The Taylor Swift Thread

[Toups]

6 nominations! Finally, she's back in the AOTY category.

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  Going for win #3.     Also, Taylor is the first woman to receive 5 nominations in the SOTY category. 

 

 

[Faulkner]

I mean, she’s almost certainly going to win. Shameful that The Weeknd was snubbed. 

[Toups]

 

She's definitely the odds on favourite to win, however, upsets happen and Taylor's been on both ends.  In 2010, she upset Gaga and Beyonce.  In 2014, Daft Punk upset Taylor and Kendrick Lamar.    The Weeknd getting 0 nominations was a shock.  I had Blinding Lights winning ROTY because it's easily the biggest hit on 2020 but not even getting a nomination was ridiculous. 

[Toups]

 

 

Called it!

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   I love that piano piece at the beginning of 'exile' - can't believe Joe create that, and the first verse.   I would not be surprise if they wrote more songs together in the future. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Long Pond Studio Session was so good!  Taylor, Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff play the entire album in Aaron's studio, and they talk a bit about each song.  Here's the link to download it for those who don't have Disney+ :

 

https://eu.cdn.ir-cdn.xyz/dl/1/454913/437266/300370/302f253b46cdcce18182f2cea79482fe1c/movies/f/Folklore_The_Long_Pond_Studio_Sessions_2020_720p_WEB-DL_5.1CH_Tars_30NAMA.mkv

 

 

 

 

[Toups]

Taylor gives her first interview, talking about Folklore, to Entertainment Weekly: Taylor Swift broke all her rules with Folklore — and gave herself a much-needed escape - The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency.

[Faulkner]

She’s releasing another album?

 

 

 

[YRBB]

Well, damn! And I thought I was surprised after the first surprise record not even five months ago!

[Toups]

Wow!! She's been giving out clues for a couple of weeks now, but NOBODY guessed it would be a new album because that's crazy.  LOL   Most people were guessing a music video for Exile or August (she mentioned she was shooting a music video when the election was called for Biden), or a collaboration with Paul McCartney.  She posted another "not a lot going on at the moment" picture but that was days before the Long Pond Studio Session, so we just assumed it was for that, and nobody thought about a new album even though that was the same clue she posted for folklore.   I wonder if these songs are ones that didn't make the folklore cut or if these were written and produced after folklore - if they were, maybe they were recorded in September when Jack/Taylor/Aaron were together and did the Long Pond Studio Session.   In any case, we are definitely the luckiest fan base.  She's so amazing to us.  

[Faulkner]

The ones that I enjoyed most were “No Body, No Crime” (love HAIM) and “Dorothea.”

[Toups]

evermore is definitely more "indie" and has less "pop" sounding songs than folklore (I'm a pop guy so I'm just a little bit disappointed in that respect).  I guess this is because Aaron Dessner produced 14 out of the 15 songs.  Jack Antonoff only did 1 song.   "dorothea" was the first song written for the album, and "happiness" was the last (it was finished just last week). 

 

So here were my rankings after one listen:

 

1. marjorie

2. no body, no crime

3. tolerate it

4. dorothea

5. ‘tis the damn season

6. champagne problems

7. happiness

8. evermore

9. long story short

10. gold rush

11. cowboy like me

12. willow

13. ivy

14. coney island

15. closure

 

After a couple of listens this list has changed. LOL  I'll post my one week, and one month rankings.  

 

 

 

What a great tribute to her grandmother!  It's so relatable and made my tear up thinking about my own grandparents who are gone. 

 

 

 

 

 

This was a fun song.  LOL

 

 

 

Aaron Dessner's post on Instagram: It’s only been 5 months since folklore was released. But truth be told @taylorswift and I never actually stopped exchanging ideas and somehow we've finished a sister record called evermore that I love just as much. These songs are wilder and freer, sometimes in strange time signatures and darker hues, but very much a continuation of what we started with folklore. I can't begin to express my gratitude and respect for Taylor -- I never cease to wonder at her seemingly boundless talent as a singer and a songwriter and storyteller. It’s been the experience of a lifetime to work so fast and furiously with her. As with folklore, @jackantonoff, @blobtower and William Bowery all contributed brilliant ideas and songwriting — the same alchemy and teamwork continued. This time my brother @brycedessner contributed much more as well— helping write and produce Coney Island and orchestrating the entire record. I’ve never done anything creatively of any value without Bryce helping to elevate it, as he does here again. As important, @heyjonlow has been my brother in all of this work too -- I could never have conceived of this without him by my side every step of the way. And Justin @blobtower , who has taught me so much, is here again too, lending his insane talents. If that wasn’t enough, my bandmates in @thenational , Matt, Bryan and Scott along with Bryce, are here too. We learned to write songs and make records together. Hearing Matt sing with Taylor and the entire band perform on Coney Island — things have come full circle.
And there are so many other friends who have made very significant contributions to this record (more later on them later)

 

 

 

 

 

[Taoboi]

Wow! She released ANOTHER album!!!

 

Go her!!!

[Toups]

Rankings after one week

 

 

 

1. long story short (+8)

2. no body, no crime (same)

3. dorothea (+1)

4. ‘tis the damn season (+1)

5. Marjorie (-4)

6. ivy (+7)

7. champagne problems (-1)

8. tolerate it (-5)

9. willow (+3)

10. cowboy like me (+1)

11. gold rush (-1)

12. happiness (-5)

13. evermore (-6)

14. coney island (same)

15. closure (same)

 

 

First week numbers for evermore: Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’ Arrives at No. 1 on Billboard 200 Albums Chart

 

Of Evermore’s 329,000 equivalent album units earned in the tracking week ending Dec. 17, SEA units comprise nearly 167,000 (equaling 220.49 million on-demand streams of the album’s songs), album sales comprise 154,000 and TEA units comprise a little under 8,000.

 

 

It's the biggest week under Billboard 200's new rules.  And these numbers don't include any physical albums since those were released on the 18th. 

 

 

 

 

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Fantastic 1 hour interview with Zane Lowe (he's such a good interviewer): youtube link

 

Here's Variety's recap of that interview: Taylor Swift Opens Up About the Creation of ‘Evermore’

 

Excerpt:

Writing “Folklore” during quarantine led the songwriter to surprise release it shortly after the project came together. The week after its release, however, she decided to keep going. Five months later, “Evermore” is out for the world to stream, but Swift is ready to close the book on this two-part series.

 

“I feel differently today than I felt the day after releasing ‘Folklore’ because, even the day after releasing ‘Folklore,’ Aaron and I were still bouncing ideas back and forth and we just knew we were gonna keep writing music,” she said. “With this one I have this feeling of sort of quiet conclusion and sort of this weird serenity of we did what we set out to do and we’re all really proud of it, and that feels really really nice.

 

Virtually every song on Swift’s first seven studio albums can be traced back to a moment from the artist’s own life. But she chose to forego the well-trodden path to success with “Folklore,” sharing instead a host of stories about people or places she made up.

 

With the subjects’ stories unfamiliar to her own personal life, Swift shifted gears into a form of storytelling that kept her own experiences more private. “Folklore” earned critical and commercial success in its first week, letting Swift know that the quarantine outlet she had picked up was appreciated by others stuck at home, as well.“

 

My world felt opened up creatively,” she said. “There was a point that I got to as a writer who only wrote very diaristic songs that I felt it was unsustainable for my future moving forward. So what I felt after we put out ‘Folklore’ was like ‘oh wow, people are into this too, this thing that feels really good for my life and feels really good for my creativity… it feels good for them too?”

 

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I thought maybe some of the songs on evermore were ones that didn't make that cut on folklore but they were all made after folklore's release. 

 

With the success of both albums, she can now continue writing made up stories/characters.  It was really smart of her to change directions like this now that she's in her 30's. 

 

From Aaron's interview, there's a very good chance Taylor will be on on the next Big Red Machine album. 

 

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Rolling Stone interview with Aaron Dessner: Aaron Dessner on How His Collaborative Chemistry With Taylor Swift Led to ‘Evermore’

 

Billboard Intervew: Aaron Dessner on the 'Weird Avalanche' That Resulted in Taylor Swift's 'Evermore'

 

Article is on a paywall, so I'll post it in the spoiler tag. 

 

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[Toups]

6 unreleased songs!! 
 

 

 

[Toups]

 

 

 

So proud of her!!  She wrote Fearless when she was 17-18 years old, wrote 1989 when she was 23-24 years old, wrote folklore when she was 30, and all three albums are so different from each other.  What an artist! A legend at the age of 31!! 

 

I didn't think she was going to win AOTY when Dua won Best Vocal Album because only two times since 1995 has an album won AOTY without winning Best Album in its respected genre field. 

[Khan]

But that dress.  I needed an antihistamine after seeing that dress.