Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department (April 19, 2024) Album • Page 64

I brought it up at one point, by calling Taylor’s song “we have ‘get him back!’ at home” (lyrically), lol. Which might be unfair, but it’s how I felt when I got to it.

 

Annie is one of the few musicians who pushes him. But she also moved away.

 

As for “All Too Well (10-min version),” I’m personally a big fan. But I also am a proud defender of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which it was compared to, lol.

As much as I believe in “kill your darlings” and in some ways have more respect for tighter, more focused work… sporadic bits of indulgence are super appealing to me. Sometimes an artist (and/or entertainer, whatever) has to get carried away, y’know? And the stream-of-consciousness delivery of “All Too Well” makes it perfect for that. The original is maybe stronger, but stretching it out with more rambling lines (that sometimes rule) works for me.

I definitely think the indulgent angle works… significantly less well here. If someone had taken the best 10, or idk maybe 13 or whatever, songs here and sequenced them into a proper album, I’d probably think it was pretty good, albeit “safe.” As is, it almost feels like homework finding the tracks I actually care about (as more than Swiftie muzak) here.

 

I have I Can Fix Him stuck in my head now because Tik Tok showed me like four videos of that hook over different montages of Matty Healy dancing

 

I think maybe my biggest frustration with this album is that it feels like her going back to Dessner again, and not really finding anything new there, cheapens folklore and evermore a little bit. Those albums were so special to me in the moment for a lot of reasons, and they're both near the top of my Taylor rankings. But part of what I really loved about them was that they stood alone as this kind of pandemic-era island in her catalog. I know some people already think evermore cheapened folklore, but I never bought into the narrative that that album was a retread or folklore b-sides. Those two albums feel so distinct to me: folklore the bleary-eyed snapshot of a summer that never was, evermore the worn-down wintertime bummer that is (still, even after this new album) the saddest record Taylor has ever made.

But disc 2 mostly feels like a retread of those two albums to me, at least so far. Maybe I'll find the magic there with more listens, but it's eluding me so far. It's all perfectly nice and pretty, but it's not grabbing me. It reminds me a little bit of when Beck made Morning Phase, a perfectly nice and pretty retread of Sea Change that was also drastically inferior and kind of sapped the original of its novelty.

 

I for one don't think I could ever recover from the devastating blow to my ego that would occur if I dated someone for a couple weeks and they went on to write dozens of songs about me, especially if I was a deeply self obsessed musician

 

one thing i wondered was the extent of Dessner's collaboration here, in the sense that a good number of songs from folklore and evermore had already been written musically, and Taylor just added vocals and lyrics to them. maybe that's somewhat the case here, but i'm assuming they wrote together this time. wonder what that says about the effectiveness of them working together at the same time vs. separately.

 

Name drop Absolutepunk next Taylor.

 

There are definitely still a few songs here that have a "Dessner wrote a loop and sent the music to Taylor" feel, but I think you're probably right that it was a different kind of collaboration. If she was going to keep both Aaron and Jack around, I wish they'd done more stuff all three of them together. "But Daddy I Love Him" is kind of the perfect combination of "Taylor with Aaron" and "Taylor with Jack."

 

I can't believe a Chris Carrabba co-write/feature hasn't happened yet.

 

…and this is why that album hovers around #2 in my Taylor rankings, lol.

“November-into-December sad bitch vibes” is so incredibly me.

 

“a chorus of posters tracking my flights”

 

It’s somewhere in that 2-4 range for me, with its ranking always a little higher around the holidays.

 

Evermore never fully clicked with me as an album. The title track is a contention for my favourite song she's ever done though.

 

No Body, No Crime is one of my favs

 

That might be my least favorite Taylor song

 

big evermore fan personally

 

Honestly, if I'm being honest, Evermore is a great album (imo)

 

"Evermore (Live in Cincinnati)" is one of her single best vocal performances ever. Dare I say the song would've been better without Bon Iver?

 

Evermore is my favorite Taylor album.

 

Yup. Evermore is in a different stratosphere to me. Cowboy Like Me played at my wedding.

With that said, I am really struggling with disc 2. Wish she kept it as is, cause I vibe more with the first half. It’s like much better Midnights, which is great for me, because Midnights will always remain a blind spot in her discography for me. Just don’t like it.

 

not trying to put anyone down here, but out of all the acts Jack produced for she is probably the most musically gifted and innovative.

 

Clara Bow is great. Seems like it’s a music industry / rising star cynical commentary

 

truly. Maybe her most mature work

 

just listened to the deluxe (only listened to black dog before). i actually think there’s a lot of great stuff here it just could have benefited from being trimmed to only the best songs…some of these feel like sketches for the same song and she should have just chosen the best one!