Taylor Swift - Speak Now
Though it is a mark of poor character, and probably unkind, I hereby rant against the pervasive claim that Taylor Swift is a songwriter. Hopefully I am where’s-waldoed into an army of detractors, although I have not seen evidence that a wall of spears is welling up behind my “charge!”. Faced with impending disagreeable consensus, I am compelled to act contrarily, to my own detriment, and likely to yours.
Her “great accomplishment” is not in writing songs, but in manipulating popular culture. She does not have “the skill of a songwriter beyond her years”, although she clearly has sucker-punched several writers who ought to be beyond her years.
Now, of course she is not a Dylan, Joni, Bill Callahan or Lisa Germano, nor should we listen only to the deep and / or dark. Her clear predecessor in pop-country is Shania Twain. While Swift has nothing to write about, beyond her immediate behaviors and impressions, Twain has endlessly sought some unification with the universal. “Gonna Getcha Good” is a song which depends for its effect on my own inherent joy, while “Dear John” requires me to vicariously invest in Swift’s latest dalliances - yet her observations of these travails stop at letters and river-banks. Only Twain could write a song about secretly planning to wed like “No One Needs to Know”, entirely personal yet utterly accessible - “I want the bells to ring, the choir to sing, the white dress the guests the cake the car the whole darn thing, but no one needs to know right now. I’ll tell him someday, some way, somehow, but I’m gonna keep it a secret for now.” Swift’s marriage-song here, “Speak Now”, is frustratingly specific and, to boot, sulkingly bland - “I sneak in and see your friends, and her snotty little family all dressed in pastel.” Even if we identify with Swift’s rapidly spoiling “other-girl” subject, she does not transcend the image, but reinforces it. Twain is full of uncertain hope, Swift of overconfident disdain.
Further, listening to Swift’s music and then abruptly switching to Twain, you can understand the utter mastery with which Twain and Mutt Lange approached the record making process. In comparison Swift’s recording just sounds like music. Yet this too is regarded by the assembled personages of taste as some great success.
Take even a cautiously produced Twain/Lange song like “No One Needs to Know”, which is essentially a straight country song with little of the synthetic gloss beaming up from Nashville on later productions. It positively explodes with inventive, effective music. There is a harmonica solo! What could it mean that Lange harmonizes these lyrics? The song’s acoustic guitars could happily loop unaccompanied for several minutes. In comparison “Speak Now” sounds cloying, like an festive interlocutor who has run out of things to say but wants to hold your attention.
Simply put, Swift is generally self-indulgent, from her over-long track times to her topics, to her shtick as the fragile country princess, to the artificially crafted singing voice. She’s obviously intelligent and aware - perhaps she will someday take up music and put down self-congratulation. For now, her success seems symptomatic of a general hopelessness and lowering of standards in America.
So I waste a bit of time ranting against the latest attempt to create a universal moment. Of course I’m frustrated - if the beyond-her-years crowd can be believed, every new pop-country singer-songwriter seems on the verge of replacing Shania’s missing work, but I have yet to hear them succeed.
1 year ago
