The rework on the unreleased tracks approximate Red to Swift’s newer musical inclinations, with recent collaborators Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff to take care of the songs from the vaults, enhancing the record with newly-acquired shades in her sound palette. With Red (Taylor’s Version), Swift decreases the distance between the two spots: most songs are autobiographical, but then there’s “Ronan,” a devastating song inspired by a mother’s blog about her 5-year-old son who died from cancer and “The Lucky One,” which is rumored to be about Joni Mitchell and Kim Wilde. With Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swift proved that it was possible to revisit the past, distancing herself from the acclaimed position of third-person narrator shown on folklore and evermore while still cohesive with her current artistic identity. The Taylor’s version of “Holy Ground” is graced with new synthesizers that hit from all sides and provide an energy boost to the already lively track. Its loud electric guitars and muffled vocals prove that Red is cooler than any indie record sitting at her ex-boyfriend’s collection. Intro track “State of Grace” is still a charmer, a festival anthem to Glastonbury proportions.
But the rest of Red (Taylor’s Version) hits how it’s supposed to, prodding the sword even deeper than expected at some points. The absence of original producer Max Martin is felt on “We Are Never Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble,” both with cleaner productions that erase the rage of their former versions. Just like it happened on Fearless (Taylor’s Version), it seems like the most well-known tracks are doomed to lack vibrancy. Red (Taylor’s Version) attempts to fix some mistakes: “Girl At Home,” noticeably the weakest song on the original album, gets new electronic arrangements produced by Swedish producer Elvira Anderfjärd, though not much strength is obtained. On Red (Taylor’s Version), the second re-recorded album in a list of six she’s redoing from scratch, Swift owns up to the mess, knitting together tracks from the standard and deluxe editions of Red, adding tracks she wrote for other artists (“Better Man” and “Babe), a stand-alone charity single (“Ronan”), and seven unreleased tracks from the Vault, which include a 10-minute version of “All To Well.” Yep, Swift’s been busy.
#Joni mitchell and kim wilde full#
It was an album full of imagery, each song with scenes surrounding you like fog, its lyrics highly personal but equally immersive. There were breakup songs, excruciating gloominess, flecks of happiness, partying, jealousy, confidence, insecurity. Much like a relationship, Red was musically jumbled, thematically messy, and all-around intense. The record marked the singer’s partial departure from country music, with dismal guitar-layered ballads sitting among subdued EDM and dubstep beats. On it, Swift shielded herself with red lipstick and Max Martin-produced pop songs that could make her critics bang their heads and swallow their mean words for three minutes. Right there, in between the “how come no one thought of writing this before?” and the “that’s so clever” inner statements, there’s enough space to feel sorry for her on “The Moment I Knew.” To get teary about her things being mailed back on “All Too Well.” To go back in time with “22,” and call your ex-boyfriend names with “I Knew You Were Trouble.” At times deluged with melodrama, Red was the narration of a relationship gone wrong, written by a famous young woman falling victim to tabloids and misogynist jokes. On 2012’s Red, Swift mastered giving people the words they wanted to say but didn’t know how.
That’s what’s made Swift a popstar with so many hidden gems and deep cuts amidst her chart-topping saccharine hits: for every track with a “haters gonna hate, hate, hate” line, there is a song like “Clean,” with more meaningful and well-written lyrics. Most of us, mere mortals, have difficulty formatting happy birthday posts to Facebook friends, but Swift’s mind seems inundated with obvious but neglected figures of speech and heart-wrenching rhymes. That’s partly because while we rush to get rid of memorabilia remnants from love fiascos, Swift inserts them in pop hits that will live forever in the annals of breakup songs, turning them into fanbase vernacular. All this gives fans a sense of secrecy that many artists aim at but fail to provide. In her lyrics, plaid shirts take on different connotations, refrigerator lights flash through the mind with psychological importance, Gucci scarves become a symbol of saudade. Her songwriting is suitable for magnifying glasses, lengthy online forum discussions, and Twitter threads with numerical theories. The words in Taylor Swift songs usually mean something else.
0 kommentar(er)
