Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department (April 19, 2024) Album • Page 73

This is very true. There were albums released in 2020 I still hold in extremely high regard, and I think it's because of how much time I spent listening to them while exercising since there wasn't much else to do.

 

Started revisiting her older stuff with Fearless and I think I love it even more than ever. Finally connecting with that album is easily the best result of the rerecordings for me so far.

 

Overall this is pretty good but I just wish there was any sign of ambition at all in anything other than than the length of the track list. Especially considering it’s a double album, which usually lets artists take a couple wild swings. Her biggest swings here are just “what if I kind of sounded like Speak Now again?”

 

That's why I'm sooo interested in Debut TV. Because that album is notoriously everyone's least favorite album, and that's mainly because her voice sounds so young and undeveloped. Hearing her matured voice singing those songs, they're gonna get the glow-up they deserve. Hopefully she kinda modernizes the songs a little bit too, while staying true to the originals.

 

The copyright situation is certainly terrible right now, but I remain convinced that the "Deja Vu" credit was more of a calculated marketing decision to associate Taylor's name with Sour than a "cover our asses because it might sound kind of similar" move.

 

It’s above Speak Now and Lover for me, lol, and this bloated thing feels likely to settle below it as well.

But yeah, I’m so eager to hear that TV. I don’t think “I’m Only Me When I’m With You” will work for me because that’s the one most elevated by raw vocals. But, “Cold as You” and “Mary’s Song” are gonna be so, so good.

 

If I made a top 10 of the decade right now, probably seven of them would be 2020 albums for this very reason. I lived off those albums in a way that I hadn't really done with new albums since college.

But they already had a Taylor credit on that album! "1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back" already had the very obvious interpolation of "New Year's Day," which to me seems way more like the calculated decision than "Let's hand off writing credit for this song that sounds nothing like this other song." I really have to assume the "Deja Vu" thing happened because someone in Taylor's camp made some noise.

 

Oh wait, the "1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back" credit is the one I was thinking of. I didn't even realize the "Deja Vu" one got added later and you're almost certainly right about it in that case.

 

Oh yeah, I can't gripe with the "1 Step Forward..." credit. It directly lifts the piano line from "New Year's Day." Well-deserved songwriting credit for Taylor there. "Deja Vu" got added later, because the bridge sounds...maybe a little like the bridge of "Cruel Summer"? I've heard both songs dozens of times and I my bullshit detector still rings out on that one. I just don't hear enough similarity to justify anything resembling a songwriting credit.

 

Olivia did say in an interview “I wanted the bridge to sound like Cruel Summer” which is probably what screwed her

 

Probably, but that is just so, so fucking stupid, and any songwriter with any scruples at all would admit that they've had similar impulses about a hundred bajillion times when writing songs. You hear something that excites you, and you want to make your version. Doesn't mean it's plagiarism, and Taylor of all people should know that. Arguably her greatest diss track is basically built off the idea of "What if this song dragging John Mayer sounded like a John Mayer song?"

 

I love hearing where artists pulled their inspiration from. It sucks so hard that we're creating an ecosystem that says "Don't share any of that stuff, you might get sued!"

 

Also before the credits issue with Deja Vu, Olivia was clearly a Taylor fan and very outspoken about her love for Taylor but after the credits issue Olivia has barely spoken about Taylor and never even attended the Eras Tour. I think that soured (no pun intended) her view of Taylor quite a bit since I think she looked up to Taylor when was first starting out and gaining popularity.

(and people have tried to argue that it could just be Olivia wants to be her own artist and not always compared to Taylor but, as I’ve seen others refute, the switch was SO sudden and SUCH a 180 that it was a bit eyebrow raising)

It sucks that Olivia had to go through that as a relative newcomer in the music business.

 

Yeah, there is absolutely bad blood there (pun 100 percent intended). Remember how many times she sang Taylor Swift lyrics in this video?! To go from that to the current radio silence about all things Taylor...there's just no way it wasn't a contentious situation that led to the "Deja Vu" credit. Zero percent chance.

 

Oh yeah, the stans are convinced that Olivia was given “media training” to stop talking about Taylor so much. That is not what media training is!

 

It paints Taylor in a bad light in this situation (I get the Cruel Summer inspiration to the bridge, but it doesn't feel like an interpolation to me), but also like... owning her art is like her entire brand and main trigger. She probably could've shrugged it off.

I'll always wonder how that Zedd song with Alessia Cara got a pass.

 

I honestly believe something happened *beyond* the credit that we don’t know about

 

To bring it back to this album a bit, the ending of Clara Bow is clearly about Olivia. "The future is dazzling." So it could be something she's trying to fix.

 

I think you mean “shaken it off.”

 

I feel like this is kind of her whole thing though. She's taking her wildly unrelatable life and breaking it down to the entirely normal emotions that she feels. No, I can't relate to getting on stage at football stadiums around the world while I'm going through a break up, but I can relate to having to fake a smile when I really don't want to. I take that song less as her saying she has it harder than anyone else, and more as saying "see even I have to do this, you're not alone"

 

I definitely like this a lotttt more when I'm really focusing on the music. I've been kind of sporadically putting it on the last few days cus I haven't had a chance to do a second cover to cover run through and it's been a lot more enjoyable this way.

 

In college I basically tried to write songs that sounded like the bands I was into (mostly balance and composure and title fight) but I was so bad at guitar/songwriting no one would’ve been able to tell. My true gift.

 

I often wonder how her (and Frank Turner's) career would've evolved in the reality where that collab between them happened on his album

 

Taylor Swift broke the record for weekly vinyl sales in three days

 

Pretty good, not bad, but let's get crazier!!