Byron The Bulb
Byron the bulb
- Messages
- 18,074
- Reaction score
- 9
- Points
- 0
Realized I still had $10 left on on iTunes giftcard. Here we go.
1. "Welcome to New York"
This is not a good start. Did you know that Taylor Swift is now New York City's global tourism ambassador? This song is a nothing. Utterly indistinct. Easily the weakest opening track on any Taylor Swift album. I'm worried.
2. "Blank Space"
Ok, now we're talking. This is on some weird 'is she joking?' Lana Del Rey sex fantasy power play shit. "Find out what you want/Be that girl for a month/Wait, the worst is yet to come" -- is this song about Gone Girl? "Boys only want love if it's torture/Don't say I didn't, say I didn't, warn ya" dang. We've come a long way from songs about kissing boys in truck beds.
3. "Style"
This sounds like the Drive soundtrack. What's happening.
4. "Out of the Woods"
This has drums that kinda sound like 808s and Heartbreak, which raises an interesting question: Is this album Taylor Swift's 808s and Heartbreak? Answer unclear, at this point. The bridge of this makes the implied violence that had kinda been burbling under the last two tracks explicit: "Remember when we braked too soon? Twenty stitches in a hospital room/You started crying, and I did too." If that stupid New York song had been dropped this would be an all-time great album opening troika.
5. "All You Had to Do Was Stay"
Kinda dials things back after the last three. This is more or less just there. Kind of a cool falsetto effect on the chorus. The bridge is neat. This album has a lot of neat bridges so far.
6. "Shake it Off"
I hated this song until I heard it in the gym one day and it helped me get through a tough squat set.
7. "I Wish You Would"
First time the drums came in on the chorus here my eyebrows involuntarily rose. As with the last two songs, the lyrics here are pretty indistinct, but it almost doesn't matter because the vocals are more or less just part of the Miami Vice-themed junior prom soundscape.
8. "Bad Blood"
Rhyming "mad love" and "bad blood" over stompy arena rock drums. She sings "now we got problems, and I don't think we can solve them" like it's a schoolyard threat. When she starts cooing "Band-aids don't fix bullet holes/you say sorry just for show/if you live like that, you live with ghosts/if you love like that, blood runs cold" I can't help but thinking she's threatening to kill.
9. "Wildest Dreams"
This really sounds like Lana Del Rey. The premise of this song is that she's singing to some guy she's about to have a short lived fling with and demanding that he assure he that he'll never forget her. "Someday when you leave me/I'll bet these memories follow you around." So fatalistic.
10. "How You Get the Girl"
"Stand there like a ghost/Shaking from the rain," "I want you, for worse or better/I would wait forever and ever/Broke your heart, I'll put it back together." Like all great western art, 1989 is mostly about sex and death and obsession.
11. "This Love"
Will be on every singly wedding DJ in America's playlist in less than a year. "This love is a life back from the dead/These hands had to let it go free/This love came back to me." I think you could construct a rough narrative out of these songs about a woman who kills a lousy good for nothing man and then spends the rest of her life obsessing about his ghost. In this reading, the "New York City" of the opening track is actually the city of the dead.
12. "I Know Places"
"And you're dead at night, your eyes so green/And I know for you, it's always me"
13. "Clean"
"The drought was the very worst/When the flowers that we'd grown together died of thirst," "There was nothing left to do/When the butterflies turned to dust, they covered my whole room." Taylor Swift has written a Waste Land for the 21th century.
1. "Welcome to New York"
This is not a good start. Did you know that Taylor Swift is now New York City's global tourism ambassador? This song is a nothing. Utterly indistinct. Easily the weakest opening track on any Taylor Swift album. I'm worried.
2. "Blank Space"
Ok, now we're talking. This is on some weird 'is she joking?' Lana Del Rey sex fantasy power play shit. "Find out what you want/Be that girl for a month/Wait, the worst is yet to come" -- is this song about Gone Girl? "Boys only want love if it's torture/Don't say I didn't, say I didn't, warn ya" dang. We've come a long way from songs about kissing boys in truck beds.
3. "Style"
This sounds like the Drive soundtrack. What's happening.
4. "Out of the Woods"
This has drums that kinda sound like 808s and Heartbreak, which raises an interesting question: Is this album Taylor Swift's 808s and Heartbreak? Answer unclear, at this point. The bridge of this makes the implied violence that had kinda been burbling under the last two tracks explicit: "Remember when we braked too soon? Twenty stitches in a hospital room/You started crying, and I did too." If that stupid New York song had been dropped this would be an all-time great album opening troika.
5. "All You Had to Do Was Stay"
Kinda dials things back after the last three. This is more or less just there. Kind of a cool falsetto effect on the chorus. The bridge is neat. This album has a lot of neat bridges so far.
6. "Shake it Off"
I hated this song until I heard it in the gym one day and it helped me get through a tough squat set.
7. "I Wish You Would"
First time the drums came in on the chorus here my eyebrows involuntarily rose. As with the last two songs, the lyrics here are pretty indistinct, but it almost doesn't matter because the vocals are more or less just part of the Miami Vice-themed junior prom soundscape.
8. "Bad Blood"
Rhyming "mad love" and "bad blood" over stompy arena rock drums. She sings "now we got problems, and I don't think we can solve them" like it's a schoolyard threat. When she starts cooing "Band-aids don't fix bullet holes/you say sorry just for show/if you live like that, you live with ghosts/if you love like that, blood runs cold" I can't help but thinking she's threatening to kill.
9. "Wildest Dreams"
This really sounds like Lana Del Rey. The premise of this song is that she's singing to some guy she's about to have a short lived fling with and demanding that he assure he that he'll never forget her. "Someday when you leave me/I'll bet these memories follow you around." So fatalistic.
10. "How You Get the Girl"
"Stand there like a ghost/Shaking from the rain," "I want you, for worse or better/I would wait forever and ever/Broke your heart, I'll put it back together." Like all great western art, 1989 is mostly about sex and death and obsession.
11. "This Love"
Will be on every singly wedding DJ in America's playlist in less than a year. "This love is a life back from the dead/These hands had to let it go free/This love came back to me." I think you could construct a rough narrative out of these songs about a woman who kills a lousy good for nothing man and then spends the rest of her life obsessing about his ghost. In this reading, the "New York City" of the opening track is actually the city of the dead.
12. "I Know Places"
"And you're dead at night, your eyes so green/And I know for you, it's always me"
13. "Clean"
"The drought was the very worst/When the flowers that we'd grown together died of thirst," "There was nothing left to do/When the butterflies turned to dust, they covered my whole room." Taylor Swift has written a Waste Land for the 21th century.
