production wasn't cutting it on pop"
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Member Since: 8/26/2011
Posts: 15,572
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Why does she say TS didn't crossover? She was big in the mainstream world then. Teardrops says hello. Even if our song or should've said no and others weren't on pop radios I still remember non country fans knowing and loving those songs
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Quote:
Originally posted by Skittles
ROTF. Gurl, please. Don't try to rationalize it as some big experiment, just be like "I needed some ****ing radio hits and Nathan's ratchet production wasn't cutting it on pop"
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Bitch needs to go back to her rockstar self tbh. This "see me playing cute" is not fitting her well. 
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Member Since: 8/5/2012
Posts: 546
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I remember her promoting the hell out of Teardrops on pop because I was pissed off at her for it and the remix sucked so much. And then she played the remix on the Fearless tour. SMH. Amnesia maybe? IDK. That whole part is weird.
I think people love Taylor when she's being Taylor and not because she has crossover hits. Gurl needs someone to let her know this.
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Her Pop Mixes have always been shite. Nothing new. Too bad bitch hasn't learned a thing. And the international version of SN got the ****** mix of "Mine" & TSOU. When I listened to it the first time, I was like, "Bitch, wtf are these?"
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Member Since: 8/26/2011
Posts: 15,572
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Her first album is her masterpiece because she really wasn't trying to please anyone. Being her first album she didn't know how successful it would be so she just made whatever she wanted. Things got messy when se tried to get more mainstream success. I feel like LP1 is 100% Taylor which is why I'll always stand by it.
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Quote:
Originally posted by Ripedie254
Her first album is her masterpiece because she really wasn't trying to please anyone. Being her first album she didn't know how successful it would be so she just made whatever she wanted. Things got messy when se tried to get more mainstream success. I feel like LP1 is 100% Taylor which is why I'll always stand by it.
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The tea has been spilled. 
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Member Since: 8/5/2012
Posts: 546
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The worst pop mix is the one for Our Song.
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Member Since: 8/5/2012
Posts: 546
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Quote:
Originally posted by Ripedie254
Her first album is her masterpiece because she really wasn't trying to please anyone. Being her first album she didn't know how successful it would be so she just made whatever she wanted. Things got messy when se tried to get more mainstream success. I feel like LP1 is 100% Taylor which is why I'll always stand by it.
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Post of the year TBQH.
There's songs on each album that I feel are 100% Taylor, but nothing as a whole as the debut. There's too many outside influences these days and too much pressure to create mainstream hits. Sadly "Taylor Swift the songwriter" is getting lost in "Taylor Swift the star"
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Girl. No. Pop mixes for TOMG, "Mine," and TSOU take the cakes. Not "Our Song," the pop mix for that one is somewhat enjoyable at least.
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Member Since: 8/5/2012
Posts: 546
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The international/pop mix for Our Song isn't bad, but the actual pop mix they played on the radio over here? It's legit the worst thing you will hear. I don't even know if it's available online tbh, it's just SO BAD.
Edit: Yeah I can't find the one they played on the radio. It'll make you CRY. I'll see if I have it on my old computer, but I think if I did all the other songs on there would beat it up and take it's lunch money.
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Member Since: 5/18/2012
Posts: 27,141
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taylor needs to stop doing pop mixes... i mean TOMG pop mix really ruined the song for me... the song makes me cry, not get off my feet and dance!! 
make pop songs and send them to pop radios, but bitch please dont ruin a perfect ballad!!
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Never mind then, Skittles. 
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Member Since: 5/18/2012
Posts: 27,141
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Quote:
Originally posted by Skittles
ROTF. Gurl, please. Don't try to rationalize it as some big experiment, just be like "I needed some ****ing radio hits and Nathan's ratchet production wasn't cutting it on pop"
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why is it so hard to admit for her??? bitch we know you want them pop #1s... 
no one goes to Max Martin for "inspiration"
she needs to take tips from K$ on that one tbh.. 
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Member Since: 12/13/2011
Posts: 26,638
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The Chri$t has delivered this era. Warrior is a great albuM(including the bonus tracks)!
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Member Since: 8/5/2012
Posts: 546
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Well she hasn't sent out a remix since Mine and that was only at the very end of that songs run. Mostly she just needs to stop making pop songs for the sake of making pop songs. Make good music, regardless of the genre and see where it lands, but don't lose yourself by chasing radio hits. Because otherwise you wind up with articles like this, which really marginalizes (or steamrolls) her songwriting cred. :/
http://www.eonline.com/photos/6916/t...of-2012/237005
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Member Since: 11/9/2011
Posts: 12,849
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Quote:
Originally posted by Icannot
The Chri$t has delivered this era. Warrior is a great albuM(including the bonus tracks)!
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She has blessed our lives.
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