notesonartistry

[notesonartistry]

#spotify #breaking records #streaming

[notesonartistry]

Taylor Swift watching her ex on a location app because he forgot to turn it off I'm obsessed with you admitting that to the entire world.

#stalking on an app #and looking in people's windows

[notesonartistry]

my boy only breaks his favorite toys - taylor swift

[notesonartistry]

I actually think reducing interpretations of songs down to if it’s about Joe or mh does a massive disservice to what this is…taylor is finally centering herself. It’s about the themes of those life events not those people specifically. Things are now way bigger and more intertwined and complicated that clean chapters per person. Someone one time posted something about how women in our 30’s are finally no longer constantly perceived by men so we learn to live outside the male gaze…this album is Taylor’s gaze

#it's all about Taylor

[notesonartistry]

My brain is on fire same I can’t sleep and am thinking of this:

The way she writes about marriage/family/commitment through these different situations across the album is soooooooooo interesting.

You have a very intense first experience of it in “The Manuscript,” where it is first dangled in front of her/the narrator’s young, impressionable self as shorthand for real love in a situation that ended up being smoke and mirrors. She’s being told everything she wants to hear by someone who basically thinks it’s just foreplay. In the end, when it’s clear that the other person has no intention of actually making a life with her, it makes her feel used, but she forces herself to recalibrate and become the girl she thinks he and all the other hes want her to be. Easy breezy cool. But there’s a sense of loss in realizing those hopes were merely banter to the other.

You have the “grown up” version of it alluded to in “So Long, London” and “How Did It End?”, the years of putting in work to save a relationship and the “deflation of our dreaming leaving [her] bereft and reeling” leading to them “calling it all off.” The implication is clearly that they built a home together with plans for next steps at a point in time, but the commitment is shattered. (Obviously to me it sounds like marriage.) She’s bitter at spending her “prime” years with someone who ultimately didn’t want to be there, even if he couldn’t or wouldn’t admit it himself.

She felt like she did everything she was supposed to, but they were learning the right steps to different dances at as it were. Those dreams were at one point shared, but in the end they weren’t right for each other and she admits that, though bitterly (“I founded the club she’s heard great things about” eg the years she put in for him to help him grow up will end up benefiting his new lover, “but I’m not the one,” “you’ll find someone,” etc.). Mixed in with all this of her resentment of him wasting her youth (sacrificing herself at the altar), and his resentment of her for reasons less defined, and insinuations of betrayal in the shadows. The fantasy of the whole package disappears into the ether, yet she still has no answers as to how they got there.

Then in comes the wolf in sheep’s clothing in many of the rest of the songs, the one who promises her all those things she’s dreamed of since she was a kid instantly. After years of moulding herself to other men’s desires, someone comes in and tells her exactly what she wants to hear at the most vulnerable time of her life, as though the universe is answering her prayers, like some sort of cosmic payback for all she’s suffered, and it’s the most intoxicating drug of all. She’s gone from her wish for a family life feeling like she’s in a way being used for her body, to it being used as a chain to a relationship gone sour, to having someone put a metaphorical ring on her finger and tell her he wants to have babies with her, fuck those other guys.

In her grief and stupor, it’s too good to be true, which is exactly why she falls for it. But of course, it’s all an illusion, because this wolf is an amalgamation of the worst of all the men who came before him. He tells her everything she wants to hear not to make her dreams come true, but to make his. He takes the worst parts of these scenarios to make his move: he’ll stand by her, he’ll commit, he’ll do it out in the open under the spotlight’s glare (all things desperately lacking in her last relationship), but after he beds her he stabs her in the back in private and leaves her. He got what he wanted at the expense of her losing everything she wanted, this time as her world caved in seemingly for good. She feels like she gave up everything she thought she might have had for a chance that this is where the universe has been point her all along, only to be left broken for good (you represent the loss of my life as I knew it).

Then there are two sort of codas to this. In “But Daddy I Love Him” we get a sassier reimagining of “Love Story,” where the girl with the scarlet letter is mouthy and crass and tells everyone to go fuck themselves for cursing her in the first place, choosing her love above all else. And no, those haters can’t come to her wedding. Her daddy may have come around, but they sure can’t. Finally it seems someone is choosing her and will someday give her these things, and she’ll be able to show all the naysayers. (Also interestingly one of the more fictionally-veiled songs which ends happily vs the diaristic ones that don’t.)

Then of course there’s “So High School,” our first glimpse into what the future holds. Probably the only unabashedly happy (nay… electric?) song on the album, it’s all about reclaiming the buzz of youth (which is a whole other post) with a new lover. “Are you gonna marry, kiss or kill me? It’s just a game but really, I’m betting on all three for us two.” It’s, er, a direct nod to a certain now-infamous interview, but again, she’s staking her claim on her future, if not certain then at least hopeful again. This time the prospect doesn’t come with a “but.” It’s not, we’ll be pushing strollers but actually you’re too young. It’s not, we had these dreams for our future but actually I can’t move forward. It’s not, I’m going to promise you a ring and a baby but only until my needs are met and then I’m out. It’s, I know what I wanted and I’m not leaving, and thanks to that now she stays too.

The album dealt with the theme not at all in the way I expected, but is absolutely fascinating.

#can't believe you tagged this ''no brain power'' #cos there's lots of it here #but daddy i love him #the manuscript #so long london #so high school

[notesonartistry]

olijacobs12: @taylorswift TTPD!!! Love you Taylor Jack Laura. I can’t thank you guys enough for everything. The greatest team anyone could ever ask to be a part of. ❤️

Engineering (1-4,6-11,13,15,17) programming/spoken word (13) Best assistant Jack Manning at the incredible Electric Lady (x)

#sweet #ttpd #oli jacobs

[notesonartistry]

#lyric parallels

[notesonartistry]

Has anyone else noticed that But Daddy I Love Him is kind of the sassier retelling of Love Story?

#lol #true

[notesonartistry]

I know I’m still doing it but I think How Did It End does make me think a little differently about how I interact with Taylor’s music/life. Idk my heart hurts for her

#it does make you think #i agree #how did it end?

[notesonartistry]

the beauty of this album is that it really fully encapsulates what it’s like going from the devastating loss of a long term relationship, to the rebound you think is gonna fix it all, only to ultimately realize that you were using the latter to process your feelings about the former. the songs are so muddled, and the lyrics are relevant to both muses because her feelings were muddled and she had no idea where to put them or what to do with them. the rebound promised her everything she couldn’t get from the ex-love and she fell for it because she was so desperate to be really seen.

[notesonartistry]

“you turned me into an idea of sorts” 🤝 “the idea you had of me who was she” and she’s actually tried to become the the idea and been told “oh oops i liked you better the other way actually” 🤮

#YES

[notesonartistry]

“Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see”

She said guys save the text post essays and the tik tok rants I don’t give a shit 🤣

#this made me laugh #but daddy i love him #i mean the lyric and this post

[notesonartistry]

“he was a hot house flower to my outdoorsmen” STOP IT’S SUCH A PRETTY WAY TO SAY “he wanted/needed to stay in and i wanted to live”

[notesonartistry]

I’m stuck on “he never even scratched the surface of me, none of them did” from the prologue poem

i don’t even think she feels like she’s scratched the surface of her

[notesonartistry]

The beauty of her rawest most messy album showing just how very much she’s grown and growing and healed and healing

#i absolutely love it #hate that she had to go through it all #but love the art she's made

[notesonartistry]

Handing us songs about the worst things that have ever happened to her let us turn them into something she didn’t have to carry on her own anymore, and the more she handed us the lighter she felt…which is why she HAD to write Tortured Poets…she couldn’t carry all of this and keep moving forward and healing…so it’s ours now…

#good for her #ttpd #i really hope it helped her #it seems like it did

[notesonartistry]

TTPD (Part 1): Overall thoughts

Unsurprisingly, this is going to require a lot more listens to digest and really figure out my favourites. Plus, I'm trying to process the fact that in addition to the 4 bonus tracks, there are 15 MORE songs! I think my initial favourite might be But Daddy I Love Him. I also love I Can Do It With A Broken Heart right up until the end when it just bursts my bubble. The main theme here is how direct she is, how honest and she just takes responsibility for her choices and says "this is how it is/was" - like it or lump it, but judge me on all the evidence, not just a selection of it.

#ttpd first listen #first listen