 |
| K.Coleman homage to cover photo by Beth Garrabrant |
How does a global superstar follow a record-breaking 2023 which had impacted cities on seismic, financial, and societal levels? By making said tour global, cheering on boyfriend Travis Kelce's victory at Super Bowl LVIII (with such exuberance that Ice Spice gave the side eye), achieving top honors at the 2024 Grammy Awards, resuming the tour, debuting "Taylor's Version" of the Eras Tour movie on Disney+, and announcing a new album. Yes, and we're only halfway through April. The news of Taylor Swift's new album "The Tortured Poets Department" left people anticipating with bated breath. Swifties. Critics. Even those who are indifferent felt some "figurative" tremors resonating through discussions. I was deciding to start responding to album releases when word got out about track leaks. A story of it's own was how the news wasn't about analyzing the leaked data. It was about the Swift fanbase loyally waiting until the official release out of respect to Taylor and her songwriting partners Jack Antonoff and Aaron Aaron Dessner, everyone else who's worked on the album, and not wanting to spoil the experience of other Swifties. That sense of community among the fanbase is just one more exceptional part of what makes Taylor Swift such an icon.
As I approached the 4.19.24 date, I started planning out how I would approach, analyze, and write for this assignment. That was when I only knew the album's title and the very minute of the its launch. Rightfully prioritizing my day job, I was scrolling through full album playlists on Taylor's YouTube channel while eating my breakfast cereal. Whether by plan or not, videos hadn't officially been strung together as a playlist yet. I did listen to "Fortnight" which featured Post Malone on backing vocals. What stood out most (other than the song fitting together such carefully worded lyric structure) was how emo the vibe was. This got me thinking of the level of introspection that had risen during the early COVID-19 lockdown of 2020. Shannon Beveridge and Cari Fletcher dedicated an episode of the Exes O's to the mental health, creative brainstorming and relationship highs and lows contained within that pressurized timeframe (all of which being so relatable to those who've weathered the lockdown). On the bus, I heard "Florida!!!" where Taylor is singing with Florence & the Machine (in a stylistically adaptive way similar to when "Safe and Sound" was recorded with Joy Williams and John Paul White of the Civil Wars). Not forgetting that the major COVID lockdown was four years ago, I was first wondering if "Florida!!!" was about the pros & cons of Pandemic era Florida or in response to legislature in the state. On another listen, it can seem existential, comparing retirement and vacation timeshares to the costs of any physical residency. Online speculations have interpreted this to be a reference to a relationship's breakup while the Era's tour made three stops in Florida before proceeding to Texas. This microscopic lens tends to be trained on most of Taylors songs. It's like "the Da Vinci Code", "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", or "National Treasure" how there are so many clues that can lead to intriguing revelations. After work, I had dinner and was preparing for the journey that is listening to "The Tortured Poets Society Anthology". Through the course of the day, Taylor and her publicity team were dropping little clues on social media. There was a launch time for the official video of "Fortnight". Posts about the visual and tonal themes of the album. Where different versions could be purchased (including a "double album" format which nobody anticipated. I was reading a post on either Threads or Instagram (one of the subsidiary platforms owned by Meta), and Taylor was presenting a summarizing thesis. Complete with the build-up and suspense, this felt more like the opening of a gallery exhibit accessible on a global scale. As footnotes to this music event, Pearl Jam debuted an album that day, and David Byrne (of the Talking Heads) releasing a cover of "Hard Times" as an answer to Paramore's covering "Burning Down the House".
With earbuds in, and crystals arranged, I got to work listening to the Tortured Poets anthology playlist in a stereo-centric meditation close to what Rick Rubin has described on 60 Minutes. By this point, I knew that this was a double album, but was not expecting 2 1/2 hours of material to cover. That much music continues to show how prolific the Swift/Antonoff/Dessner team are, but what is more astounding is that the lyrical quality consistently is present in all 31 tracks. That ambition and followthrough resonates with me and anyone else who thrived in "creative writing assignments". Writing out your feelings can often be cathartic, but finding artful ways to convey those feelings, giving them structure, flow, and a sense of beat is where artists are able to metabolize experiences into output. That is a core ideology behind my blogging. Likewise, a co-worker and I were talking yesterday about how everything that Taylor Swift goes through gets metabolized into art and the energy to create experiences for her fanbase. Comparing my exploration into the Tortured Poets anthology to a deep sea dive, this explorer had to come back up for air a few times no matter how wondrous this experience is. The full 31 track can be a lot to throw yourself into, and overwhelming sense may be comparable to the Eras tour in-person phenomenon. Many of them are about relationships that others discourage. People warning that someone is a bad influence (such as "Daddy, I Love Him"). In "Albatross", the wrong element is the person embodied by the song's POV ("point of view"). "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" and "I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) can fit together as the emotional and (possibly) physical ways that a significant other struggles through a bad relationship where they confidently plan to fix the other person's problems. "Bolter" is when drama and trauma reaches the point where the lead character escapes a bad relationship. Some songs address a breakup as it's happening, but there's more songs talking about the psychology of a person trying to get over a breakup. Even if they run the risk of potentially seeing that Ex. Counterintuitively, that can involve someone hoping to see their ex in passing. "Down Bad" would be an example of someone trying to get past ruminating about an ex who they felt they had found love with. "Fortnight" is one of the songs examining when ex-lovers see eachother too often, and (at least one) are conflicted between smoldering passion and their lives developing since the breakup.
It stands out more in the consumers' receptions of Taylor's songs that people search not just for hidden meanings, but specific digs at certain individuals. Personally, I find that to be polarizing subject matter for the sake of polarization, but the timing of "So Long London" comes less than a year after Taylor broke up with English actor Joe Alwyn, There are other songs that could be seen as more cryptically allegorical. Hearing song like "thanK you aIMee" can be more literally seen as a dig at Kim Kardashian while also not letting high school bullies define your present and future. It's when writing out the title that I saw the alleged association stand out more. "So High School" similarly connects adult interactions to adolescent drama. I couldn't help thinking of how Kevin Williamson's "Dawson's Creek" portrayed the feelings and interactions between teenagers with the communicative toolbox of more matured articulation . Being compared to Cara Bow (an actress from early 20th century Hollywood) may however be more like a deep cut reference that you'd hear in "Gilmore Girls". Rising above of the teenage and adult bullies of the world, Taylor Swift (as the 21st century's "Cara Bow") is who teens may want to be like. If there's one more potential allegory to look at before getting out of this figurative rabbit hole, it would be "alchemy". With the references to American football and championship titles, and winning streaks despite people's criticism, this seems like it was clearly about Taylor's budding relationship with the Kansas City Chiefs' tight end Travis Kelce. Recurring themes in the song not only speak of the odds of their finding success, but also that Taylor had to alchemize the hurt from her Florida breakup in order to be ready for the relationship with the football star.
In the face of all the people looking for the next droplets of juicy gossip that can come from Taylor's personal life and in some cases criticizing her, there are songs where Taylor makes a clear point to respond. "Whose Afraid of Little Old Me" is about Taylor rising up from the lows, letting people see how this tortured poet (with 31 new songs, and others not making the cut) rises above, transforming all those experiences and feelings to fuel propulsion. "Manuscript" is a closing declaration which communicates that thesis for the album. "Robin" is an encouraging message out to the fans in the spirit of Neil Young's "Long May Your Run". As fittingly a closure "Manuscript" was, it does not appear on every copy of "The Tortured Poets Department". So many songs (cleverly articulated poems put to music) were released in the TTPD project that there are four full length albums each with a different track #17. My copy of the Target exclusive "Manuscript Edition has the "phantom vinyl" visually transparent LP's. "The Tortured Poets Department Anthology" is by definition a collection allowing people access to every song released for this project. As I was listening to the anthology, "lyric videos" were being uploaded onto Taylor's official YouTube channel. Partly to be discussed, but also to create less confusion. How many people still listen to "Blank Space" and wonder what "Starbucks lovers" are?
This leaves me wondering as a journalist and a visual artist how what I can create a visual aid to accompany my writing this album response. On my original music blog (where I would write short-form posts about a song or two each time), I would include the album art as the editorial art. Sometimes photographing CD's that I had readily on hand. For r0ck bl0gster, I will try something different, and a little unique while communicating the album that the respective blog posts are about. With all due respect to the original artist hired for the album, I will attempt an interpretation of the cover art. A visual version of one musician covering another's song.
Til Next Time.
Comments
Post a Comment