Decoy Wedding?!

I don’t know how we’ve ended up squabbling when we both seem to be on the same side - not exactly Swifties (despite my username!), like many of her songs but not automatically, and intelligent women who don’t fit the earlier accusation of ‘music for schoolgirls not adult women’. All I’m doing is quoting what she’s said. If she comes out in a yellow floral Dior wedding frock, I’ll take my cardigan off to you 🤣

I completely agree, there is absolutely a TS album for every mood. I think Midnights is probably the single most consistent of her albums for me, there is not a single song on there that I don't consider a masterpiece, including all bonus tracks, and everything about it, music, lyrics, production is just perfect. However, TTPD is my favourite because I just love it in all its messy, sad, angry,sprawling glory. I also like that it is clearly a snapshot of a very brief, though tumultuous, period in TS' life and couldn't have been written a few months before or after that, only while she was in that very specific mindset. As I've said elsewhere, while I consider TTPD to be a superior album to Showgirl, it is also very much an album of melancholia while Showgirl is decidedly a happy and loved-up record which I am glad about, I don't want TS to stay heartbroken just so she can write another TTPD for me!
Sorry to hear you had such a frightening birth experience but glad to hear it all ended happily! I had a mercifully very quick and straightforward planned c-section early last year and we chose to have folklore and evermore on in theatre as we thought they would be most soothing. I was chatting to a Swiftie nurse about TS while my epidural was being inserted! Our perfect baby was born to 'tis the damn season, very appropriate timing since it is one of my husband and I's favourite TS songs and because I am a bit obsessed with Christmas. We gave our baby an evermore-inspired name too!

I love Shake it Off, it's got me through some dark times. Bad Blood I agree with you on, it just never resonated with me.

As you say, there's some bangers on Lover but as a whole album I just find it feels a bit forgettable. I would never turn it off but it's not my favourite.

Fearless holds a special place in my heart, specifically the title track. After hours of difficult labour and an induction, my daughter decided it would be funny to somersault to an awkward breach position and I was rushed in for an emergency C-section. The anaesthetist asked my husband what music I liked and he said Taylor Swift. She only just avoided being born to Mean and instead came out to Fearless.

I think what I love is that there's always something for my mood. If I'm feeling moody and angry, TTPD. Wistful and creative- Folklore/Evermore. Silly and energetic, I'll stick LSOAG on and happily laugh along to Wood.

I really love the debut album, as you say, it isn't lyrically as polished as her later work but the song-writing is remarkable for someone so young. There are so many really great pop songs on the album which I think hold up extremely well, even when compared to her later work. Also, while TS has obviously developed significantly as a lyricist in the last twenty years, I still think the lyrics on debut are wonderful and very evocative considering they were all written between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. I consider TS to be the greatest lyricist in pop music history, a true lyrical poet, and, while her early songs may lack the sophistication and complexity of her later work, her authorial voice is already very clearly present in her early work and I would argue that that voice remained consistent throughout her albums. Yes, the vocabulary is far more extensive and the themes far more adult, but TS' lyrical style is still very distinctively her own.
I actually prefer Taylor Swift to Fearless as a whole album, I think it is a little more consistent than the latter. However, there isn't a single TS album I don't love. There are five I consider to be perfect, purely in order of preference these are:

1. The Tortured Poets Department
2. evermore
3. Midnights
4. Reputation
5. folklore

I love "I'd Lie." Her early stuff might not match the lyricism and polish of her more recent releases but it is still really impressive for someone so young.

She says she had already recorded the debut album so It would be a waste not to release it. Given that it's the twentieth anniversary of its release in October we are expecting something around then.
I am very excited about the vault tracks for this one. It will be lovely to get official releases for some of her lovely early songs which were left off the debut, particularly 'I'd Lie', which is such a brilliant song and which I only have a bootleg of.
I'm a little sad we won't get Reputation TV now but, since the original is perfect, I am relieved that she isn't left with the unenviable task of capturing that particular lightning in a bottle again! Still very much hope the Reputation vault tracks see the light of day though. Given the extraordinary quality of the 1989 vault tracks I can only imagine what the Reputation ones might be like!

Taylor has re-recorded some, but not all, of her previous albums; the ones that were sold. Debit was one of the ones she hasn't re-recorded. Now she's bought them all back there's not really any purpose to re-recording but she's included vault tracks in all the previous Taylor's Version recordings so some Swifties are hoping she will do the remaining ones.

They're making a doc about the wedding so we'll be seeing a lot more than the dress!

Re. your last line, what's debut TV?

Yes!

If they have kids, I can only imagine the beautiful music she will create when the love for her child swamps her. 🥹

Don't get me wrong, I am desperate to know every detail of the day and of her dress of course and will, of course, devour any and all information I can find and would also love a film about the day! I am a little ashamed of being so nosy and over-invested in the wedding of two people I don't know but, since I feel like I have been through TS' heartbreaks with her it is lovely to see her get a happy ending!
I must admit I am a sucker for melancholy Taylor, musically only of course. TTPD is still my favourite TS album, but I didn't want her to stay miserable so she could write another like it so while, for me, Showgirl wasn't in TTPD's league, it is clearly a loved-up happy album and that's great to hear!

Honestly, I feel really grumpy about not seeing the dress yet, lol! I know you're right, though. But I do love wedding dresses and I bet hers is spectacular! The NY Post apparently said she was going to do a whole film about her wedding, and I really hope she does, because I think it would be both interesting and beautiful.

In the meantime, I be like the image below about not seeing the dress yet! 🤣🤣

My husband and I are devoted Swifties, as are a number of our friends. I don't feel she owes me anything as she already shared her amazing music with us, so has given me far more than I have given her! I don't feel entitled to a piece of her wedding day on top of the music.
Having said that, I'd be lying if we hadn't been messaging each other frantically with wedding speculation over the last few weeks. Though there is always a great deal of esoteric TS chat happening around here so it's business as usual really. We'll be back to predictions about debut TV next week!

So the poster in question didn’t say she was excited and that her class was invested? And her next class was almost invested? What part am I making up? I’m only going by what I read.

There are people on this thread talking about two people as if they know them and they are privy to special information about it - if intelligent adults are doing this then it has to start somewhere. It’s a shame that it starts so early, that’s all.

If it makes you all happy to hero worship a pop star and talk about her ‘not egging her life’ (whatever that means) then you crack on. Feel free to ignore any comments that don’t accord with your own opinion.

Well, it would have been nice to see a photo when it was all going on. I feel the moment is over now and it's back to work tomorrow. Mean way to treat all the Swifties who are so loyal to her and put her where she is. They must be going crazy. (I'm not a Swiftie, I just like her, many of her songs although not all, and I do love a wedding dress.)

I didn't do Latin at my comp, either. I was going to write Mandarin but Latin is shorter. Talk about insanely sensitive!

Yes, she said that before she was engaged. Doesn't mean she was going to stick to it always. The bags weren't just Dior, they were by the specific Dior designer who was doing her dress, and she used them in the months when her dress was being made. Total Easter eggs. Two of them.

Precisely. I am decidedly not a fan of a certain famous band who got back together and played some high profile gigs in the UK last year. However, I somehow managed to refrain from joining threads where people were discussing their excitement about these shows to tell them they were all idiots because I think the band in question are terrible and I consider myself to be some kind of unquestionable arbiter of objective musical good taste! I was just happy for friends and family, and strangers, who were excited about seeing one of their favourite bands reform, the fact that, personally, I'd have needed to be paid a considerable sum to go near one of their shows, was pretty irrelevant to other' people's enthusiasm. I accept that we all like different things and that my taste is not superior to someone else's, which seems a bit of an arrogant stance to take to me!

It wasn't about her wedding. It was actually about using a sound from her name, if you want to be technical.

You seem to focus relentlessly on a single detail you've picked up on (sort of made up in this instance) and struggle with overall context. I suspect that's an issue not limited to mumsnet.

It. was. a. jumping. off. point. for. one. phonics. lesson. No more, no less.

The point was the phonics.

I guess you can't seem to understand that.

I also have to wonder why someone would go out of their way to post on a thread about an artist they don’t like just to tell everyone how terrible they think they are. When that thread is full of people who do like that person and her music.

What purpose does it serve? Other than to be unkind?

I am a very serious music fan. Music has always been a huge passion of mine, and I think my love of TS is very much compatible with my life-long devotion to great music. TS is very much the real deal as far as I am concerned, a proper old-school song-writer and a true lyrical poet.
Trying to suggest that Wood is in any representative of her work is ludicrous and shows you know almost nothing about her music. If you did you would know that Wood is notable as being the only even vaguely sexually explicit song in her entire extensive back catalogue and it is clearly a light-hearted Sabrina Carpenter pastiche.
As for the accusations that her music is not serious, I would ask you to listen to her two 2020 indiefolk sister albums, folklore and evermore, I think you will find they will challenge the incorrect and unfair conclusions you have drawn about her music.

My question was why her songs were vacuous. That’s all.

Does music have to be serious to not beconsidered vacuous? I don’t understand how you can declare all
of her songs vacuous when you’ve clearly only heard a small sample. That’s just lazy.

I’ve not called you misogynistic for not liking her songs. A fact you continue to ignore. I’ve made it clear that it’s absolutely fine to not like her music. It’s also not misogynistic to call a song vacuous but it is lazy to declare a whole catalogue of songs vacuous when you’ve not even listened to them.
I considered it misogynistic to call them vacuous because she writes about relationships- as I’ve said that’s rarely a criticism levelled at men when they write about relationships.
I considered it misogynistic when you referred to her outfit choices and dressing for the male gaze. It was also untrue.

It all felt like an attempt to say ‘look how cool I am, I listen to serious music’. When you can just say it’s not to your taste. Being unkind is an active choice.

So she's vacuous because she wrote one silly tongue-in-cheek song that you didn't find funny? Nevermind the other 200 and something songs she's written.

@MickyMoonshine It's just not serious music in my opinion.
That song about her husband's penis was embarrassingly bad.

Maybe I'm not looking at this through the same lens as you are.
I'm honestly not looking at it through a gender lens.

I am very much a music fan and that is where my thoughts on this come from.

It is not particularly misogynistic to me to describe her songs as vacuous as I say the same things about men.
That terrible Shotgun song. Awful.

Indeed I said that what vacuous, self-indulgent tosh 'Three lions' is to my dh just today.

Equally I say that women can be excellent songwriters e. g. Kate Bush, Chrissie Hynde.

So when somebody says it's misogynistic to criticise her music I'm like wtf?!

I am only still on this thread because of the misogyny accusation and my wish to defend myself against it.

I am going to leave it now because I do feel I'm spoiling it for others and I feel a bit bad for that. Though aibu was probably not the best place for it to be fair.

I don't wish to argue about it any more.