A friend of mine recently burned me a CD when I opined that I had run out of CD's in my car, leaving me only with the same old tried and trued songs that I liked a few years ago, a mix of Joe Purdy, Ray Lamontagne, and Ryan Adams. And while I'm still rather a fan of this music--sadness is universal--I was looking for something new. To make a short story rather longer than it needs to be, I heard Out of the Woods and was shocked to learn that it was Taylor Swift's song.
M: That song was by Taylor Swift? I liked it.
F: Yeah. She's good.
M: But I didn't like the song ironically. I just kind of liked it.
F: Yeah. She's great.
M: Huh.
A few days later I had a long conversation with one my part-time staff members about the six page review she was writing about Taylor Swift's new album, "1989.". Unfortunately, her editor told her that they didn't write about "pop" music. Thus, the task has fallen to me.
Song 1: This song says "Welcome to New York" a lot, which is great for my little daughter to sing along to because the words are easy to remember. After a while though you kind of wish she'd thought of some more lyrics besides just welcoming everyone to New York. Maybe something about Occupy Wall Street or how financially centric our economy has gotten. However, Taylor leaves these difficult topics on the side to welcome everyone to New York a lot of times.
This song by Rosie Thomas about New York is better:
Song 2 Blank Space
The thing that's annoying sometimes about pop music is how catchy it is. It just gets in your head like a really strong drink of alcohol and pings around in there like a pinball until you want to split your skull open and let the words fall out. Okay, it's not always that bad. The best thing about pop music is that it's catchy. This song is great. Taylor Swift is great, and I bet if we went to Starbucks together we could laugh about how they spelled our names wrong and wonder what kind of future two lover's with the names written on the cups would have that would be somehow different than ours because you just know Taylor Swift is up on the possibility of a multi-verse.
Song 3 Style
This song has the best chorus on the whole album. Mainly because it reminds me of that James Dean phase that my sister went through that didn't really make sense to me. So it's this guy who's been dead for a few decades who wore white shirts and drove around in old cars? Yeah. I'm in! Or maybe I wasn't. There's those classic lines of song writing like "good girl in a tight little skirt." I remember that girl, Taylor, and this part where you can sing along and have your voice go up a couple of octaves or crack or whatever floats your boat. But yeah. This is a winner. Also, I used to wear white t-shirts and have long hair. We could have beautiful music together. Or rather, you could have made beautiful music while I sat around drinking and complaining about the life of a writer. Next time around.
(Picture of me with long hair and white t-shirt no longer included)
Song 4-Out of the Woods (a conversation with my daughter)
s: Why does she want to get out of the woods?
M: The woods are metaphorical. It means she can't see anything.
s: Does she want to get into the clear?
M: Yes. She wants to get out of the woods, so she can see what's happening. its' a metaphor.
s: Oh.
This is probably the "best" song on the album, in that you wouldn't have to like it ironically. You can just kind of like it. I prefer self-loathing.
Song 5 All you Had to do was Stay
I always wind up skipping this song or sending my voice up about 9,000 octaves to the range only hit by 15th century Italian eunuchs. In general though, I'm too worn out from loving the first four songs so much to really enjoy Stay other than singing, "Stay."
Here is a better song with Stay in the title.
Song 6: Shake it Off
This is the original anthem from the album because it got everyone excited to shake things off. In this track it's clear that Swift is channeling such legends as Galileo when he shook off the church's dismissal of his heliocentric world view. Swift, a student of many types of history is also channeling Gandhi's shaking off of oppressive British rule and subtly giving a shout out to the members of Occupy Wall Street, who tried and failed to shake off the shackles of 21st century capitalism.
Of course there's also the chance that this bouncy tune is all about the fact that haters are gonna hate, hate, hate, and so you just have to shake, shake, shake, but I believe it's a more complex song than that. I do. Let's dance.
Track, I've been using song before, I'm sorry 7 I wish You Would
This is one of those secretly good songs. Okay not secretly this girl has sold like 9 billion albums, which might be a low end estimate. Anyhow, coming off the high of shaking it off I feel like people could miss how great this song of stalker regret is. Sure she's still driving by the dude's house, but that's because she loves him bro. Haven't you ever loved someone and then lost them and then kind of treated them like crap to convince yourself that you were better off without them only to realize that you missed the very thing that you'd been repudiating? That is some rough shi- regardless of your age and station in life. Thankfully, we have this chorus to make us feel okay.
Track 8 Bad Blood
This kind of sounds like a Lorde song. But Lorde sings her version of this song better, so I usually wait until Taylor has told me about Bad Blood and problems a couple of times before I skip to the next song. I hear you girl. We all got problems. My problem is that I need to get to the next song.
Track 9 Wildest Dreams
On my first run through the album this song stood out as the best. Taylor is talking about hindsight and the ephemeral nature of reality and occasionally relationships. She is committing herself to the beauty of the moment in a way that would make Buddhist monks proud. And really, in channeling the best of Borges, she talks about the phantasmic dreams of the future in which these two lovers will remember each other, invoking a reality that does not yet exist nor that is guaranteed to justify her current state of affairs. But he's tall and handsome. We've all been there.
Track 10 How You Get the Girl
Thank goodness for track 10. After track 9 and pretty much every other track I'm starting to wonder if it's ever possible to get the girl, or hold onto her. But we have this song that tells us how precisely we are supposed to get the girl and then lifts us up to head shaking realms of happiness in it's catch little chorus. I've been known to wave my hand a bit in the car to this one because I feel exactly what Taylor is laying down. It's going to be okay. We're going to get that girl.
(I could give you a bunch of randos covering this song, but I don't want to do that to both of us).
Track 11 This Love
Wait? Did she just reference Wildest Dreams in this song? It's like a meta-commentary that Swift is getting into here. No matter how far you run you can never actually run away from yourself and perhaps that's all we're trying to escape whether it be drugs, travel, pop music, or new loves. Of course, maybe she just wanted to write a pretty song.
But really this song makes me think that we're going to sail away on a ship over some emerald water and have everything work out fine.Also, it has a little musical riff that reminds me of that crazy ass movie Drive.
Track 12 I Know Places
I think this song is mainly about fox hunting. If my life had worked out differently, I'd be spending my days smoking pipes and hunting foxes. I like foxes and am partial to the Fox and the Hound. But honestly, let's go hunt some foxes or be the foxes or whatever. I'm in. I like what's happening here. We're hiding away, probably to smoke pipes. Do foxes smoke pipes?
Track 13 Clean
I was getting ready to pan this song or say that I didn't remember it, but then I found this video of Ingrid Michaelson talking about the depth of song writing that Taylor Swift showed in this album. And I got to thinking that maybe Taylor Swift was like our version of Plutarch or Keats or something, and maybe we just needed to listen closer to the words especially when they didn't involve shaking things off.
I suppose rain is a metaphor of washing oneself anew in the way that baptism was in the early church. Thus, rain and water are serving a dual purpose of implying an external and internal cleanliness that people have been channeling for thousands of years. We hear you, Taylor. Plutarch hears you, and he gives you a nod.
And so ends a wonderful musical journey that started a few weeks ago when I heard a song and thought, "this is kind of good." I'd suggest that you buy the album, but I can guess that you probably already have a copy and have bought two for your siblings. My daughter's review after four days was,
s: "I like this voice."
s: "Who is this voice singing?"
M: Taylor Swift
s: Taylor Swift is my favorite singer.
M: I hear you honey. I hear you.
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