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the pop music thread has had enough of my slow build to this reveal so I'm just gonna say it here: Taylor Swift released two albums this year, both with absolutely no build-up, and somehow each one was the best thing she ever made. I'm aware that a good portion of the audience here might immediately just glaze over when they see the words Taylor Swift but for those of you willing to give it a chance, I'm gonna show you three songs that might change your mind. This is Exile. If you're not a Taylor Swift person and you've heard a track off of these albums, it's probably this one, and that's probably because of the other name on the track. The whole big special thing about these albums, aside from completely tossing aside the traditional 6 months of build-up and hype that come before the release of a new TS album, is that they were made with Indie Music People. And not just any indie music people, and maybe not the first indie music person you'd expect, but Aaron Dessner from The National, plus some of his friends, including one Justin Vernon. This is inarguably the first time Taylor has had a male vocalist feature on a song and it hasn't been lame in her entire history of releasing music (my apologies to Kendrick Lamar and Future, no apologies to Ed Sheeran or Snow Patrol guy). The album very much sounds like What If Taylor Swift Made A 2010 Indie Record, and it gives her writing a lot of room to go new places. She's less pop-oriented on this album than she has been in years, and while that doesn't mean that there's no bops here (there are bops), it does mean that she's making music that isn't always just intensely personal diary entries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osdoLjUNFnA This is Marjorie. It sounds like Someone Great filtered through a folk lens. My dream is that she'll just keep going down the list of the 2010s most influential indie producers until she makes an album with James Murphy. It's a very sweet and wistful ode to Swift's grandmother, Marjorie, who was an opera singer (and if you listen closely you can actually hear a sample of her voice in the track!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP6QpMeSG6s This is Mirrorball. It's Swift's try at making shoegaze music with Jack Antonoff and it's just really pretty and happy and I didn't want to leave you with three sad songs. (there's lots of really good sad songs on these albums, especially my personal favorite, Champagne Problems, which is a very simple piano ballad about a wedding proposal that goes wrong) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaM1bCuG4xo I haven't stopped listening to these albums for over a week now, combined they're probably my favorite album in a very long time. After her last couple albums, which were just fine at best and yikes in their worst moments she's started to transition into a new phase of her career and could make another album like this a year for the next few decades given how much variety she was able to squeeze out of two hour-plus albums made mostly by the same people. edit: also entirely unrelated to Swift, iPhone is the single of the year because it goes hard as gently caress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuhvdaDabpU
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Dec 20, 2020 04:20
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 09:52 |
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