Listening to albums is too much of a chore

[koganbot]

Quote of the day, from skyecaptain:

Why on earth won't someone who wants to talk about Taylor Swift's "image" please listen to her album fucking ONCE before they write things about her? PLEASE.

Have only read some of the essays, but of the ones I read Chuck's was the only one I understood.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Here's the offending passage I was referring to, may actually write a post about this:

Actual schoolgirl innocence was bliss for Taylor Swift, the red-state sweetheart made all the more innocent by Kanye West's interrupting-cow bit at the MTV Video Music Awards (triggered when Taylor beat out Beyoncé for a statue, and overshadowing Gaga's own bloody theatrics). Straight from the school of Mad Men's Peggy Olson, Swift commands attention through virtuosity, not sexuality, her teen rebellion cloaked in giddy couplets. By casting herself as Juliet in the blissful "Love Story," she reduces a Shakespearean tragedy to a dreamy, doe-eyed lunchroom crush: "Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone/I'll be waiting, all that's left to do is run/You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess."

Does she know what she's doing? Not really. At just 20, she's merely playing to her strengths. But Swift, like Peggy, is increasingly aware of her power. She certainly owns the coyness, as was evident during her Saturday Night Live opening monologue, wherein she (adorably) sang, "I like writing songs about douchebags who cheat on me" and referenced "that guy, Joe [Jonas, you'll recall], who broke up with me on the phone," offering a quick shout-out: "Hey, Joe, I'm doing real well." It's true, Joe. Swift had a great year, the alpha female in sales and accolades, if not aggression.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The thing about "Love Story" is that Taylor does know what she's doing - I assume from the smarts and precision she generally exhibits that she does actually know how Romeo & Juliet ends - and this fact actually makes the song astonishingly arrogant (in a good way): she's saying, no, my worldview believes in happy endings, and I'm going to rewrite the plot of Romeo & Juliet to make that point.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

That whole essay was bullshit, though. I mean, first of all, if you're writing an article about the state of women in pop in 2009, quoting an AskMen article -- from 2006 -- is not the best way to bolster your argument.

I don't know if I really need a second of all, but second of all: was Rihanna that unsuccessful? By what standards? And what "blurring of gender lines" does Lady GaGa do? She doesn't blur, she opens up Photoshop and applies a "sharpen" filter over and over until the lines are super-stark -- exaggerated "femininity" is half her schtick. Which the author herself acknowledges: Her way of shunning feminine ideals is to embrace them to a repulsive extreme. So, um, she shuns feminine ideals by not shunning them at all? And, um, Taylor Swift doesn't know what she's doing but makes sharp and self-referential comments that indicate she knows what she's doing? I hate to break it to you, Clover Hope, but you kind of suck at this whole writing thing. (And PS - Blurring gender lines does not make you a hermaphrodite in any way, not even in "theory.")

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Agreed on all counts. But none of this gets wrong what those artists do quite as profoundly -- I don't think she makes much of a claim for GaGa (or Rihanna's) music (she's right at least that the Rihanna album is "dark" and there isn't a standout single, sure), but with Taylor the whole picture is ass-backwards. With the others it just feels like contextual speculation that may be misguided (or even factually wrong), but with Taylor it's a wholesale misrepresentation of what she does at the most basic comprehension level -- she's not just interpreting Taylor questionably, she's not taking the effort to even try.

[koganbot]

From the essay:

Actual schoolgirl innocence was bliss for Taylor Swift, the red-state sweetheart made all the more innocent by Kanye West's interrupting-cow bit at the MTV Video Music Awards

Straight from the school of Mad Men's Peggy Olson, Swift commands attention through virtuosity, not sexuality, her teen rebellion cloaked in giddy couplets.

Putting aside whether or not I agree with what Clover Hope is trying to say, what is she trying to say? These sentences seem to be written in code. "Bliss" possibly means "Taylor made a lot of money without knowing what she was doing" (though why Hope doesn't think Taylor knows what she's doing isn't explained). The experiences recounted in Taylor's songs about her schoolgirl days - like her getting tormented in junior high and her best friend getting her heart crushed as a freshman - sure don't seem like bliss, and as Dave suggests they may be something Hope never bothered to find out about by, e.g., listening to the songs.

"Commands attention through virtuosity not sexuality" possibly means "Taylor's singing and songwriting is at a virtuoso level but she doesn't wear blatantly revealing costumes" - though I'd say Taylor's sexiness comes through powerfully, the dresses not remotely suppressing her figure or her breasts. Not to mention that sex is an actual big issue in some of her songs. And not to deride her singing and songwriting, but it's not as if her looking so good and dressing so appealingly don't also command attention. And if she didn't look so appealing she might not have gotten the attention, no matter how much she deserved to.