I'm sure most of you are aware that I have been a Swiftie for a long time now. I've definitely not hidden it, like ever, and any dive into my music makes it glaringly obvious. Well, I figured it would be cool to do a proper delve into the music of Taylor Swift! This was spurred on by a few things. I've recently found myself enjoying the music side of the site more than ever. Between Song Contests, Walruses, and the general cool threads about people's likes and dislikes, not to mention Song Games (not that I've played many recently) I've found it to be a very comfortable place for me here. On top of that, just before my hiatus I made a list of my top songs for PJ and, well, I felt pressured to make a list he would approve of rather than one I believed in. I feel stupid about that list. I know I should shake it off, but it needs to be rectified! Thirdly, I've not had the chance to listed to the last couple of albums really as I've been far too busy to give them any time. This all comes together pretty perfectly to set the stage for this! So let's step into it head first, fearless!
I'm going to rate songs based on a few things with points scales for each, as well as going into the story behind the songs, my thoughts on them, and maybe even some general research on each to see what others have said or analyzed. I mean, it's Taylor Swift songs. I'm by no means the only person to have delved into them in this manner. But I do think I have a good bit of experience here, so why not!
The grading scale will be as follows (although I am always open to tweaks):
Enjoyment/13 - this is self explanatory I hope...
Musicality/7 - this is based on the music itself including complexity in writing, whether it reached the desired mood/feel, how it interacts with lyrics, etc.
Songwriting/10 - speaking of lyrics, this is a category based on their depth, effectiveness, wordplay, etc.
Overplayed/-3 - That's right, I'm going to sin popular songs for being popular. You all know that one or two songs that will get a -3 here. If it's lightly or middling in radio play, that's -1 or -2. If it's never played, that's your 0 loss songs.
Emotion/5 - Now this doesn't have to be *sad*. If a song has emotional depth, it gets more points. This may or may not be effected by the backstory, I guess it depends on the song.
Banger/2 - Maybe it's overplayed but it's still a banger. Maybe it's severely underplayed. Wherever it is on the spectrum, if it fits here, it can sits here.
Swiftness/3 - Now this is probably the most controversial of the sections, but if it doesn't feel like it should be a Taylor Swift song, or if it doesn't fit with her general persona, it may not do well here. I'll definitely take into account her different eras, but that won't be enough for some to score. I also had this written as "authenticity" but that sounds pretentious.
This is a lot of words and I'm likely to continue with the lots-of-wordsing as we go along, but I think it will be fun!
I'm totally undecided on a starting point and will likely take suggestions at various points in this journey. There's no real structure other than the grading scale, and I invite you to give as much feedback as you like. Heck, do your own grading here if you want, that sounds like fun! We've got a lot of blank space to fill.
Last edited by Aristophanes on Sun Nov 05, 2023 11:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Alright, I've decided on a starting place! It's a little based I suppose, but it seemed wrong not to begin with her breakout hit. For that reason, allow me to delve into a song with the title of another artist: Tim McGraw!
How original, I know. I actually debated starting elsewhere so I could do this once she's rereleased her self-titled album. I decided to go with it anyway though because why not!
Here's a tl;dr of the scoring for those who don't want to stick around.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's dive into it!
Enjoyment
Yes, this gets a middling score of
8
6. Honestly, I think I'm being a bit too generous to it and after I listen to it repeatedly for this write-up it might actually go down (it did). I think that's one of the problems with this as a song. It endures on legacy and nostalgia, but not because it's a terribly enjoyable song to listen to. It goes just so all in on an exaggerated twang that I'm sure she was told to increase so she could be marketed as an authentic country artist, and it's really not the song you want that highlighted on. There are multiple spots in the song where she lingers on vowels for just that little bit too long for the twang to hold making it an incredibly hard song to sing well. She's had live performances that sound just awful with it because any shakiness is immediately highlighted. I mean, who wants to listen to sustained nasal whines? I really don't think it stands the test of time. That said, I'm really excited for a rerelease, because when she records it anew it could give it that tweak it needs to become nicer. I don't think it will solve all of its problems, but a version with more confidence, a matured voice, and a less twangy affectation will definitely help this piece.
Musicality
This is a really basic song. I know that it's one of her first songs and that she apparently wrote it in math class at the age of 15. I get that it's simple in order to highlight the lyrics. I'm just pointing out that it cannot really score well here by nature of the song. It does definitely get points for being a vessel of the lyrics. One of Taylor's best qualities as an artist is her songwriting, which is one of the main reasons I'm so staunchly a fan of her's. It sometimes leads to a simple base upon which things are built, There's nothing wrong with that, but it is a large portion of this category. The song lends itself well to simple acoustic covers in the instrumentation line, but not in the lyrical lines, as mentioned above. It needs something to shake it up. (Not off! We'll get to that!) Some vocal runs. Some variation. Something to inject interest. Musically it's really easy to forget this exists.
Songwriting
Spoiler: The Lyrics
He said the way my blue eyes shined
Put those Georgia stars to shame that night
I said, "That's a lie"
Just a boy in a Chevy truck
That had a tendency of gettin' stuck
On backroads at night
And I was right there beside him all summer long
And then the time we woke up to find that summer gone
But when you think Tim McGraw
I hope you think my favorite song
The one we danced to all night long
The moon like a spotlight on the lake
When you think happiness
I hope you think that little black dress
Think of my head on your chest
And my old faded blue jeans
When you think Tim McGraw
I hope you think of me
September saw a month of tears
And thanking God that you weren't here
To see me like that
But in a box beneath my bed
Is a letter that you never read
From three summers back
It's hard not to find it all a little bittersweet
And lookin' back on all of that, it's nice to believe
When you think Tim McGraw
I hope you think my favorite song
The one we danced to all night long
The moon like a spotlight on the lake
When you think happiness
I hope you think that little black dress
Think of my head on your chest
And my old faded blue jeans
When you think Tim McGraw
I hope you think of me
And I'm back for the first time since then
I'm standing on your street
And there's a letter left on your doorstep
And the first thing that you'll read
Is when you think Tim McGraw
I hope you think my favorite song
Someday you'll turn your radio on
I hope it takes you back to that place
When you think happiness
I hope you think that little black dress
Think of my head on your chest
And my old faded blue jeans
When you think Tim McGraw
I hope you think of me
Oh, think of me
Mmm
He said the way my blue eyes shined
Put those Georgia stars to shame that night
I said, "That's a lie"
Let's break this down, shall we?
Probably not every line or section, this isn't English class. But I'll highlight the ones with significance to this section for sure.
He said the way my blue eyes shined
Put those Georgia stars to shame that night
I said, "That's a lie"
I love this line! It really sets the mood for the song and is such a great spotlight on the people involved here! He's obviously flirting with her with a really cheesy line, but it's so kind and innocent in the way she presents it. And the response of "That's a lie" is cute and innocent, but also confident in a way. It starts the song with a snapshot of 2 seemingly real people, which is so important for her songs.
"And I was right there beside him all summer long
And then the time we woke up to find that summer gone"
This is an unfortunately clunky segue that I think detracts from the songwriting somewhat. It's unfortunate because slight tweaks to the second line here would make a huge difference. Change "And then" to "Until" and it solves my problems with the line. It makes it a continued timeline instead of someone projecting a timeline to force movement along. Adding "long gone" or "all gone" or even "was gone" at the end would also clarify it grammatically. With the currently written line it's ambiguous until you get to the end, and the way she pauses on the line in the song emphasizes that ambiguity. It's a simple couple of fixes that I think would make the whole thing flow better.
Now for the chorus:
"But when you think Tim McGraw
I hope you think my favorite song
The one we danced to all night long
The moon like a spotlight on the lake
When you think happiness
I hope you think that little black dress
Think of my head on your chest
And my old faded blue jeans
When you think Tim McGraw
I hope you think of me"
This is one of the reasons the song works so well and hit home with so many people in my opinion. It gives you an image of a moment, of a memory. The lake, the moon, the song. The little black dress. It's this perfect little scene. And it doesn't fall into the trap that so many references make in songs which close things off. It doesn't quote the song lyrically or musically. It doesn't even give you which Tim McGraw song they danced to. This could be subbed in for any song from any high school love memory. It's such a specific scene with her exact references, yet it's vague enough to create a universality to it. It allows the listener to be in the scene, and that is really special about her songwriting.
In comparison, this is a song that references the original by...ripping it off. It's basically the other extreme, but I think it highlights what I like so much about the way she does this in Tim McGraw
Spoiler:
"September saw a month of tears
And thanking God that you weren't here
To see me like that"
This is where it starts to fall apart for me un the songwriting, and it doesn't really come back. The month of tears that came in September, from the context of the song, are due to him not being there as their romance ended after their summer fling. But she's glad he wasn't there to see her crying over him not being there? If he were still around she wouldn't be crying here, nullifying her point.
"But in a box beneath my bed
Is a letter that you never read
From three summers back"
I thought this fling was just the one summer long. Was she writing him love letters before they had their summer? Because again, from the context given, this was a summer lovin', not a long term relationship that would have necessitated a love letter 3 years ago. And maybe this is 3 years in the future, but she just ended summer and said she cried a lot in September. There is no temporal framework to support that, so I am not entertaining it.
This section's segue into the chorus is a lot better, and I like the framing of looking back at their fling as bittersweet, but going into the good memory anyway. It feels very real in that.
"And I'm back for the first time since then
I'm standing on your street
And there's a letter left on your doorstep
And the first thing that you'll read"
Okay, this is the part that really confuses me. It unpacks to give a lot more context, but also so many more questions. It leads us to believe she left town after the summer, which would have been why she had to end things with him. That makes some sense, but it also makes that 3 year old letter make less sense unless we did perform a time jump earlier. And then she leaves him a letter, and to me it sounds like that must be the mystery 3 year old letter that she never gave to him, otherwise why bring it up earlier. That is, unless she never moved on from him and wrote him a new letter, which is implied by the slightly adapted chorus that follows. In that part of the chorus she references the things they did all those years ago
"Someday you'll turn your radio on//I hope it takes you back to that place"
. It really muddies the timeline even more and makes this mystery letter even more confusing, not to mention that she should maybe have tried moving on within those many years away (it was at least 3 as we know). This may be an unhealthy obsession or mechanism to keep herself padded from the trials of the real world, keeping her stuck in her past as a buffer to the present. Either way, that's not healthy. The pleading with him to think of her in the post-chorus wrap-up is another red flag that maybe she's got a bit of an unhealthy obsession, or at least an unhealthily built notion of their relationship in her head. (Yes, I can identify red flags. Hardy har!)
I like that it ends on the same lines as the intro. After hearing the story, it reminds us of the innocence the story began with and of the fun place it was in. I have a bit of a soft spot for bookended lines tbh, so this gets a couple points added back onto things for me.
In doing some light sleuthing, I found that the Tim McGraw song is Can't Tell Me Nothin' and that her song was about a breakup she expected to have with her boyfriend when he went off to college, which is definitely something I'd heard but never remembered. I don't think either of these bits of information really change the feel or the emotion of the song. I mean, it could explain some of the inconsistencies as she is drawing from real life elements. Maybe that's where this blasted letter comes from. But she is taking the situation and morphing it into a pretty decent story that obviously captured a lot of peoples' attention despite my criticisms of it. There's really not much more to read into this, she's said so herself in interviews many times.
Overplayed
It was overplayed for a time, but I think it's drifted enough at this point that it only gets a -1. Minor radio play that doesn't feel annoying when you hear it.
Emotion
I'm kind of torn here. I think this has a lot of elements that strike chords with people. The fact that she wrote it in a way that allows the listener to sub themself in is really strong. The reference to how memories may arise from a song is also a big point towards it, as she does that well I think. I find the detracting factors to this are the pace of the song and the nasal toughness in singing along, as well as the mess that is the middle of the song. It's not one you can belt, but maybe one you can sit and cry to. I'm going to stick this right in the middle of the scale for lack of a better placement.
For the record, I changed this section from 4 to 5 points after realizing it's going to be a tough one to rate in, as well as wanting to round out the max points to an even 40 instead of 39.
Banger
Maybe controversial, but this is not a banger. At least not by my understanding of its definition. It may have been a hit, but it does not score in this category.
Swiftness
I mean, this is very Swift. It's about a breakup. It's poetic, even if troublesome in some areas. It's striving for that emotional chord. It was written in her math class in 15 minutes, which I believe is a bit of a theme when it comes to her songwriting. We'll see again that when inspiration hits, she just puts her head down and goes for it! Especially for this era of Swift, full points!
As someone who is not really into Taylor Swift, this was a very interesting read. I would always get annoyed by this song when it would play, but didn't realize this was her first hit, or that it was idly written in math class, which does make me a bit more charitable to it, but not charitable enough to actually click on it and let it into my YouTube algorithm.
If I may make a minor formatting suggestion, recapping the scores for each section after the write-up would be helpful, instead of having to scroll back and forth to see them. Then reposting the overall scores at the bottom would also be nice, because my laziness knows no bounds
Maybe the real Mafia was the friends we made along the way
I appreciate the suggestions, I'll work them into my next draft for sure! That's very little work on my part and I'd be happy to make it moree accessible and enjoyable!
I'm sure some of the other songs we'll see here will be a little bit more your speed
album, specifically Death By A Thousand Cuts/Paper Rings/It's Nice To Have A Friend (oft-forgotten gem, IMO!) would prob be fun to do a big write-up like this for, instrumentation on some of those in particular is kinda n u t s (in a good way)
