October 19, 2012

isabelthespy:

bookbat:

rogueish:

poptastic:

Song of the Day: Taylor Swift - 22

She has really outdone herself with this one! It sounds like all my favourite female pop-rock singers of the past decade. Amy Studt, Sinead Quinn, Michelle Branch, Avril Lavigne, Ke$ha and Fefe Dobson all in one. As an album, Red has its ups and downs, but when it’s good it’s really good. I’m feeling very proud to be a long-term Swift supporter these days and it’s great seeing so many people finally recognising the brilliant pop star she really is.

I’m not quite sure why I’m invested in this particular bit of pop-star soap opera, but I like this song even more when I imagine that it’s about Swift’s friendship with Selena Gomez.

I give up, I stopped caring about “slut-shaming” a thousand years ago and I can’t even be mad about “when we’re on the phone we talk real slow” anymore, Tay-tay you’re an angel can I hide this beer in your purse? ok.

at some point in this song she’s talking about how there are too many cool kids and she says, in a cool-kid voice, “who’s taylor swift anyway? ew.”

at some point in this song she’s talking about how there are too many cool kids and she says, in a cool-kid voice, “who’s taylor swift anyway? ew.”

at some point in this song she’s talking about how there are too many cool kids and she says, in a cool-kid voice, “who’s taylor swift anyway? ew.”

OK I give up this is pretty great and Red Taylor seems much more fun than Speak Now Taylor (never forget the existence of “Innocent”), and also I would like to note the fact that Taylor is singing about “dancing like we’re 22” but you guys she is 22. Being 22 and being like “I really feel 22” is just, I feel so old right now.

12:00am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZSRIbyVZEkWN
(Notes: 70)
  
Filed under: taylor swift 22 feeling old music that's literally all i have 
September 7, 2012

rgr-pop:

I know we’re supposed to be like post-pop-feminists and I know that “thinking something is stupid” and “not oppressing teenage girls” are like mutually exclusive now or something but SORRY “You Belong With Me” is actually still the stupidest thing in the entire world. Creating a sex +/- binary argument out of a virgin-whore binary narrative is reductive as fuck but all y’all Defend The Teen Shallowness crusaders are conveniently forgetting that this white dress bullshit had everything to do with that Save Taylor Swift From The Mean Black Man bullshit. I would die for Taylor Swift and Teen Shallowness everywhere, but come on. And don’t y’all pretend like the arguments against “You Belong With Me” were just about shaming a girl for being into dudes. The argument against “You Belong With Me” is that that shit is too much even for me.

The important thing to remember is that Taylor is a person and she’s a precious person and even she obviously thinks that “You Belong With Me” is stupid and you don’t have to protect her anymore. ‘Cause she doesn’t get your humor like I do became some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.

Yes, basically, yes. I wrote about my complicated I kind of like Taylor Swift but She Is Also The Worst feelings like two years ago when I actually updated my website. (The dude voice in “Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together” totally complicates all of this, but I saw her on TV after the video came out telling a VJ that she wanted the video to be “as quirky as the song is” and, yeah, whatever, not sure it’s cute anymore. Also I wish I’d talked more about the racial politics of the whole Kanye Thing, but I felt at the time like those arguments have been well-rehearsed elsewhere, and also that I was ill-qualified to talk about said racial politics but rest assured I was and always am on Team Yeezy.)

11:33am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZSRIbySxJAHu
(Notes: 24)
  
Filed under: taylor swift 
July 13, 2011
tessastrain: I am waiting patiently for Taylor Swift to realize her potential as an evil genius. Words cannot express how much I want this for her. Taylor Swift is noted for playing the victim, the innocent, the girl next door. She has built her career around the fact that there is nothing America loves more than rooting for a fake underdog. When Kanye West famously interrupted her acceptance speech for the “You Belong With Me” music video, I agreed with his sentiments. I still do, in that Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” video is both visually iconic and responsible for a dance craze, and if those aren’t the most important criteria for judging the quality of a music video, I don’t know what are, nor do I care to find out. Moreover, there was the fact that the entire conceit for the “You Belong With Me” video was stolen from Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” video. But here’s the thing: Lavigne was never the ideal messenger for it (the fact that she and Swift are in many ways dark reflections of each other is another story for another time, some cozy night by the fire). What I am trying to say is that in spite of all its shortcomings, the “You Belong With Me” video continues to haunt me, and being as one of my bad habits is ascribing genius to people/things that likely don’t deserve it, I am convinced that this is because it is the product of a great and evil mind. Taylor Swift makes me feel like Magneto, in that I want to draw her aside and tell her “You aren’t like these people. Come with me, and I will make you the destroyer of worlds you were born to be.” And don’t tell me she doesn’t want to. The problem is she doesn’t have the first clue how how. Curse her for turning the Kanye debacle into a maudlin feud with her condescendingly immature ballad of rebuttal instead of grabbing the man by the shoulders and saying “TEACH ME TO BE YOU.” The girl who made a video about the conflict between her sad-sack, passive-aggressive, girl next door identity and the Queen Bitch she wishes she could be needs to be taken in hand, and who better than a man caught between arrogance and self-loathing, grandiosity and heartache? It’s not that I don’t think she’s kind of doing something great already. She has a genius for the perspectiveless chronicling of teenage horribleness that is truly astonishing. Take for example, her best friend persona in “You Belong With Me.” I can’t be the only person who hears the line “I know all your favorite songs, and you tell me ‘bout your dreams. Think I know where you belong, think I know it’s with me,” and think about the all the subtly undermining things I said in high school to my friends who were dating people I don’t like. I know the word “dreams” probably means like, something super American, like majoring in political science or owning a small business. I always imagine her object of affection literally describing the dream he had last night and her giving him complex semiotic interpretations that always lead back to “Your girlfriend is stifling you.” I give her that kind of credit. And speaking of semiotics, let’s not forget that she also plays said evil girlfriend, wearing a brown wig, which you cannot tell me is any more or less of a phony affectation than those fake glasses are. Evil Girlfriend is Taylor’s id, the girl who publicly talks shit and has mad pre-marital sex, who wears red to the big dance, who grinds up on date on the dance floor, who probably has peach schnapps in her purse, and who, in spite of her self-possession, duh, feels totally threatened by her boyfriend’s asshole best friend who is always trying to undermine their relationship. And they clearly fight about it all the time. Do you think Taylor Swift has ever told anyone to fuck off? Don’t you think it would be the best thing that could ever happen to her? Doesn’t all that repression hurt? Have you ever seen anyone more “good” out of guilt than out of any deep abiding “goodness”? Does she need to listen to Eartha Kitt’s “I Want to Be Evil” on a loop for like a week, or what? Taylor Swift doesn’t have the nerve to do anything more than hint at this conflict, which is why Nicki Minaj, who openly grapples with her warring personae, gets to be Kanye’s protege. Taylor would never cop to being “a motherfucking monster,” although she totally is. Remember when she used Jungian archetypes to convince a dude to break up with his girlfriend? It happened like, two paragraphs ago/in my mind every day. I cannot say this enough: “relatibility” is a bogus identity. Nobody became a good guy by hiding the fact that they are a bad guy. (Sorry for making everything in the world about Kanye, but that’s why “Runaway” is one of the best songs ever. #ITSAPROCESS) I would rather see Taylor Swift as a sympathetic villain than a self-pitying princess, but I’m not gonna kid myself that it’ll happen in my lifetime. I might anonymously mail her a copy of The Prince, though.  I read this and I just wanted to heart it like a hundred times. This is so, so deeply true.

tessastrain:

I am waiting patiently for Taylor Swift to realize her potential as an evil genius. Words cannot express how much I want this for her.

Taylor Swift is noted for playing the victim, the innocent, the girl next door. She has built her career around the fact that there is nothing America loves more than rooting for a fake underdog.

When Kanye West famously interrupted her acceptance speech for the “You Belong With Me” music video, I agreed with his sentiments. I still do, in that Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” video is both visually iconic and responsible for a dance craze, and if those aren’t the most important criteria for judging the quality of a music video, I don’t know what are, nor do I care to find out. Moreover, there was the fact that the entire conceit for the “You Belong With Me” video was stolen from Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” video. But here’s the thing: Lavigne was never the ideal messenger for it (the fact that she and Swift are in many ways dark reflections of each other is another story for another time, some cozy night by the fire).

What I am trying to say is that in spite of all its shortcomings, the “You Belong With Me” video continues to haunt me, and being as one of my bad habits is ascribing genius to people/things that likely don’t deserve it, I am convinced that this is because it is the product of a great and evil mind.

Taylor Swift makes me feel like Magneto, in that I want to draw her aside and tell her “You aren’t like these people. Come with me, and I will make you the destroyer of worlds you were born to be.” And don’t tell me she doesn’t want to.

The problem is she doesn’t have the first clue how how. Curse her for turning the Kanye debacle into a maudlin feud with her condescendingly immature ballad of rebuttal instead of grabbing the man by the shoulders and saying “TEACH ME TO BE YOU.” The girl who made a video about the conflict between her sad-sack, passive-aggressive, girl next door identity and the Queen Bitch she wishes she could be needs to be taken in hand, and who better than a man caught between arrogance and self-loathing, grandiosity and heartache?

It’s not that I don’t think she’s kind of doing something great already. She has a genius for the perspectiveless chronicling of teenage horribleness that is truly astonishing. Take for example, her best friend persona in “You Belong With Me.” I can’t be the only person who hears the line “I know all your favorite songs, and you tell me ‘bout your dreams. Think I know where you belong, think I know it’s with me,” and think about the all the subtly undermining things I said in high school to my friends who were dating people I don’t like. I know the word “dreams” probably means like, something super American, like majoring in political science or owning a small business. I always imagine her object of affection literally describing the dream he had last night and her giving him complex semiotic interpretations that always lead back to “Your girlfriend is stifling you.” I give her that kind of credit.

And speaking of semiotics, let’s not forget that she also plays said evil girlfriend, wearing a brown wig, which you cannot tell me is any more or less of a phony affectation than those fake glasses are. Evil Girlfriend is Taylor’s id, the girl who publicly talks shit and has mad pre-marital sex, who wears red to the big dance, who grinds up on date on the dance floor, who probably has peach schnapps in her purse, and who, in spite of her self-possession, duh, feels totally threatened by her boyfriend’s asshole best friend who is always trying to undermine their relationship. And they clearly fight about it all the time.

Do you think Taylor Swift has ever told anyone to fuck off? Don’t you think it would be the best thing that could ever happen to her? Doesn’t all that repression hurt? Have you ever seen anyone more “good” out of guilt than out of any deep abiding “goodness”? Does she need to listen to Eartha Kitt’s “I Want to Be Evil” on a loop for like a week, or what?

Taylor Swift doesn’t have the nerve to do anything more than hint at this conflict, which is why Nicki Minaj, who openly grapples with her warring personae, gets to be Kanye’s protege. Taylor would never cop to being “a motherfucking monster,” although she totally is. Remember when she used Jungian archetypes to convince a dude to break up with his girlfriend? It happened like, two paragraphs ago/in my mind every day.

I cannot say this enough: “relatibility” is a bogus identity. Nobody became a good guy by hiding the fact that they are a bad guy. (Sorry for making everything in the world about Kanye, but that’s why “Runaway” is one of the best songs ever. #ITSAPROCESS) I would rather see Taylor Swift as a sympathetic villain than a self-pitying princess, but I’m not gonna kid myself that it’ll happen in my lifetime. I might anonymously mail her a copy of The Prince, though.

 I read this and I just wanted to heart it like a hundred times. This is so, so deeply true.

5:30am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZSRIby737UX1
(Notes: 138)
  
Filed under: music taylor swift 
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