I’ve been interested to read the press around Taylor Swift’s new album. These big cultural events tell us much about where society’s collective head is at regarding the music industry, consumerism, the artist vs the art, and culture in general. I haven’t listened to much of Swift’s later work but I found the single ‘Anti-Hero’ really enjoyable. As many of her songs seem to, ‘Anti-Hero’ poked fun at the gossip and negative press about her. It seems as though that negative press is out in full force again with this latest album cycle and I was intrigued to get a sense of the substance behind it (or lack thereof). Many seem to resent her due to her status as an economic juggernaut, and her perceived consumerist repurposing of whatever genre she turns her attention to. It’s also hard to ignore the gendered nature of much criticism (or eye rolling, at least) regarding her perceived flightiness in relationships, much as was levelled at Joni Mitchell half a century ago. Ultimately the biographical, highly personal storytelling of her songs is written off by many as self-indulgence, or as coded references to keep the fans gossiping.
But so far, it’s all been about lyrics, socioeconomic context and life story. What my glance over the reviews for Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, made me realise is just how unmusical musical criticism is. I’ve read Pitchfork and other publications for many years; it’s not like I was unaware of this trend, but when you really think about it, it’s kind of absurd. In a 12 paragraph Pitchfork review, there is one point about production, which refers to the (male!) producers of the album, and one passing mention of ‘melody’. It feels as though the music itself has been completely omitted from the review in favour of lyrics, lyrics, lyrics, and the (female!) songwriter stripped of her musical agency. Of course, the lyrics of a song are half the package so they’re obviously of relevance – but without the music, which receives merely a passing offhand mention, they’d be poetry. And, as is the case for most songs which function beautifully in their hybrid state, that poetry wouldn’t be better than, y’know, actual poetry.
I decided to try and review Taylor Swift’s album on a purely musical basis, only referring to the lyrics in terms of how the music emphasises, connects to or undermines them. It’s not a serious attempt at a review (though the technical analysis has been pretty carefully done, and it took me long enough!), but more of a corrective exercise to demonstrate that Taylor Swift writes music, and that music does actually exist as notes, chords, rhythms, not just ‘Dessner’s understated production’ or ‘Antonoff’s glittering production’.
Here we go.
01: Fortnight
Melody:
The vocal melody in the verse has some pleasing syncopation, which then makes the more straightforward rhythms (and rhymes) like ‘all of this to say / I hope you’re okay’, sound childlike and more emotionally direct. There’s also something nice about the rhythmic looseness of the last line, ‘but what about your quiet treason?’ mirroring the surreptitiousness of the question. Range-wise, the tune mostly sticks within a 6th, from F# to D#, except for at the end of the verse where it dips lushly to a D#. The chorus melody has an insistent, more punchy rhythmic motif on ‘for a fortnight there we were’ which repeats three times with just the first note changing. It’s quite catchy and evocative too.
Harmony:
This song continually cycles round the same chord progression: IV V iii vi. Every second cycle, the third chord is replaced with a I, which gives those moments a more direct emotional strength. This variation could have perhaps been used more sparingly to highlight key lyrical moments; this would have made the rest of the chord progression feel more restless and those moments of resolution hit harder.
Rhythm:
A nice andante 4/4, with an alternating kick-snare rhythm. Nothing world-changing but it serves the purpose of the song really well.
Production:
The drums in this track are stripped back in a rhythm reminiscent of those synth-wave YouTube compilations. They pick up a bit in the choruses with a brighter snare sound and some hi hats… even the odd shaker (a human musician perchance?) The bass just pulses through the entire piece in 8th notes, with the only variation coming from some accents and passing notes. It’s soothing and warm and reminds me, both in terms of the chords themselves and its sound, of the music from ‘Bramble Blast’ in Donkey Kong Country 2. Minimal stuff happens in the midrange – the odd blast of a synth pad or mallet, lashings of reverb and of course the 40 other repitched versions of Taylor Swift and Post Malone’s vocals.
Vibe: This track is the kind of music someone might play if they were driving around some city on a late summer night in an idealised version of the 80s. The almost entirely electronic nature of it gives it a slightly clinical, detached feel, filtering out the minutiae of daily life and linking to an escapist world defined by love, beauty and the big existential questions. I quite liked this song and, though I feel like I’ve got other go-to tracks for the above context, I feel like this is a worthy addition to the canon of ‘idealised summer night driving music with an 80s urban twist’.
02: The Tortured Poets Department
Melody:
The melody for the first two lines of the verse is almost the same as the melody of the chorus of the previous track. It gets more distinctive after that – a bit of syncopated rapid fire lyrical ‘roasting’ leads us into a little bridge section which then, weirdly but charmingly, serves as the base melody for the chorus. It’s an unusual and asymmetrical transition into the chorus which is pleasantly disorientating. The chorus melody, and the way it is passed back and forth between octaves, is creative and rather haunting, and the plainness of the ascent to the IV degree of the scale combined with the move to that same chord is very expressive. Especially when the ascent repeats at the end of the chorus but combines with chord I and this time serves as a 4-3 suspension! The middle eight is quite freeform and gets a bit rambling. The melody at 2:45 is stronger than the one at 3:20- could it have been used at both moments to reinforce it?
Harmony:
This song doesn’t stray outside of the primary chords, I, IV, V and VI. With the synth arpeggiator rattling away on its diet of octaves and fifths in the background, it’s hard to know if there would have been any way to convincingly sidestep outside of this palette for a moment without it completely pulling the rug from under the song’s atmosphere. I suppose the question is, was the atmosphere worth preserving? I feel like there’s a lot of slightly unfocused music in the middle section that’s mainly there to accompany the storytelling; could this have at least ventured onto chord II, or chord VII?
Rhythm:
A mid tempo 4/4 with a drumbeat reminiscent of ‘It’s Like That’ by Run DMC. It feels a bit inflexible and unresponsive to the rest of the song – it might have been cool to rev it up with a bit of ‘four to the floor’ (god, how I hate that phrase) underneath the ‘you’re in self-sabotage mode’ segment of the verse as the rhythmic complexity of that feels unsupported- even a bit undermined- by the beat. Again, the arpeggiator probably gets in the way of this but: would a bit of a tempo increase over the song have been too much to ask?
Production:
The distant clanginess of the snare feels a bit out of place with the warm bass and the intimate, hushed vocals. There’s some real (I think) electric guitar and piano chiming away and outlining some nice add9 and maj7 chords which- dare I hazard?- link back to Swift’s first love – country! The ol’ synth arpeggiator (which I’m sure is probably worth more than my entire life’s income) flutters away intrusively over the choruses. I really enjoyed the warmth and haunting ambience of the chorus but felt that something needed to change when it got to the whole ‘you’re not Dylan Thomas […] We’re modern idiots’ segment – again, maybe the rhythm could have revved up a bit. Wasn’t sure about the thick organ (again, probably worth more than my entire life’s income) that comes in towards the end of the song- it felt almost comically out of place.
Vibe:
The cheerleading-type beat and bright, open sound of this track makes it feel a bit more combative than the previous track, but with a bittersweet and almost parental tenderness at points- particularly on those beautiful melodic ascents on ‘Who’s gonna love you like me?’. I did get a sense that maybe there were too many lyrics to fit into the song which results in an unfocussed middle eight with two- even three- separate ideas that the writer doesn’t really commit to.
03: My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys
Melody:
The first verse melody is a nifty descending sequence which then leaps up a whole 5th beyond its starting note. It’s creative and catchy. Then a little bridge of just two bars, escalating suddenly into the chorus. With chorus 1 landing at 0:27, the ‘don’t bore us, get to the chorus’ mantra has been observed here. The chorus melody didn’t particularly inspire me, even though, with its use of ‘Scotch snaps’, it gives me the first opportunity to use the phrase ‘Scotch snaps’ since I was doing my A Levels. The second verse has a completely different melody to the first and has some great moments, like the sudden jump into the exclaimed ‘repeating myself’, which feels like it mirrors the frustration expressed in the lyrics. There’s a little coda to this song which is quite a nice surprise.
Harmony:
We stray slightly out of the primary chords here, but that iii chord sounds a little anaemic. The other chords work nicely with the sparseness of the track but, with so little happening in the midrange to back it up, the iii feels a bit hollow.
Rhythm:
Another mid tempo 4/4 rhythm with a slowed down breakbeat-type thing- or is it meant to be like a marching drum line? Again, I think there could have been more subtle shifts in rhythmic emphasis to highlight contrasting sections. That syncopated kick drum punching away the whole way through makes the whole thing feel a bit unresponsive.
Production:
We’re still in the world of pads, arpeggiators, cavernous vocal reverb and what feel like real backing vocals rather than just repitched vocal lines. I like the dynamic and textural contrast between the verses and the choruses, and the way the intensity ramps up even more for the second part of the chorus.
Vibe:
With some clear vocal hooks and the militaristic percussion, this generally feels like a shot at a singalong anthem. It’s not my thing, but why would it be?
04: Down Bad
Melody:
Well, it’s not a vocal melody (or is it some distorted-to-hell, retuned-to-hell vocal sample), but it’s certainly prominent. I found the synth lead in the intro, and at any other point it came in, pretty distracting. But let’s move past that! I loved the verse melody with its soaring upward arpeggio followed by a drop back down, which mirrors the song’s metaphor of someone being unceremoniously dumped back on Earth after an alien abduction. Initially, I thought the chorus melody, which is pretty much glued to the 2nd degree of the scale, felt very unremarkable in comparison. But maybe that was the intention! We’ve got these quite cosmic, soaring lyrics with a melody to match in the verse, followed by the mundanity of ‘crying at the gym’. So the matching mundanity of the melody is quite effective, which then expands with lush vocoder-style harmonies and some impassioned octave doubling.
Harmony:
I V vi IV pretty much covers this song up to the end of the chorus, and I think the repetitiveness of that pays off in the post-chorus refrain at the 1 minute mark, where the V is exchanged for a iii (or is it Ib?)
Rhythm:
Another andante 4/4 rhythm which sounds like it could have just been exported directly from a drum machine. The kick drum intensifies and is more syncopated in the chorus. Again, I think the emphasis could have changed at moments to just inject a bit of ‘je ne sais quoi’ at choice points in the song.
Production:
This is back to our ‘night driving’ mode – muted drums, minimal bass, lashings of reverb, bursts of synth mallets and pads. The chiming DX7 sound takes me right back to ‘Dire, Dire Docks’ from Mario 64, which is exactly where I want to be taken sometimes.
Vibe:
This track has a resigned tone which matches the desolate nature of the lyrics. The city lights in the distance, some crickets chirping on the roadside and [insert continuing list of imagined 80s urban summer night touchstones here].
05: So Long, London
Melody:
The choral introduction is quite arresting, particularly following on from the last track, and reminded me a bit of ‘Green Bird’ from Cowboy Bebop. After that we’re into a rapid fire triplet sequence, then whisked into a slow hymn-like valediction to The Big Smoke. The choral vocals return in the final chorus to spirit London on its merry way.
Harmony:
The chords are played on a synth that sounds like something from a futuristic movie about a robocop who is avenging his robofamily but realises that he’s never going to get them back anyhow, meaning his vicious, industrial-scaled roborampage is all a bit futile. The voicings of the chords are also quite unusual, with close intervals such as 3rds appearing way down at the low end of the chord. I really like this because it goes against all conventional chord architecture and sounds great. When we get to the chorus the chord changes speed up to mirror the melody, like a choir made up of the robocop’s family in a flashback.
Rhythm:
This track breaks the 4/4 spell that had been cast over the ‘Tortured Poets’ Kingdom with some hard 6/8 (or is it 12/8?). Swift’s verse melody hemiolas across it creating a sense of weightlessness over the driving beat. Almost like a robocop (on his aforementioned revenge mission) gliding smoothly over the dystopian city.
Production:
There are some quite refreshing choices here which I’ve already sort of referenced. The sparsest bits of the song are probably the most arresting moments but it builds quite cathartically with a mix of synth pads and the organic sounds of funereal piano and chiming guitar.
Vibe:
At points this song does just sound a bit like someone has turned off the synth melody and the snare from ‘As It Was’ by Harry Styles and then put it all into 6/8. But I do quite like that song, and this gives us an idea of what it would sound like as a jig.
06: But Daddy I Love Him
Melody:
Over a vintage vi-IV-I-V progression (replete with an unyielding acoustic guitar ostinato) the verse melody feels pretty logical but a bit unadventurous. It gets a bit more interesting with the more legato bridge passage, which reaches for the higher register of Swift’s voice. The chorus melody feels quite ‘country’, especially with the pentatonic harmony below, and perhaps reminiscent of some of Swift’s earlier work. There are some other sections which feel constructed to house the bits of lyrics that didn’t fit into the rest of the song structure but don’t feel like they add much.
Harmony:
It’s quite a nice contrast between the bittersweet vi-IV-I-V chord progression of the verse with the much more majestic and triumphant major key tonality of the chorus. Generally the chord voicings and overall tonality of this song do mirror the openness of a lot of modern country. Considering that the theme of the song seems to be a clever riff on the classic ‘forbidden love’ theme of many country songs (where the stock character of the overprotective father has been swapped out for puritanical fans), it’s quite fitting for the chord palette to echo that style.
Rhythm:
Another big mid-tempo pop beat which feels similar to the one from ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’. This time there’s less of that syncopated kick drum which I was beginning to get a bit tired of in the earlier songs- here it is mostly just marking out the primary beats, doubling up the snare on the 2 and the 4. It serves the song well, I’d say.
Production:
This song is a bit more organic than previous tracks somehow, with an acoustic guitar foregrounding the verse and some real strings doing bits and bobs. Pulsing synths add some shimmering drive to the chorus. Overall the whole production has a gentle warmth.
Vibe:
Bittersweet, end of summer (on a farm, probably) atmospheres in the verse contrast with euphoric highs of the chorus, which suggests this overall sense of the ephemerality of love, while also glorying in its power and purity in face of the jaded naysayers.
07: Fresh Out the Slammer
Melody: This song gives my second big opportunity to use the phrase ‘Scotch snaps’, due to its frequent deployment of ‘Scotch snaps’. In the verse, the vocal melody sits on the 2nd degree of the scale over the I chord before dropping to the 7th degree when the chord shifts to the relative minor, meaning we have ourselves two implied add9 chords in a row. To me this melody has a rather timeworn, Romantic feel. Then the drums come in and the Scotch snaps come thick and fast, again sitting on that 2nd degree of the scale before dropping impressively to a low D. Generally it doesn’t feel like it’s a particularly creative vessel for the inventive and quite cryptic lyrics. The chorus – I think? – is a restatement of the intro melody but octave doubled.
Harmony:
The strummed electric guitar is muddy with some dense maj7 chords chiming, just on the edge of being out of tune, in a sort of lo-fi, bedroom pop, Clairo-type way. It’s nice to hear, because it’s very human-sounding. Unfortunately although the chords are extended, they’re still just I, vi, IV, and the fatigue is perhaps setting in after not hearing much else beyond this for the last 6 tracks.
Rhythm:
Once the drums are in, we’ve got that same kick > snare > pushed kick > snare beat that we had some form of in tracks 2, 3 and 4 and a similar tempo. It feels like the 3-3-2 rhythm hinted at by the guitar strumming pattern could have been taken up by the drums for a slightly more unusual and refreshing beat. One thing that was cool is the way the tempo and beat suddenly changed for the outro. I liked this second beat a lot more.
Production:
I enjoyed the slightly cuspy tuning of the electric guitar which reminded me of Clairo, or Yo La Tengo, or something like that. I’m surprised they didn’t chuck some chirping cricket SFX to really hammer home that ‘recording on my old Tascam’ vibe. When everything came in with the drums though it did feel like more of the same as we’ve had already – fluttery arpeggiated synths, syncopated drum beat, piano and guitar just marking out the 1 on every chord change. Bonus points though for the sudden switch-up towards the end which did feel a little outside of what I’d heard so far.
Vibe:
I don’t really know where to place this one. With all its dense add9, maj7 and generally quite muddy guitar chords it didn’t give me that ‘night drive’ feel, and it didn’t sound like country either. The production was a bit too ornate for it to have the intimacy and fragility of DIY bedroom pop.
08: Florida!!!
Melody:
This track has a strong melody for the first segment which felt really satisfying. The second verse, sung by Florence Welch, sounded a bit more ad-libbed. The middle eight, which felt like it built into its own anthem, was also catchy but perhaps not as cinematic and sweeping as that first bit.
Harmony:
The harmonic palette of this one felt a bit like a 70s Fleetwood Mac song, which was nice.
Rhythm:
The tempo’s a bit higher for this one, and that pulsing bass felt like it was building to something a bit more rocky. When the slamming drums came in on the chorus, I wondered if we were about to go into a Vampire Weekend-style rock rhythm. Alas, when the drums do come in, they’re in half time, which takes away some of the tension of the song.
Production:
Given that the vocals have been silky smooth throughout the album so far, the contrast brought by Florence Welch’s vibrato-rich voice is as much of a shock as Tymon Dogg parachuting in for that one song on Sandinista by The Clash. The production otherwise is a bit more ‘classic rock’ like the aforementioned 80s Fleetwood Mac song, but all underpinned by that pulsing bass synth.
Vibe:
This has grown on me since first listening to it but I can’t say I understood the rationale behind another vocalist just randomly appearing on the album and I rarely do with guest appearances, unless they seem integral to the song’s story, or simply reach notes the other singer can’t. In ‘Florida!!!’, are Florence and Taylor Swift both singing from the same ‘I’? Or are they speaking to each other, comparing their experiences of Florida? It’s not particularly clear, but the song has a nice atmosphere and feels quite ‘literary’ because of its attempt to ‘tackle’ the idea of a particular place, like the film Belfast.
09: Guilty As Sin
Melody:
Lyrical, legato melody. I generally liked how rich this sounds. The chorus melody clung to the 2nd degree of the scale a bit too much, but it had a nice hook at the end of the first two lines.
Harmony:
This song has quite a reflective minor key tonality, although it goes to the relative major for the chorus. The twangy guitar ostinato adds some nice colour to the chords.
Rhythm:
4/4, mid tempo, kick > snare > kick > snare, but with a slightly looser, organic groove, and even a real tambourine! I am still wishing for a bit more variation in rhythm and tempo at this point in the album.
Production:
This track felt quite inspired by something off HAIM’s third album- that lush organic sound combines with some understated vocals and works nicely as a more stripped back effort.
Vibe:
This is wistful and summer-y, but more like a 90s romantic teen movie than the 80s late night drive music that the album’s had a lot of so far. It does have a superficial resemblance to ‘Kiss Me’ by Sixpence None the Richer, and I quite like that song.
10: Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?
Melody:
A lot of repeated motifs with emphasis on the 2nd degree of the scale. There are hushed parlando moments, juxtaposed with big stratospheric leaps, meaning that the song has quite a theatrical feel.
Rhythm:
Alright, we’ve got a 3-3-2 additive rhythm here which feels a bit more part of the DNA of the song and gives it a different energy to this from some of the other tracks. The rhythm section is quite start-stoppy, with drums marking some of the narrative moments.
Harmony:
This track has a quasi-Wild West feel due to the minor tonality with a major IV chord- it’s that combination of grim, detached triumph that this particular chord palette evokes. There’s a key change, or at least a change of emphasis, in the chorus to the major VII chord of the first segment.
Production:
This has a retro cinematic feel- strings, brass and that tubular bell they always use in Wild West movies play alongside arpeggiated synth bass. The big contrasts between full orchestra and near silence are effective.
Vibe:
This song had a captivating sense of theatre and tension in its own right but it felt so discordant with everything else on the album and might have worked better as part of a different project.
11: I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)
Melody:
The verse has an understated and sultry melody in the Mixolydian mode, which is unusual for the album. It shifts subtly into something more poignant in the chorus, mirroring the key change.
Rhythm:
This song has a lumbering swagger which is organic and enjoyable.
Harmony:
This is the first time in this review that I can’t just use straight Roman numerals to describe the chord progression, because the pattern in the verse begins with a flattened III chord. The harmonic world, combined with the Mixolydian melody, sounds a lot more slinky and emotionally detached. In the move to the chorus, something quite cool happens where the first two chords of the progression, ♭III and IV are repurposed to become the IV and V of our new key. Of course this only becomes clear when we hit the vi on chord 3, so the chorus’s sense of melancholy is quite a surprising and slow dawning shift that you only notice a couple of bars in.
Production:
The slide guitar gives a hint of a bluesy countermelody which, again, is repurposed into something more mournful in the chorus. There are some nice choral harmonies in verse 2 that reminded me of ‘Personal Eclipse’ by The Weather Station. I liked the combination of the acoustic guitar with the rhythmic tremolo (I think?) of the electric guitar. This generally had a very organic and intimate sound-world foregrounded against some quite epic percussion.
Vibe:
I really liked this one- the way it plunges you into the middle of a story. It made me think of a road trip across a desert. It’s subtle and more nuanced and has more of a narrative progression – from self-delusion to dawning realisation. This was one of my favourite tracks on the album.
12: loml
Melody:
This went back to the anchor point of that 2nd degree of the scale, with lots of repeating hooks.
Harmony:
The repeated 4th (F) over all the chords gives some interesting colours to the harmonies, and our first V7 chord of the album. Otherwise, it’s primary chords all round and I think I wanted something a little different.
Rhythm:
A gentle 3-3-2 rhythm which is nice in a piano ballad.
Production:
This is the cigarette lighter/phone torch moment, isn’t it. It’s piano, backed by some sort of vintage-sounding keyboard. Every album’s gotta have one, but I wasn’t bowled over by it.
Vibe:
It feels like the lyrics are the main strength of this song- the DNA of the song felt overly similar to a lot of other tracks, as though it had been picked to be ‘the ballad’ of the album and was given the stripped back arrangement to suit.
13: I Can Do It With A Broken Heart
Melody:
The verse melody had much more of an arc to it than some of the other poppier tracks on the album and some interesting progressions of phrase. The chorus tune was fantastic in its joyousness, reinforcing that discord between the pain expressed in the lyrics and the demands of performing.
Harmony:
The big, triumphant sounding major key tonality also clashes brilliantly with the lyrics. There’s also the first and last (b)VII chord of the album, just at the very end of the song (3:20) which sounds like it’s lifted from some 80s corporate video.
Rhythm:
Generally this song has a fairly minimal beat, until we reach the chorus and its jittery, heavily metronomic 16th beat drive, which was quite surprising and enjoyable.
Production:
That weird blokey voice shouting the count-ins reminded me of the guy who shouts ‘are you ready for the DJ?’ in a recent Ross from Friends track. Did they both hire the same guy? I imagine him looking a bit like Gordon Ramsay. I really liked the overall progression of the song into the stuttery chorus, which reminded me of a KPop song.
Vibe:
This felt like something out of that ‘Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too’ episode of Black Mirror- that combination of happy-go-lucky pop with that slightly sinister male voice and the despairing lyrics.
14: The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
Melody:
I like how the melody follows the chords initially without any strong beat underpinning it, meaning you only realise it’s all syncopated in a dotted rhythm when more of the rhythm section comes in. The verse melody is folky and quite haunting in its simplicity. The melody in the rest of the song didn’t really have a huge amount that was memorable about it and felt purely like a vessel for the lyrics rather than a creative element in itself.
Harmony:
The chord voicing and the general sparseness of the verse was really effective. The I vi V IV progression of the outro felt a bit throwaway in comparison, like someone had pressed the ‘Catharsis!’ button.
Rhythm:
The chord and melody movements in the verse were a cool clave-type rhythm against the percussion. At the end it all gets a bit Sigur Ros but without the complete abandon that makes those moments work (well, sometimes).
Production:
It sort of felt like two different songs, and I liked the production on the first one more.
Vibe:
I think the song had to go somewhere, but the final reckoning felt a bit forced somehow (I’m talking musically here). I guess this is one way that streaming, playlisting and so on has affected songwriting- this song had to be a self contained unit of tension and release rather than a question that could be answered in a subsequent track.
15: The Alchemy
Melody:
Here we have more leaning on the 2nd degree of the scale in the chorus melody and vocal rhythms in the verse that seem inspired by hip hop. A nice lyrical pre-verse section which returns at the end of the song and goes to what (surely!) must be the lowest note of Swift’s vocal range.
Harmony:
We’ve got a wistful Cmaj7 chord starting this track but somehow the thickness of the guitar part muddies it up a bit. The chorus is an uplifting and very uncomplicated I V vi IV, which feels like it lacks nuance, given the journey the narrator has been on through the album to get to this point.
Rhythm:
The song features a very slow beat, which feels like it drains any joy out of the song.
Production:
This track doesn’t do anything particularly maverick in the context of this album but it serves the song well.
Vibe:
This track has the sense of being a slightly tacked on, half-hearted resolution.
16: Clara Bow
Lyrics:
I know I’ve been avoiding a focus on the lyrics in this review but I honestly thought they were brilliant in this song. A haunting journey through different eras of female stars shows the transitory nature of fame and the way the industry and fans pit these artists against each other. The ‘twist’ ending, where Taylor Swift herself is one of the touchstones referenced, did feel quite haunting and indicative of a more general meditation on time, ephemerality and the fact that we’ll all probably be forgotten eventually.
Melody:
The verse melody is marcato with little pauses between the first three notes. In the bridge passage, the emotive slide on ‘die’ each time evokes vulnerability and passion. The chorus melody leaps up and down as if reflecting the precarity, the highs and lows, of show-business.
Rhythm:
A stripped back tresillo rhythm serves the song well.
Harmony:
Uniquely in the album: this track uses of a bass pedal on the tonic, D, underneath the verse’s shifting vi V IV Ib chord progression. It’s very stripped back, quite murky and quite ‘grim’ which really adds to the darkness of the song. Subtle pads and squeaky strings mark out some more complex chords – added 9ths, 4ths and so on. In the bridge, the rising higher note of the chord suggests a sense of hope, as if something good is waiting through the fog. The chorus chord progression is using the primary chords but it combines with the vocal melody to create some pleasing discords.
Production: The overall sparseness of the production, particularly at the start of each verse, gives this song a haunting atmosphere. It’s all muted and slightly underwater sounding.
Vibe: For me this track was the highlight of the album. The economy of the melody, production and lyrics makes it feel like the most focussed and restrained song. It’s compassionate but icy, world-weary but Zen, and is a great way to end the album.
General impressions
It’s been an interesting exercise reviewing this album. I have spent much more time listening to it than I have done recent albums by artists I love, and this speaks volumes about the effect that a continuous, overwhelming barrage of new music has on the attention span.
It also makes me realise how difficult it is to write interestingly about the purely musical merits of an album (I don’t necessarily think I’ve achieved this aim) and why reviewers might leap for the more attention-grabbing, salacious lyrical content. But it demeans music, and the musicians who make it, to completely ignore those elements. Ultimately, if people didn’t enjoy the artist’s music (even on some subconscious level, as a bed for the lyrical intrigue) they would be unlikely to listen to the songs. And if Swift released a spoken word album, or an album of serialist lieds, it doesn’t seem likely that fans would repeatedly listen to it in the way that they do this.
Listening critically forced me to seek out the merits or flaws in what felt like a relatively fair-minded way. Generally I felt there were certain chord progressions and even melodic features (such as emphasis on the 2nd degree of the scale, a rhythmic displacement about a crotchet away from the beginning of a bar, etc) that were a bit over-used and contributed to a slight feeling of sameness and interchangeability. Every composer has their autopilot setting- I know I do. None of these features were bad in isolation and were actually really enjoyable at points – it was just those points where it felt a bit thrown in to service another jokey extended metaphor (“We got our big Hollywood ending / but all the actors went on strike”- that’s one by me you can have for free– and so on, and so on). Rhythmically speaking, I would have enjoyed more variation in tempo, time signature and drum patterns.
I think my conclusion is that the album could have been 12 tracks and that those tracks could have been slimmed down. The fact that Swift released 16 more tracks on the same day (which I think I will pass on reviewing) just baffles me.
I guess it’d be nice if one of the most successful songwriters on the planet did venture outside of their musical comfort zone more often, but maybe their success is down to the fact they don’t! ‘I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) gives a window into a parallel universe where Taylor Swift goes in a more bluesy, or jazzy direction and I really like the idea of her exploring these worlds further.
Ultimately, even when production can be quite bold, I often regret the lack of harmonic and rhythmic innovation in pop music, which is why I can’t say I’m a card-carrying ‘poptimist’. But there are people out there creating brilliant, moving music that does push the boat out a bit further; a recent favourite of mine has been ‘Little Vampire’ by Gretel, where the unusual melody and chord changes fuel each other on. I guess I just wish those people were getting a few more streams themselves, so they had the income and the creative freedom to pursue these explorations in songwriting. Without more critical analysis of the music – and identification of when it gets a bit same-y or fatigued – I fear there’s not as much of an incentive for musicians to explore and be bold.
Filmtracks would be proud of this review.