Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department (April 19, 2024) Album • Page 72

well that's fun!

 

Honest question...

why?

the only similarity is the concept of getting someone back lol, what in the world?? I don't condone the Deja Vu credit, but that was for musical interpolation, these two songs are musically in different planets. So... you think lyrically?

 

I’m not really being serious here, haha. But really, it isn’t any more of a stretch to say that song (which has the exact same lyrical concept as a very recent song Taylor has 100 percent heard) is plagiarism as it is to say that “Deja Vu” (which has a kinda-maybe-similar cadence to part of a song Olivia had 100 percent heard) is plagiarism. Neither warrant songwriting credit be given out, but it’s so wild that our copyright situation with music has ended up penalizing minuscule musical similarities when lyrical similarities (or even direct lyrical lifts) almost always get a pass.

I am kinda surprised, though, that Taylor put that song out there when someone she has had song similarity issues with in the past wrote a better version of it less than a year ago.

 

I have not yet been able to parlay this relationship into meeting any famous pop stars.

 

I've met some, you're not missing much! Job's a job's a job.

 

That's a really cool family connection you've got!

After seeing Post Malone playing beer pong with Turnstile and Dua Lipa, I know i'd have a great time just chilling with that dude. He seems like one of the most down-to-earth artists in the industry.

 

I am all in on the Post Malone love. Big fan of his work, but he really does just seem like the sweetest man.

 

if Post is ever looking to sell his One Ring MTG card, my partner would be interested, lmao

 

As non-essential as the first album is, it’s way better than the second, which I struggled to make it through

there’s like five or six songs that I ever need to hear again on this entire project. Oh well

 

I just played Fortnight for my wife and kids and none of them were impressed - they ignored it and then told me to shut off the bad song

fools, all of them

 

Time to go out for cigarettes

 

I feel like people act like Reputation was her "misstep" (if you feel like she's even had one because obviously every release she's ever had has been successful) but imo her misstep was Lover and if the pandemic hadn't have happened and she kept going in the vein of Lover instead of folklore I don't think she'd be at this level now. Acknowledging that this is wild speculation cause obv nobody knows what she'd have done if covid didn't happen but I'm bored so I'm thinking about it

 

I was thinking about that too, Lover definitely saw a “dip” in overall interest of her. I even think if we went lover to Midnights and then this we’d be having a very different discussion about Taylor

 

Agree with this and think it’s an interesting discussion. Also regularly think about what Lover “Fest” would’ve been like.

Its funny, because that was only going to happen in Mass and LA and yet I remember it being easier to get great tickets for than both Rep and 1989.

 

it's funny how a flop for Taylor would be a huge success for anyone else haha, but yeah I do think not getting a number one from that album before Swifties bullied her to make Cruel Summer a single and getting rid of spelling is fun broke her a bit

 

Yeah if what proceeded Reputation caused her to suffer so much anguish I have no idea how she'd react if she ever actually flopped or was "cancelled." If sis had a flop album like a Christina Bionic moment or an actual career impacted controversial moment like Janet after the superbowl or sinead after snl she'd never recover. The fact that she views herself as someone who was canceled and overcame it or like an underdog despite the fact that her star never dimmed for a second is fascinating. And I don't think we'll ever find out what would happen if she truly flopped because I don't see her having a complete flop like that. She's already a legacy act at this point. Even if she's not always number 1 I feel like she'll have a gradual respectable decline where she's still getting critical acclaim even if she's not the "it" popstar. She's very in touch and grounded with what people's perception is and how to navigate her career.

Even "I can do it with a broken heart" is interesting to me. like yeah sis we all do. People deal with the cops and doctors after a domestically violent situation or a death in the family and go into their minimum wage jobs the next day cause they get no PTO and it's what you have to do. Obv it's a unique perspective to do it so publicly. I know she's not comparing what she does to what the average joe has to do and if anything we can all relate to having to go to work as we're dying inside. It's just interesting to me to see how she balances fame and how surreal her entire life is while maintaining a relatable image and perspective in her music.

 

If we went Lover -> Midnights -> The Tortured Poets Department I think she would be in the same position she was in during the Lover era, perhaps even less popular. Not that her career was dying or anything, but folklore and evermore really did “revive” her career.

 

And for good reason. Unfortunately, with hindsight the covid albums are the clear outlier in the last seven years

 

Releasing two of your best albums in 6 months will do that.

It is so much more enjoyable to just listen to the still long but digestible 16-track version and pretend the 31-track version doesn’t exist. “But Daddy I Love Him” is hitting. “Clara Bow” belongs in her closers catalog, which is saying something because girl can write a closer.

 

Six Songs We're Listening To This Week Because We've Been Banned From Listening to the New Taylor Swift Album (thehardtimes.net)

 

the one-two punch of "Robin" then "The Manuscript" is absolutely incredible and I think criminally overlooked because of where they happen to be sitting
(at the very end of a 2 HOUR AND 2 MINUTE ALBUM!?!!)

 

The interesting thing about her meteoric rise over the pandemic is that a lot of artists during that time were delaying albums and tentative about how to approach it. I remember thinking that was a wild choice, because it seemed so obvious that people needed things to comfort them and that the music released during 2020, especially, was going to be something a lot of people bonded with in a really unique way. Taylor read the moment and delivered not one but two albums that people tag with the “got me through COVID” thing, and it earned her so, so much good will.

It really wasn’t just those two albums, though. It was also going into battle against Scooter Braun and her old label. The TV albums have maybe gotten a little annoying as more of them have come out, but the first two were really novel and smart narrative work, and positioned her (somehow) as an underdog again. The Red re-release is actually probably the moment that she re-claimed the crown — in part because Red just has a special place in her catalog, in part because the vault ruled, and in part because it was fun to just make memes of the Jake Gyllenhaal drama for a few days and pretend like it was 2012 again. “All Too Well 10,” despite my distaste for it, didn’t hurt. (It also probably didn’t hurt that the artist who had always outsold Taylor, Adele, dropped an album around the same time that mostly whiffed.)

All of that primed the engine for the Eras Tour, which is obviously when the “Is this the biggest any artist has ever been?” conversation starts.

All to say, a lot of artists did not navigate the pandemic years well, but Taylor used them to reclaim all the ground she’d lost and then some. You can say that she wouldn’t be as big if she’d gone Lover-Midnights-this, but I don’t think she’d be as big had it not been for COVID, regardless of what order the albums had gone in.

 

Being unable to tour like 3 albums worth of material and also not touring for how many years? 5/6? It created a legion of fans that had never seen her live, and in turn unprecedented demand.