Red: a liveblog

[Byron The Bulb]

oh god this thing has 16 songs on it.

01. "State of Grace" - released as a single already. it's the one that "sounds like U2" according to every press release-parroting blog post written about it. and, well, it does. shimmery guitars, arena size drums, soaring, life affirming vocals, etc. seems kind of an odd choice to kick off the album with a lighter-up anthem, but i guess it might also work as a nicely bombastic overture type thing.

02. "Red" - "loving him is like driving a new maserati down a dead end street" is a pretty killer opening line. this sounds way more like standard taylor swift than the opener, though the drums are still much more pronounced and muscular than they ever were on the older records. man, this thing is just piling hooks on top of hooks. it's only the second song and this is already starting to get kind of tiring, but in a good way?

03. "Treacherous" - i guess this is meant to be a cool down song. gentle guitar strumming, more subdued vocals. i can't decide if "all we are is skin and bone, trained to get along" is a great or terrible line.

04. "In Knew You Were Trouble" - the "dubstep" song. the bass drop at the chorus is still kinda shocking, so is the almost house-ish pre-hook piano figure. like the three songs before it, and like "we are never..." the lyrics repeatedly employ repetition in fairly interesting ways. the part on the hook where she alternates "i knew you were trouble when you walked in" with "trouble, trouble, trouble" makes it sound like she's doing her own back-up vocals. self-absorbtion or self-reliance?

05. "All Too Well" - first song that actually sounds like something you'd hear on country radio. oh man, this is five and a half minutes long. i can already predict that it's gonna build into a big time soaring climax. yep. "you call me up again just to break me like a promise/so casually cruel in the name of being honest" is a really overwrought line that's also kinda like really pointed? taylor swift in a nutshell, i guess.

06. "22" - this sounds like it was practically made to soundtrack a scene on "Girls" or something. “we’re happy, free, confused and lonely in the best way/ it’s miserable and magical.” a little too on the nose, but a better "oh the harships of being young good looking and privileged" track than that terrible fun. song from last year.

07. "I Almost Do" - least interesting track so far. pretty much a cookie-cutter taylor swift deep cut, which means it has a slightly sharper melody and more interesting songwriting than most things on the radio, but nothing about it really stands out as particularly stunning or noteworthy.

08. "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" - you've all heard this already. interesting that this is at the half-way point, as the songs up to now have alternated between "man, new relationships are exhilarating" and "man, relationships are frustrating!" and i guess this is maybe the 'climax' of the second grouping? is this a concept album?

this is exhausting. i need a break. i'll be back after lunch to do the second half.

 

[Byron The Bulb]

09. "Stay Stay Stay" - whoa, this is jaunty as fuck. "i'm pretty sure we almost broke up last night" continuity from the last song, or an alternate history? this is a concept album. more repetition-as-lyrical-motif, too. "stay and i'll be loving you for quite some time/no one else is gonna love me when I get mad mad mad/so i think that it's best if we both stay stay stay stay." is this a song about settling?

10. "The Last Time" - wtf this starts out with a dude singing. track list says it's the guy from snow patrol. whoa, two-part harmony. this is back firmly in arena-rock territory, though it's a little more cloying and less dynamic or effective than "state of grace." it's really starting to drag now. easily the weakest song so far. i blame the snow patrol guy.

11. "Holy Ground" - back to propulsiveness after the longueurs of the last track. the whole song is built entirely around the drums. wait a minute this actually kinda sounds like "all my friends" if you squint hard enough.

12. "Sad Beautiful Tragic" - wow that's a bad song title. pretty song, but largely unremarkable. basically a less effective version of speak now's "last kiss." runs on way too long, and there aren't enough concrete details in the lyrics to redeem the song's reliance on overt cliches. album has definitely hit a second half lull.

13. "The Lucky One" - starting off much more promising than the last few. also built around the drums, but swift does a much better job of wedding her vocals to the rhythm than on some of the other tracks here. i guess this is the "trials and travails of being famous" song. kind of a really interesting shift in narrative perspective from verse to verse. not as strong as the first six songs, but better than the last few. i think this may reward multiple listens.

14. "Everything Has Changed" - taylor swift albums are not meant to be listened to straight through. i think this might be a good song, or it might now, but i've been desensitized to all the tricks and flourishes and patterns she's pretty regularly deploying on this record. ending is pretty good.

15. "Starlight" - at this point i'm just waiting for the end. i have nothing to say about this song.

16. "Begin Again" - well, it ends on a high note at least. best or second best song on the album. not as radical a departure from her normal sound as others, but rather a natural, organic progression of the aesthetic she spent the three albums crafting. ending an album filled with painful break-up songs with one about the unbridled optimism of meeting someone new is an interesting choice, and casts a weird shadow over the song itself, and also, along with the title, invites a cyclical reading of the album as a whole. it's like finnegans wake!

 

[Brooklyn Zoo]

Cool. I'm guessing this wasn't the classic you expected, though.

You should do Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.A.d city.

 

[Byron The Bulb]

There's a classic in there, but too much filler as is. Maybe I'll put together an edited version.

 

[Mickey Massuco]

I'm gonna be liveblogging a classic during maff tonight, stay tuned

 

[Byron The Bulb]

Once "I Knew You Were Trouble" starts to catch fire on the radio (and it will) I'm pretty sure it's gonna hit "Bad Romance" and "Call Me Maybe" levels of on-air saturation.

 

[KOAB]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPMoh78b-Hg

My thoughts on this masterpiece

 

[Mattdotcom]

For $22 you can get this and a large one topping pizza from Papa John's delivered to your house

 

[MFer]

Sold over a mil last week...highest numbers since The Eminem Show a decade ago.

 

[bps21]

I like some of these songs...but there's a lot of questionable stuff on here that should have been cut. A lot of it wouldn't have made the speak now album which had a bunch of great tracks. The only song that reaches her top stuff on the whole album is "all to well" IMO.

1,2,3,16 are decent. And the one up tempo song about being a 22 year old slut is mindlessly listenable. Should have cut half the back end of the album.

By comparison I'd have only cut 2 of the 14 tracks off of speak now...on this album I could easily pare it down to 10 without having to think about it.

 

[Byron The Bulb]

"State of Grace," "All Too Well" and "Begin Again" are as good or better than anything she's ever written, but yeah, lots and lots of filler here.

 

[MFer]

Once "I Knew You Were Trouble" starts to catch fire on the radio (and it will) I'm pretty sure it's gonna hit "Bad Romance" and "Call Me Maybe" levels of on-air saturation.

Taylor Swift - I Knew You Were Trouble

 

[Baby Shoes]

Amazon has the download on sale for $1.99 today. Now I can live this thread.