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Where do you start with Taylor Swift?

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Ok, I admit I have technically started with Taylor Swift because I have heard “Shake It Off” which I thought was fine but it wasn’t enough to tempt me in.

However today I have a long train journey with two children who will be engrossed in their tech, so its a good day to stick my toe into the shallows at least of Taylor Swift.

But where? What is her best album? All suggestions appreciated.

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Comments

  2. If you want straight Pop Taylor start with 1989.

    If you want Synth-Pop Taylor start with Midnights.

    If you want Country-tinged Taylor start with Red.

    If you want tasteful, beard-stroking backwoods Proper Music Actually Taylor start with Evermore or Folklore (the conventional Afterword jumping-on points).

    If you want the greatest break up/kiss off lyric of its generation start with the peerless All Too Well (10 Minute Version).

  3. Folkmore, as Swifties call the ‘sister’ albums, are indeed the recognised go-to for people who consider her as ‘just for teens’ etc.
    I recently listened to Midnights again for the first time in ages. It’s an astounding album, sonically fascinating and lyrically rich and sophisticated.
    I’d put Speak Now on the same level as Red in terms of style and quality – both incorporating elements of country, pop and even stadium rock.
    If you want to experience a curveball, try Reputation – harder electronic soundscapes based around rap, hip-hop, trap, but retaining her emotional storytelling core.
    For a more country-focused vibe, Fearless is where she begins to mature as a songwriter and artist. On the debut, the potential is all there, but it naturally sounds still a little gauche.

    The other choices you need to make are over the original albums or the Taylor’s Versions. The originals have the immediacy and freshness of being recorded in the moment, but the TVs benefit from her improved vocals and greater studio experience.

  4. No-one (including Me – he – he!) has mentioned Lover, which is also a great pop album, if not quite as great as 1989. Some absolute bangers on there, and some heartbreakers (The Archer, Soon You’ll Get Better).

  6. I did think about the OP’s question which was a very good question. I started to walk in the opposite direction, nothing original in any of the stuff I’ve heard*

    *This of course is my opinion.

  7. I think Shake It Off is a terrific piece of pop, and I’ve picked up 1989 and the rejigged Fearless and Red, but sadly I’ll never be a Swiftie.

    Clearly she is a musical and cultural powerhouse, and fair play to her for reaping the rewards for what seems to be a phenomenal amount of hard work over the years, but I can’t quite see what the fuss is about.

    I’m far from her target market, but to me she and her minions just create polished pop that occasionally takes some interesting musical and lyrical detours. However, from the coverage she receives you’d think she was practically the second coming. Apparently she is walking out with an American football player, and this fact alone has received the sort of breathless reporting normally reserved for something really important. None of that is her fault, of course, but it does put her on something of a pedestal that I don’t think her music deserves.

    Still, I doubt she’s bothered what I think… *tuts sadly*

      • If The Beatles had lived in a world where social media ruled, they would have been subject to the worldwide coverage and adoration currently applied to Taylor.
        Whether or not The Beatles’ music is “better” than Swift’s is irrelevant. Both are pop phenomenons.

        • Weren’t The Beatles actually subjected to worldwide media coverage and adoration from fans without the help of social media and on a scale many times larger than that being experienced by La Taylor today?

          • A scale many times larger? For example, even allowing for inflation A Hard Day’s Night or Help grossed approximately 0.342% compared to Eras. The Beatles sold out Shea Stadium a few times. Swift is in the middle of a worldwide tour which will generate approximately 453.57 billion dollars. It’s a different world these days.
            I’m certain that back then there were plenty of grumpy old men saying “The Beatles – don’t know what all the fuss is about.”

        • Impossible to know if the Beatles would have gained the same traction today.

          They were a pop phenomenon in an era when there wasn’t a great deal else to do with one’s time. Taylor is a pop phenomenon in the most competitive attention economy there’s ever been.

          Social media would also have brought greater exposure to John Lennon’s beating of women, his desire to sleep with his own mother, etc. In a lot of ways it was easier to be a superstar when the media was monolithic and willing to cover up for you.

          • But then would, say, Charlie Chaplin be the same phenomenon if he was starting out today? The industry he was working in has totally changed, partly due to him, and I think the same could be said of the Beatles and pop music. The star making machinery behind the popular song has evolved hugely and Taylor Swift seems to have been very aware of how to use if from a young age – and that is not a criticism.

            I have been reading David Kynaston’s latest volume of British history in the near past, A Northern Wind, 1962-5 and of course the Beatles, and other pop acts, are a significant part of it. You don’t have to like their music to see they both caused and reflected social change – he also talks about sport a lot, which doesn’t interest me at all, but was also an important part of society. The book wouldn’t make sense without either of these.

            • I totally agree David. Context and relevance are vital things. Asking how successful the Beatles would be today is a strange question as they were a product of (and one of the major contributors towards) their times.

              I’m wary of commenting further as in the end neither ‘side’ can win an argument like this. It always gets ugly. If someone really, genuinely believes that Taylor Swift and Scouting For Girls are as innovative and as musically transcendent (yep, that’s the phrase I’m choosing😁) now as The Beatles were in their time, I can’t see any way to argue.

              Argh. I know below I said I wouldn’t comment any more but people using the word ‘twee’ when describing The Beatles has a way of bringing out my fighting side.

              I’m sorry, love and peace to every one I promise! I’m jealous that whatever pleasure you are all getting from Taylor Swift still seems to elude me. Big Ringo peace fingers to you all (the right way round, I promise).

            • I’m a big Chaplin fan, but I don’t take it as a given that he’d even make it onto our screens if he was starting out today.

              As with most stars of popular culture, his skillset was uniquely suited to the particular moment in which he arrived. It’s certainly difficult to point to anyone in movies now who is his obvious heir, or who trades in the same material he did – just as virtually no one (in the mainstream at least) is making music that particularly attempts to sound like the Beatles. They’re artists of their time.

              By the same logic, I don’t think it’s a given that Taylor Swift would have been a success if she’d touched down in 1963, or was catapulted forward in time to 2083 for that matter. Tastes move on and it’s difficult enough to achieve spectacular success in your own times, let alone someone else’s.

              The major pop stars of the day will always cause and reflect social change, and then the world eventually moves on. It’s just the nature of things.

  9. Red tends to get a bit underrated, I think, but it’s the first hint of an intentional transition away from the Nashville-with-sequins Shania-isms of the early template, and it’s packed with great songs. (I don’t mean that in a sniffy way: Shania Twain was a huge influence on her early on, and nothing at all wrong with that, but it kept her audience narrower than it needed to be).

    Anyway, it’s a cracking album. I can live without its top and tail, but from the title track through to Sad Beautiful Tragic, it’s almost nothing but net (The Last Time, Everything has Changed and Begin Again being my skips). You want Taylor’s Version, natch, and the 10 min All Too Well is one of the only pop songs I’ve ever heard that justifies the run time. It’s cinematic, compelling stuff.

    You don’t tend to listen to Taylor Swift for her voice, which is pleasant but not remarkable: she’s got a real gift for melody, but IMV it’s the lyrics that make her special. She’s incredibly good at specific, richly textured observation, with a real gift for nailing emotional truths in a few words, and Red is the record where that talent starts to become really obvious (I Almost Do and All Too Well being the clearest examples). With Lana del Rey, I think she’s the best lyricist working today, and has been for some time.

  10. Every thread needs a grumpy naysayer so I’ll take that role here if no one else wants to? The troll role, as it were.

    I can’t abide Taylor Swift. I’ve tried, especially as people on here keep going on about her, and especially with those two apparently beardy albums that are supposed to appeal to people like us. I don’t get it. It all just sounds like bland, overproduced country pop.

    There’s some Taylor Swift movie that keeps popping up as an advert on Netflix or somewhere, and I keep thinking it’s some kind of joke or spoof film. Her voiceover talks about ‘deconstructing’ her identity and making the music she wants to make, and clichés like that. It all seems very calculated and shallow to me.

    So she’s not for me. Which is fine I suppose. And my advice would be don’t struggle to get into her music if it’s not working for you. You just might not have a crossover point, as I don’t.

    OK, I’ll stop there and hold up a white flag before I get into an argument!

    • Arthur has emboldened me –

      Good luck to Taylor Swift
      If you’re an Afterworder and you enjoy her music – then good on yer.
      But she’s not for me and for that reason – I’m out.

    • I think you’re referring to the Folklore Long Pond Studio Sessions. She is trying to articulate the shift in her own artistic perspective and the resulting shift in audience perceptions of her as a result of that album, which was clearly a thing judging by the numbers of critics who belatedly began to take her seriously. I just think this is an audio/video take on all those oh-so-serious articles and interviews with ‘important’ bands in the inkies over the decades.

  11. I still find it odd that people (men) who have been shuffling around this planet for several decades, still feel the need to say they don’t like someone’s music. I immediately wonder that if they don’t like fish, do they go to restaurants that specialise in fish to tell them of their dislike? Or to a pub to tell of their dislike for beer.

    • And there’s often an odd sense of defensiveness, as if their own tastes are somehow embattled, besieged, like Taylor Swift fans are forever on about how shit they think eg. Pink Floyd are, when I doubt you’d find a Taylor Swift enjoyer doing an Arthur on one of the (for the sake of argument) “Afterword music” threads. 🤷‍♂️

    • @leedsboy – thought it was a site for discussion, maybe I’m wrong. I hadn’t intended to comment on this thread at all – until Arthur did an Arthur!
      @Hedgepig – no defensiveness from me. Obviously you’re being disingenuous about slagging off music on threads – stuff I like is regularly given a good kicking on here and I usually take it in good part, rough and tumble of the Afterword, etc.

      Cheers, guys!

      • Wasn’t aimed at you in particular @fitterstoke. Just the general trait of explaining what we don’t like about music when we don’t really do it on other things. We’ve all done it – I try not to anymore but if you dig around the bowels of this site I’m sure you can find me not liking Jethro Tull and The Mavs Orchestra (sorry Colin H). No offence intended and apologies if it was.

        • Over the years most of us have learned to avoid threads on music we just don’t like. For me that’s Prog and Jazz. I admit to sometimes forgetting this rule, especially when it’s Pink Floyd where I know I can tease @Gary.
          I think it’s different when, for instance, Tiggs reviews Hackney Diamonds. Given his and almost every other review I have read fulsome praise , it’s, I hope, legitimate to stand up and say “Not sure our boy is wearing any clothes” ??

    • I can’t be doing with people simply saying ‘Taylor Swift/Bob Dylan/Pink Floyd/Kendrick Lamar (or whoever) is shit’. But it can be illuminating if someone says that aforementioned artist is poor, or they don’t like them, and give constructive reasons for that opinion. Sadly the former approach is more common.

      As for Ms Swift I haven’t heard enough of her music to have a strong opinion, but the video in the OP is a hoot.

  12. On one listen I will say that Folklore will defo get another listen from me. It’s a classic “grower” as far as I’m concerned.

    You know, I’m just glad that I didn’t think the massive cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift was shit.

    • Try the aforementioned Long Pond Studio Sessions version as well, if you’re able.

      Evermore is almost -*almost* – as good…some actually prefer it to folklore. Had it not been released so soon afterwards, I reckon it would be held in equal esteem across the board.

    • Ah, the Albarn perspective – which was given a deserved kicking at the time. She endured this snarky criticism early in her career, so wrote the whole of Speak Now completely on her own as a “fuck you” to the naysayers.

      Yes, she does collaborate – and readily acknowledges it and gives credit where it’s due. But don’t take that to imply she’s a peripheral presence in the creative process; all her collaborators are on record that she is absolutely the creative driver of all the songwriting, coming up with most of the compositional blueprints and writing 99.5% of all the lyrics.

      I hate the implication which *still* persists that as a woman, she cannot possibly be a ‘proper’ artist and her success is due to shadowy figures in the background. No-one undermines the pale, stale, male ‘icons’ in such a way, when indeed most of them are celebrated as co-writers.

  14. Crikey! You’re starting an argument in an empty room, chum.

    I don’t tend to listen to Taylor Swift’s music, largely because my own preferences lean more towards the likes of Bonnie Raitt and Maria Muldaur.

    However, this thread prompted me to investigate – and I like that this message board sometimes points me at unfamiliar music – and I was surprised to find that although mine was the 60th plus comment, nobody had mentioned that “All Too Well”, for example, is a co-write. Collaboration if you like, or co-write, it’s still a joint effort.

    I thought that others may also be unaware and might be interested to read about Liz Rose. (I’d never heard of her and so didn’t know about her work with Swedish country singer Jill Johnson, who does a nice version of one of my favourite songs, “Need Your Love So Bad”.)

    “The Albarn perspective / snarky criticism / implications that she’s a peripheral presence in her work (and) cannot possibly be a ‘proper’ artist” are all in your head, not referenced in my single sentence.

    I apologise that I upset you, albeit unintentionally. Personally I’m quite pleased to have read about Liz Rose.

  15. I have another perspective in that I have teenage offspring who would be mortified if I suddenly became a fan. If my dad had started to get into Depeche Mode and bopped around the house to Just Can’t Get Enough, I’d need surgery to uncurl my toes.

    • But then you’re assuming the “Taylor Swift is just writing for teens” cliche. This was true when she was a teen herself, of course, but those original fans have grown with her into adulthood, and she has continued to attract admirers of an increasingly diverse age range as she has progressed. There are legions of ‘senior Swifties’ out there.

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