#album: don't mess up my tempo

[exoplanetupdates-blog]

DMUMT Music Show Promotions - EXO

181102 - KBS Music Bank

Backstage Interview [RAW]

Ooh La La La

Tempo

Tempo Official Fancams [group] [xiumin] [suho] [baekhyun] [chen] [chanyeol] [d.o.] [kai] [sehun]

Full Cut [RAW]

181103 - MBC Music Core

Ooh La La La

Tempo

Full Cut [RAW]

181109 - KBS Music Bank

Backstage Interview [RAW]

Tempo

Official Fancams [xiumin] [baekhyun] [chanyeol] [d.o.] [kai] [sehun]

Tempo 1st Win + Encore (Relay Dance)

Full Cut [RAW]

Thanking EXOLs for 1st Place

181111 - SBS Inkigayo

Ooh La La La

Tempo

Full Cut [RAW]

181116 - KBS Music Bank

Backstage Interview [RAW]

Tempo

Official Fancams [group] [suho] [chen] [d.o.]

Tempo 2nd Win [RAW]

Encore

Full Cut [RAW]

181117 - MBC Music Core

Tempo

Official Fancam - group

Full Cut - Chanyeol MC Cut + Tempo [RAW]

190104 - KBS Music Bank

Tempo v/s Love Shot - Tempo 3rd Win

[chrisbangs]

when exo made oasis they had no idea that however many miles away they were going to change my day, my brain chemistry, my entire life- they could have no idea that i would hear this song and become a new person...

[dmumt]

power on loop and the only time we take a break from making out is to appreciate the junmyeon bridge, thoughts 🎤🎤

oh? i need this more than oxygen come over rn 😙

[suuho]

EXO’S 5TH STUDIO ALBUM: DON'T MESS UP MY TEMPO

[aliypop]

Baby Let's Play House

Word count: 758

Prompt: December 8th, 1955, Elvis is having a bit of trouble recording Baby Let's Play House, that's until Cecelia steps in Sun Records

Warning: none

Note: I'm back from Graceland Y'all

Taglist:

@darkmoviesquotespizza

@sissylittlefeather

@richardslady121

@thegettingbyp2

@presleyenterprise

@dkayfixates

@rjmartin11

@thetaoofzoe

@your-nanas-house

@zayurir

@60svintage

@sillybookmarks

@leapresley

@everythingelvispresley

@dreamondina94

@elvismylove04

@pocketfulofpresley

@elvispresley1956

@poeandmoonknightgirl

Memphis December 8th, 1955

"Elvis, let's ugh... try this again..." Sam sighed as Marion handed him another cup of coffee, this had been their fourth take on the song and it was driving Sam up a wall even more it was driving Elvis up a wall. With the slight Memphis chill coursing under the doors, all he could do was move to keep warm. "I'm tellin' you Elvis this ain't gone work." Bill sighed looking at the 20-year-old before him who looked worn out,

"I think if we pick up the tempo we-"

"Just follow my lead," Elvis smiled, "Mr. Philips when you're ready..." The record sign flashed from outside. As a pink 1955 Thunderbird was parked outside the studio a young tawny tawny-skinned woman wrapped in a fur shaw and Oxfords on her feet walked in wearing Elvis's sweater. Opening the door she noticed Marion and Sam who seemed to be focused on something until she looked at who was in the booth, her heart pounding fast as those slick black locks were stuck to the face of a God,

"Ms.Valmos, good you're here."

"Everything okay Mr. Philips?" She asked taking the teacup from his hands, "Not really, but since you're here mind helping us a bit?" Cecelia looked at Sam as she nodded, "It's either this or record another new album, so tell me what to do." She smirked, Sam had handed her papers to file and so forth as her background music was Elvis trying to record,

"Come on baby I wanna make love to you..."

Cecelia nearly choked on her tea as she heard him sing the lyrics, Marion noticing as she looked over,

"You okay, sugar?"

"Uhm... Don't you think that's too on the nose?" Both Sam and Marion looked at her then back at the lyrics, "What do you suggest,"

"I don't know maybe... Play house?" She shrugged,

"Play house?" Sam questioned,

"Boys play house with girls they like."Cecelia winked as Marion chuckled, looking at her eyes, which landed on Elvis. "I assume girls play house with boys they like too..."  

"Oh, El and I are just uhm friends..." Cecelia blushed as those beautiful blue eyes spotted her, Scotty could only shake his head knowing things between them hadn't been the same since the merger tour they had,

"Hey, Nel!"

"Yes, Aaron?" She responded,

"Somethin' ain't right about this song can you help us..." Elvis asked as Cecelia looked at Sam, Sam nodding at her to go into the booth,

"Alright boys show me what'cha got." Cecelia closed her eyes listening to the band, then Elvis as she sighed, "Scotty half step, DJ I need a higher tempo on drums, Bill you're out of tune baby, and you..." Elvis gulped knowing that despite being a chart-topping artist she knew her stuff on the technical aspect, though it did help that her parents owned a record company and studio, "Yes Cece..."

"You're flat... Have you been drinkin' anythin'?" Her southern accent peered out,

"Well, just water..."

"In this cold, baby no, you'll mess your voice up, it's an instrument just like the boys have, and like your guitar..." She sighed, but she was gentle with him, and even Elvis knew that, "Well, whaddya suggest?" He smirked, her heart skipping a beat,

"Tea..."

"That stuff you drink?"

"Yes, that stuff..." She smirked looking up at him, his slender tall frame hovering over her,

"Fine but I ain't gone like it."

"Yes, you will..." Taking her teacup she poured another cup of tea into it and she added honey and sugar, Elvis couldn't help but stare as he looked at her outfit a smirk on his lips,

"You wearin my sweater huh?"

"What is a girl not supposed to miss her boyfriend..." She whispered,

"So you missed me?" He cheesed,

"Might've..." She kissed him quickly, as he held her close,

"Might've missed you two..."

"I knew it!" Marion smirked, pushing her glasses up as the two were both rosed cheeked,

"I was gettin' durt out his eye." Handing him the teacup "See, El better..."

"Perfect... CRAP that's hot!" He rushed to the recording booth, Marion laughed looking at them both,

"I won't tell a soul."

"Come back baby I wanna play house with you~" Elvis sang out as Cecelia was a rosy red, they had gone through many takes but this one was perfect,

"Say, do we have a hit?"Sam smirked looking at Marion, then at Cecelia who was watching him play his guitar and dance, "Cece... Cece..."

"He could play house with me anytime..."

[okiecookie20]

EXO and the CUBE •

There are multiple times we see the symbolism of the Cube in Exo's mvs. Things you (maybe) didn't notice:-

-We find it first appears as a box given to Kyungsoo in Overdose intro (Overdose theory!) as they are trapped in a maze. He sees a vision and empties the sand in it.

-A surprising link I found was in Obsession's concept photos. (Obsession Theory!) I noticed that Baek and Suho stand in and out of a cube literally made of glass & light:

-Tempo is wholly based on this cube and SM further makes things complicated for EXO-Ls 👻. Notice the white text at the bottom of this teaser image:

They solve the puzzles in different rooms which are in the bigger "cube": Jongdae+Chanyeol📝, Ksoo+Xiu♟️, Kai🎹 / Sehun🥂 / Jongdae in the bar, Baek+Suho💡 in the room with a bed (another cube imagery!)

The image below clears all doubts that the 🟥 is nothing but the maze we see in Overdose and Lucky one. (Lucky One theory!)

Another smaller red cube is seen at the very centre of the maze. I'll talk more about this in a different post dedicated to Tempo.

-Notice how the logo of EXODUS - 2nd album is awfully similar to the Necker cube which appears in Don't Mess Up My Tempo Album:

The lyrics of Exodus can be interpreted in two ways 1) they are in a maze in that era 2) this was the past and they escaped it:

I'm still trying to understand the concept of the best kpop group♡. Thank you for reading and have a nice day ;)

[atzupdates]

[230628] Consequence Article: 10 Dynamic Pop Albums ATEEZ Think Every Music Fan Should Own

1. SZA - SOS

HONGJOONG: I’ve been so into this album lately. SOS itself is so organic, and with SZA’s voice, it’s music that you wouldn’t get tired of even if you listened to the entire album on repeat all day long. I can honestly say that it’s an album that awakened a new taste in music that I never realized I had.

2. DPR IAN - Moodswings in to Order

SEONGHWA: The videos and concept are so fascinating and extremely cool. And the music, of course, is to my taste and preference. I’ve actually been largely influenced by the style from this album.

3. Christopher - Under the Surface

YUNHO: Every single track on this album, even the B-side tracks, are my style! I can honestly say that every song on this album is my type of song.

4. ATEEZ - SPIN OFF : FROM THE WITNESS

YEOSANG: This is an ATEEZ album, but I wanted to bring it up because I personally really like the style and mood of the album. I loved performing the title track off the EP a lot, too.

5. EXO - DON'T MESS UP MY TEMPO

SAN: This would definitely be my personal pick for a top album because it’s one that largely inspired me as an artist on stage. I grew my own dreams of being an artist while listening to their songs and watching their performances.

6. Calvin Harris - Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2

MINGI: I’ve always been a huge fan of Calvin Harris, but I really like the overall vibe of this album, so it’s my favorite. It’s got so many songs that are great for easy listening, so it’s an album that I’m really fond of.

7. Shawn Mendes - Illuminate

WOOYOUNG: There’s a lot of memories tied to this album, and Shawn Mendes is an artist whose vocals have really inspired me as an artist. I remember when we used to listen to this album a lot as trainees, and even do vocal practices using his music. Each and every single song on this album is a masterpiece! I’d love to collaborate with him one day.

8. Bruno Mars - XXIVK Magic

JONGHO: Every single song on this album is amazing. It’s an understatement to say that his music has given me so much inspiration vocally. This album in particular really makes you think, because it’s simply enthralling how one person’s vocals can express so many different genres! After listening to all the songs on this album, it made me want to work even harder to broaden my spectrum and range.

9. Charlie Puth - Voicenotes

ATEEZ: We listened to this album a lot in the car on our way to and from different work schedules during promotions, so it brings back a lot of memories. Definitely one for the road that brings back a lot of memories we’ve had together as a group.

10. EDEN - RYU : 川

ATEEZ: This is an album that we listened to a lot as trainees that gave us comfort. We learned and gained inspiration from this album during our early days as a group. And though we work with him frequently now as our producer, it wasn’t as easy to see EDEN back then. We would listen to his songs, study them, and receive comfort from them.

[exosongtournament]

Round 1 - Don't Mess Up My Tempo/Love Shot - The 5th Album

[taylor-on-your-dash]

Writing of Speak Now Timeline

Disclaimer: Hello! Just a quick note before you dive in. As I said in the Writing of Red Timeline, not every album has enough information to pinpoint the exact date on which its songs were written. Sadly, Speak Now is one of those albums, so I based this timeline more on the experiences that I think inspired the songs on the album. Of course, I'm not Taylor, I'm not in her head and I don't know people in the music industry that can corroborate this research. Therefore, there's always the chance that some of the conclusions might be wrong. You are more than welcome to take the sources listed here and come up with your own theories on the condition that you'll credit me. This is 100% my research, originally posted on Reddit on March 3rd, 2023.

Trigger Warning: John Mayer.

Introduction: The making of Speak Now was very different from Fearless which was recorded live, and closer to Debut. After Taylor wrote a song, the first step was to record a stripped-down demo at Nathan Chapman's studio Pain In The Art, where Nathan would play all of the instruments and Taylor would record the vocals. To understand better what "stripped-down" means in this context, listen to Let's Go. All of Speak Now started like Let's Go. Some of the demo instruments survived, and others were re-recorded by other musicians or overdubbed at a later date, between January 2010 and July 2010. Taylor's demo vocals ALL survived. They were not re-recorded.

[Nathan Chapman Interview] “With Speak Now, we deliberately went back to our initial way of working together. We had an unlimited budget, and could have gone and recorded the whole album in the Bahamas, used any studio we liked and whatever musicians we wanted. But we decided to bring it back to the basics on purpose, because we wanted to keep it about the music and our chemistry. [We were trying not] to over-compensate for the pressure we were feeling for a follow-up to Fearless. That's why we stripped it down and made the demos first. Taylor came to my studio and I played all the instruments on the demos, and because I have a good vocal booth, her demo vocals ended up being the vocals you hear on the record. After finishing the demos, we went out to different studios, and tried different combinations of engineers and musicians to replace some of the elements of my demos, mostly the programmed drums, and to do additional overdubs. So Taylor comes in, and plays me a song, and I chart it while listening to her. I then tap out a tempo, she hands me her guitar, I go into a recording booth, put on headphones, start the click‑track and hit record. She's hearing what I'm doing and singing along while she's in the control room, so I know where I am in the song. After that, I program the drums, usually using Superior Drummer in Logic. I play the drum parts on my Roland Fantom G6 keyboard, and then quantise. I then play the fills that I want to complete the drum part. After this I'll put down a bass part, and at this point we make sure we're really OK with the tempo and that we love the arrangement. I may add an electric guitar to make the track bigger, and then she'll go into the vocal booth and she'll sing the song three or four times. We may do a little bit of comping, but she executes these songs really well, and I don't want to mess with her takes too much. The audience wants to hear someone sing with real emotion. From there we'll listen to what we have and we'll maybe add some vocal harmonies and guitars, and I do a quick mix and she's out of the door.”

WRITING OF SPEAK NOW TIMELINE

November 2, 2006: Taylor writes Sparks Fly, after opening for Jake Owen in Portland, OR, on Halloween night. The secret message in the album booklet is Portland, Oregon. She will perform the song for the first time on April 6, 2007, in her native Reading PA.

[From MySpace] Happy Halloween! I'm sitting at the airport in Portland, Oregon... About to get on a red-eye flight (Oh yes, I just said red-eye. Meaning, all night. This should be interesting...)  to Toronto, Canada for another weekend of Rascal Flatts shows. Tonight was awesome. It was a show in Portland at a bar called Duke's, I opened up for Jake Owen. And a little back-story, I've had his album on repeat for the past couple of months... It's an amazing album and I literally cannot stop listening to it. I've got every line memorized, and if you see me on a plane.. Chances are, I'm listening to some song off that album, at a volume level that's probably going to cause long-term hearing damage someday. ANYWAY. I got to walk in on his sound check and meet him. Turns out he's extremely cool, and had bought my album on iTunes. :-) And since I had to leave after one song of his set, he played my favorite song "8 Second Ride" first. Which is another reason why he's awesome.

The writing date was leaked by Steve Hall from the IC on July 21, 2010. Since we didn't have the secret message yet, we didn't have any reason to believe it was written after the Jake Owen show. (thanks @backup-baby-backup!)

Original handwritten lyric sheet:

May 30, 2007: First performance of Sparks Fly in Oroville, CA. Steve Hall from the Inner Circle/Dark Blue Tennessee.com films it and posts it online.

Differences between the draft and the 2007 live version:

“You stand there in front of me” -> “you stood there in front of me”

“Get me with those brown eyes, baby” -> “get me with those green eyes, baby”

“Take your open hand and take me out” -> “reach out open-handed and lead me out”

“Dim the paper lanterns” -> “don’t need more paper lanterns”

“This night is the 31st” -> “my heart is beating fast”

“So let’s make it count now, baby” -> “I could wait patiently”

“I’ll run my fingers” -> “I run my fingers”

“And make no borderlines” -> “gonna strike this match tonight”

“Forgive me when I can’t take in everything you are” -> “and lead me up the staircase”

“You kissed me like you meant it, I swear I saw sparks” -> “I’d love to hate it, but you make it like a firework show”

There was also an additional section: We stood at the gate (and you kiss me) / With the moon on your face / And you’ll kiss me

September 2008: Taylor and Martin Johnson team up to write a diss track about Camilla Belle, called Drama Queen. This is one of the first steps in the Taylor-Joe-Camilla saga, which started with Forever & Always and Drama Queen and continued on Speak Now. There is no evidence that Drama Queen was considered for Speak Now, but for being an unreleased song, it made it as far as being mastered for the OG Fearless so it has to mean something. In my opinion, it would've taken Better Than Revenge's place, if BTR hadn't existed. Taylor talked about the Fearless mastering process on September 30th on MySpace: this song literally CANNOT be younger, since the mastering of a song is considered a legal document, necessary for copyright protection and the collection of royalties.

March 8, 2009: John Mayer tweets: "Waking up to this song idea that won't leave my head. 3 days straight now. That means it's good enough to finish. It's called Half of My Heart and I want to sing it with Taylor Swift. She would make a killer Stevie Nicks in contrast to my Tom Petty of a song."

Taylor's answer: "I freaked out when I heard [it], because I’ve been such a big fan of John for such a long time. I’m really excited about just the idea that he would even mention me in his Twitter!”

March 13, 2009: [From her Twitter] [second source] "A day off in Sydney. Drove two hours out of the city and spent the day on the beach. Wrote a chorus you'll hear on the next record. :)"

March 19, 2009: [From MySpace] ““I’m wiped out. I've been in the studio all day (I know, I know.. We JUST put out a new album. I think I have a problem, I cannot stop writing songs.) It’s so much fun knowing that you can take your time, because you have like a year and a half to make something you’re really proud of. I love recording a few songs, waiting a few months, recording a few more.. Instead of devoting a few weeks to “record the album” and then it’s just done. I like dragging it out, that way you can be meticulous about every detail. Daydream about different ways to put the songs together, and then take them apart. I’m pretty obsessed with the whole process. So needless to say, it was good to be back in the studio with my redheaded producer who I missed terribly.”

Speculation: One of the songs is possibly Mr. Perfectly Fine, since, as we know from Fearless TV, it was considered for Fearless Platinum. Maybe Haunted was also part of the same recording session. Haunted is the first Speak Now song to be copyrighted, so it has to be one of the first songs.

‘Haunted’ is about the moment that you realize the person you’re in love with is drifting and fading fast. And you don’t know what to do, but in that period of time, in that phase of love, where it’s fading out, time moves so slowly. Everything hinges on what that last text message said, and you’re realizing that he’s kind of falling out of love. That’s a really heartbreaking and tragic thing to go through, because the whole time you’re trying to tell yourself it’s not happening. I went through this, and I ended up waking up in the middle of the night writing this song about it.

The secret message is: "Still to this day".

Early April 2009: Taylor and Martin Johnson from Boys Like Girls write If This Was A Movie.

Speculation: I think it was written in April just because of the lyric "six months gone and I'm still reaching" and Taylor and Joe Jonas had broken up six months before, in October.

Literally nothing else is known about this song.

April 23, 2009: The Fearless Tour starts in Evansville, Indiana. Taylor will write most of Speak Now while on tour.

May 22, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer perform White Horse and Your Body Is A Wonderland at the LA Staples Center.

May 23, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer record Half Of My Heart.

May 29, 2009: [From MySpace] “Tomorrow, after the performance on the Today show, I’ll fly back to Nashville and record a lot of new songs I’ve written in the last few weeks.

June 8, 2009: [From Twitter] "In the studio. I don't know whose computer I'm using. Pssh.. Such a rebel right now.."

June 9, 2009: [From Twitter] "If I said I was in the studio with T-Pain, would you believe me?"

June 12, 2009: American publishes an interview with Taylor where she talks about her third album. The interview was probably done in April.

“There are definitely breakup songs on this record, but not too many. I like to balance out the amount of happy songs, breakup songs, sentimental songs, I-miss-you songs, angry songs. I don’t want to try and harp on the same emotion too much because I feel like if you make the ‘angry’ album, that’s going to lose people.”

June 16, 2009: the Jonas Brothers release their new album Lines, Vines and Trying Times, which includes a song called Much Better, that references Taylor:

I get a rep for breaking hearts / Now, I'm done with superstars / And all the tears on her guitar

This is likely the song that inspires Taylor to write Better Than Revenge, since the phrase "much better" is used multiple times in the song.

“The song "Better Than Revenge" is about a girl, who a few years ago, stole my boyfriend. I think she probably thought I forgot about it, but I didn't.”

Fun Fact: Joe Jonas changed the lyrics from "I'm done with superstars" to "I'm cool with superstars".

July 1, 2009: [From MySpace] “What else is new... Recording a bunch of new songs.”

One of them is possibly Better Than Revenge, maybe even Let's Go. Taylor seems still bitter about Joe leaving her.

July 11, 2009: Taylor writes on her diary about going to an antique shop. This is probably the inspiration for Timeless.

[Lover Journal] I just got back from a trip to Canada that was absolutely refreshing and good for the soul. I never really knew what a good thing having no cell or internet could be. But it was a great thing. I did things a little differently up there, and I actually liked it. I started reading self-help books. It’s really uplifting knowing that you can change your life today, tomorrow … just by doing a few things you never thought of. Or doing things differently than you’ve done them before. New things I adopted from a self help book: Get up early. Keep your cool. Don’t tee off on people you love. Laugh more. You can control your moods. Create a love account and make deposits, in other words, show people that you love them. Another new hobby of mine is ….. antique stores. And not just neat, organized antique stores. I really like the ones where there’s so much crap to dig through, you can find absolute treasures for nothing. I went to 2 antique stores in Saskatchewan, and one today in Winnipeg. I bought all these old glass mason jars. I’m gonna use them for candle holders. I bought old scales and watch faces and chairs and old trunks and a bird cage and 2 lamps.

July 21, 2009: [From Twitter] Hanging with my producer Nathan, discussing the next adventure. Album #3.

July 2009: Based on a Lover Journal, I think that Taylor wrote Never Grow Up in July 2009.

Handwritten Lyrics From a Lover Journal:

‘Never Grow Up’ is a song about the fact that I don’t quite know how I feel about growing up. It’s tricky. Growing up happens without you knowing it. Growing up is such a crazy concept because a lot of times when you were younger you wish you were older. I look out into a crowd every night and I see a lot of girls that are my age and going through exactly the same things as I’m going through. Every once in a while I look down and I see a little girl who is seven or eight, and I wish I could tell her all of this. There she is becoming who she is going to be and forming her thoughts and dreams and opinions. I wrote this song for those little girls.

[Nathan Chapman Interview] “The song 'Never Grow Up' is just she singing and I on acoustic guitar. We recorded ourselves live. That song probably happened in two hours.”

September 6, 2009: Taylor announces Fearless Platinum Edition on MySpace, out on October 26, 2009. It includes Jump Then Fall, which was originally written in the summer of 2008, while Taylor was dating Joe Jonas. The secret message of the song is "Last Summer Was Magical". It seems like Taylor doesn't harbor bitter feelings toward Joe anymore.

“We just put out Fearless last year? I know! We’re not putting out a whole new album. We’re re-releasing Fearless with SIX new songs added. I’m so excited for you to hear this new music, see the new pictures, and watch the 50 million hours of bonus content. I love you a lot and I’ll see you on the road!”

September 13, 2009: New York. Night of the VMA incident, where Kanye West interrupts Taylor while she's accepting the Best Music Video Award for You Belong With Me. Taylor starts writing Innocent shortly after.

Based on the themes of the song and on the fact that, according to the booklet, it was written in 2009, I think that Castles Crumbling was also inspired by the VMA incident.

[GQ] “When the crowd started booing, I thought they were booing because they also believed I didn’t deserve the award. That’s where the hurt came from. I went backstage and cried, and then I had to stop crying and perform five minutes later. I just told myself I had to perform, and I tried to convince myself that maybe this wasn’t that big of a deal. But that was the most happenstance thing to ever happen in my career.”

September 15, 2009 (morning): Taylor is still in New York doing interviews, like The View with Whoopy Goldberg. Taylor says that she bought her own condo in Nashville. Unsurprisingly, the main topic is the VMA incident.

September 15, 2009 (night): Taylor attends Owl City's show in New York. She and Adam Young (aka Owl City) had exchanged emails in the previous months. She writes Enchanted after their meeting.

[MTV Interview] “I started writing that in the hotel room when I got back, because it was just this positive, wistful feeling of ‘I hope you understand just how much I loved meeting you.’ Using the word ‘wonderstruck’ [in the lyrics] was done on purpose, because that’s a word which that person used one time in an e-mail... so I purposely wrote it in the song, so he would know.”

[Adam Young Interview] When Young met the 21-year-old music superstar backstage at one of his shows in New York, he was starstruck. "She was on her way up to meet me and that was the most nerve-racking few minutes of my life just waiting to meet Taylor Swift," he says. "When I met her she was glowing and I was too. It's hard to put into words, but I was definitely wonderstruck to meet her." Unfortunately for Young, nothing ever progressed beyond emails and one fateful meeting. "I think I'm not the most romantic and eloquent guy in the world," he admits. "She's just this endearing, wonderful girl and maybe I said something wrong. Who knows. It went on for three or four months, something like that."

Speculation: I think that the first verse of Enchanted is a reference to the View interview that Taylor did that morning.

September 26, 2009: While touring in Little Rock, Arkansas, with Kellie Pickler and Gloriana, Taylor writes a song, possibly Last Kiss.

“The song ‘Last Kiss’ is sort of like a letter to somebody. You say all of these desperate, hopeless feelings that you have after a break-up. Going through a break-up you feel all of these different things. You feel anger, and you feel confusion, and frustration. Then there is the absolute sadness. The sadness of losing this person, losing all the memories, and the hopes you had for the future. There are times when you have this moment of truth where you just admit to yourself that you miss all these things. When I was in one of those moments I wrote this song.”

[Drummer Nick Buda on the recording of Last Kiss, recorded in mid 2010 circa] On "Last Kiss," South African-born Nick Buda said there was an air of real excitement when they were recording the album. “She is awesome to work with and super-appreciative of her players. There was a real chemistry involved in this record.” Their desire to get exactly the sound they wanted extended to changing Buda’s modern drum kit to a vintage one on some choruses in order to get a different tone from some of the bombastic “teenage rock band” sound. “The songs were so well written that very rarely did they go past a third take,” he said.

The secret message is "Forever And Always".

October 17, 2009: [From Twitter] Travis: you look so out of it. Me: I'm writing a song in my head. Travis: oh, I apologize. I didn't realize you were working."

November 7, 2009: Taylor sings "Monologue Song (La La La) at the SNL, where she mentions her breakup with Joe and dating Taylor Lautner.

November 30, 2009: Taylor tweets: “If I had a dime for every time my producer and I blurt out the same thing at the same time, followed by an awkward, uncoordinated high five...”

Late November/Early December 2009: Taylor writes Ours and possibly Superman. Maybe they're the songs Taylor was talking about in the tweet.

[People Country] “I wrote [Ours] when I was about to turn 20. I was in a relationship I knew people wouldn't approve of and it was just a matter of time before everyone found out. When you're first getting to know someone, it's a fragile time, and then you add newspapers and magazine covers and it can get kind of rough. I wanted to have this song to play for him when it got difficult. Singing it for him was one of the sweetest moments I can remember. [I won't say who inspired it], to me, the song says something bigger, which is "I love you, and I don't care what anyone else thinks."”

(About Ours) “I’m excited about telling the beginnings of stories, like the story of this song called ‘Ours,’ where I wrote it about this guy nobody thought I should be with. So I wrote this song specifically just to play it for him, just to show him, ‘I don’t care what anyone says. I don’t care that you have tattoos. I don’t care that you have a gap between your teeth. I love you for who you are.’ And that song ended up actually making it on [Speak Now] and becoming a #1 song.”

That's how Taylor broke down the lyrics for People in April 2012:

“Seems like there’s always someone who disapproves” -> "I felt like I was on a tightrope. I knew that falling in love with the wrong person could freak people out."

“So don’t you worry your pretty little mind” -> "A lot of people have pretty little heads, but it's difficult to find a pretty little mind."

“People throw rocks at things that shine” -> "I kind of made up the phrase. It has a nursery rhyme feel, which I like."

“The stakes are high, the water's rough” -> "Those are the first lines that came to me."

“Lurking in the shadows with their lip gloss smiles” -> "It stereotypes girls who that pretend they're happy for your and are not."

“I'll fight their doubt and give you faith with this song for you” -> "My realization of what we were up against came out in that line. I was desperate to make it work."

“Cause I love the gap between your teeth” -> "My favorite part of the song. It's symbolic of "I love your idiosyncrasies."

“And any snide remarks from my father about your tattoos” -> "My dad thinks that this line is hilarious. He loves to tease me."

[About Superman] “This is about, well, a guy, as usual. This was a guy that I was sort of enamored with. This song got its title by something that I just said randomly in conversation. When he walked out of the room, I turned to one of my friends and said, ‘It’s like watching Superman fly away.’”

Dear John's secret message is "I Loved You From The Very First Day", which is a line from Superman.

The song also includes the line "Wishing the flowers were from you", which may or may not be the same flowers mentioned in Back To December ("You gave me roses and I left them there to die").

Gossip Speculation: This makes me think that Taylor was never deeply in love with Taylor L (-> "And I realised I loved you in the fall") and she left Taylor L for John Mayer (-> "And if you'd never saved me from boredom, I would've gone on as I was")

December 6, 2009: [From MySpace] “I just got back to Nashville this morning after being in LA all week. Today I was out and about and in the studio all day...”

December 11, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer perform Half Of My Heart at the Z100 Jingle Bell Ball concert in New York. After this concert, rumors of them dating surface.

December 13, 2009: Taylor turns 20.

December 22, 2009: [From Twitter] "I was writing a song and my pen fell into the piano. Still trying to figure out if I should do anything about this."

January 11, 2010: [From Twitter] "Studio-ness with all the same boys who played on Fearless. Home-made cupcakes were brought. Awkward fist-pumps happened. Onward!"

January 13, 2010: [From MySpace] Thank you January. I have had this month off. [...] I've written songs on napkins and sat at a giant table with my whole family on my mother's birthday, all of us in one place for the first time in too long. I've gotten to take what has happened to me and process it to my full capability, and celebrate it the way it deserved to be celebrated. I've made new music. I've gone over the memories and jumped up and down with my producer and floated around with nothing on my schedule other than just appreciating what my life has somehow turned into. So thank you for giving me so much to be thankful for this January. Thank you beyond what I know how to say.

[From Twitter] "More recording. So excited. So excited. So excited. See, I said that three times. Once for every album we've made in this studio."

[Music News.com Interview] “The weirdest place I have ever written a song is probably in an airport, and I got an idea so fast that I had to run to the bathroom at the airport, grab a paper towel and write lyrics on the paper towel. I still have it. I still have it in a box in my room.”

“Getting back in the studio with the same guys I trust and know and love.. (right, the pointing one: my producer Nathan Chapman) (Left, the waving one: Bass extraorinaire, Tim Marks. Clearly marked on his road case.) Nick Buddha is in charge of the drums.”

January 2010: It's possible that one of the songs recorded during the January session was Speak Now.

[MTV Interview] "One of my friends... the guy she had been in love with since childhood was marrying this other girl," she said. "And my first inclination was to say, 'Well, are you gonna speak now?' And then I started thinking about what I would do if I was still in love with someone who was marrying someone who they shouldn't be marrying. And so I wrote this song about exactly what my game plan would be."

“This song was inspired by one of my friends who was telling me about her childhood sweetheart, crush guy. They were kind of together in high school and went their separate ways, and it was kind of understood that they were gonna get back together. Then, she one day comes in and tells me he’s getting married. He had met this girl who was just this mean person who made him completely stop talking to all of his friends, cut off his family, had him like so completely isolated. And I just, kind of randomly, was like, ‘So, you gonna speak now?’ She was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And I was like ‘Oh, you know, like storm the church, speak now or forever hold your peace? I’ll go with you. I’ll play guitar. It would be great.’ She was just kind of laughing, and later on I just was wrapping my mind around that idea of how tragic it would be if someone you loved was marrying somebody else. Later I had a dream about one of my ex-boyfriends getting married, and it just all came together that I needed to write this song about interrupting a wedding.”

The secret message for Speak Now is “You always regret what you don’t say.”

In January 2010, things are starting to get serious. Taylor, Nathan and the rest of the group, are at the Starstruck Recording Studio to finish up some songs.

Mid January 2010: In a Rolling Stone interview, Taylor confirms she has already recorded some songs.

“‘I’ll be moving out, living on my own, experiencing relationships,’ she says. ‘All of that will be documented in sort of a photo-album-slash-diary, which will be this next record.’ I’ve written so much for this next record and recorded a bunch of songs already, but I don’t want to give away any of the titles – it’s still too early in the process. I don’t really write for albums as much as I just write for my life and process what I feel, whether that feeling is resentment or hope or happiness or a crush — writing songs helps me get through those moments.”

January 31, 2010: Taylor wins her first AOTY for Fearless at the 52nd Grammy Awards.

February 1, 2010: Bob Lefsetz posts his particularly negative review of her performance with Stevie Nicks at the Grammy's. Mean was likely written shortly after.

“When you do what I do, which is you put yourself out there for a lot of people to say whatever they want about it, there are a million different opinions from a million different people. I get it that not everyone is going to like everything that you do, and I get that no matter what, you’re going to be criticized for something. But I also get that there are different kinds of ways to criticize someone. There is constructive criticism. There’s professional criticism. And then, there’s just being mean. There’s a line that you cross when you just start to attack everything about a person, and there’s one guy who just crossed the line over and over again. Just being mean, and saying things that would ruin my day. […] There’s always going to be someone who’s just mean to you. Dealing with that is all you can control about that situation, how you handle it. ‘Mean’ is about how I handle it, and sort of my mindset about this whole situation.”

"There's a song called 'Mean,' that I guess you could categorize it into feelings and or relationships but it's actually about a critic."

In a later interview with 60 Minutes, Swift revealed that the critic was someone who attacked her performance with Stevie Nicks at the 52nd Grammy Awards, where she sang off-key.

February 3, 2010: Taylor writes Mean.

[InDemand] "There's a song on the record called Mean. I remember I started writing it sitting on my kitchen counter, just playing it. Then I took a plane and flew to the venue where we were gonna play that night, and finishing it in the dressing room.

I'm inferring the date but Taylor went to Australia on February 4th, so that's the closest date to the Bob Lefsetz's post. Alternatively, the other closest date is February 17th.

February 4, 2010: John Mayer is interviewed for Rolling Stone, and a friend of his says: "Nothing is what it seems. He operates in layers of meaning, where a poop joke is so much more than a poop joke. And he’d be a phenomenal chess player, because he knows all the moves so many steps ahead. That’s just how he operates.” (-> "And I lived in your chess game, but you changed the rules every day.")

February 5, 2010: Josh Farro from Paramore announces his engagement. Since he specifies that some people already knew about it, it is safe to assume that Hailey Williams, his ex-girlfriend and bandmate, knew before this date about it. Taylor's interviews imply that they were talking about the engagement, not the wedding.

I've got some news to share with you guys so here it goes... As some of you already know, I am engaged! So, as weird as it is to stay behind, I need to take some time off to plan the wedding and everything.

February 11, 2010: Taylor Lautner's birthday. Taylor doesn't call him, as she confessed in Back To December.

February 13, 2010: Based on a Lover Journal entry from this day, it seems like Taylor and John were no longer dating. Dear John must've been written around this period.

[Lover Journal, Flight from Adelaide to Nashville]: “My horoscope said today someone new is going to come into the picture and change my life in an exciting way. PLUS, its the 13th so it has to be true. Right? Right Well, I don't see it happening in the form of meeting someone. Maybe I'll get an email or a call. From someone fantastic and life changing. Or maybe I won't. That's more likely. I've been obsessing over the new album. I always do that until it's just right. I don't know if I have the formula just right for this one yet. I know there are great songs. I just need to figure out the strands that bond them together into a great album. And I will obsess until it's there. This album, any album, is the next 2 years of my life. It has to be more than amazing. It has to be great enough to keep MY attention for 2 years.”

“The song ‘Dear John’ is sort of like the last email you would ever send to someone that you used to be in a relationship with. Usually people write this venting last email to someone and they say everything that they want to say to that person, and then they usually don’t send it. I guess by putting this song on the album I am pushing send.”

February 22, 2010: [From MySpace] “I’ve been writing lots of songs.”

March 10, 2010: Taylor writes Mine.

[InDemand] "I wrote Mine somewhere on the road, I think in Texas, actually."

According to three different Reddit sources, Taylor was dating a non famous guy from Belmont University. The coffee shop referenced in Mine is a coffee shop in Austin, TX, by the water called Mozart's.

“This is a situation where a guy that I just barely knew put his arm around me by the water, and I saw the entire relationship flash before my eyes, almost like a weird science-fiction movie. After I wrote the song, things sort of fell apart, as things so often do. And I hadn’t talked to him in a couple months. And the song came out, and that day, I got an e-mail from him. And I was like, ‘Yes!’ Because that one was sort of half-confession and half-prediction or projection of what I saw.”

“Lately I’ve had this bad habit of running away from love. Kind of getting to the place where it’s about to commit, and then you just, like, run in the opposite direction. ‘Mine’ is about the idea that I could find someone who would be the exception to that, someone who would be so sturdy and so much of a sure thing that I wouldn’t run from it. Sometimes I look back on a lot of examples that I’ve seen of love, long term, and a lot of times it doesn’t work out. There are goodbyes and people get really hurt, so I tend to be a little ‘run-awayish.’ But I’m never past hoping that at some point that could change. This song is the first single because it has this… There was this moment between Nathan [Chapman] and I, my producer, when I brought this song in and when we made this demo in one day in his basement and we just kinda looked at each other and we were like, ‘This is it. This is the one.’”

[Nathan Chapman interview] “The demo for 'Mine' took less than five hours to record, and sounded almost identical to the record. After that we worked on the track for another four months, off and on [until July], and spent $30,000 to make sure it sounded perfect in the real world.”

[Scott Borchetta Billboard Interview] "Mine" was a turning point in the album’s development. Swift and Chapman had begun recording new songs almost as soon as "Fearless" was released. The two cut demos in his basement studio and would only take those songs to larger facilities once they felt they had an emotional foundation in the basic tracks. Still, it wasn’t until early 2010 when the album truly began to coalesce. Swift presented "Mine" to Borchetta in his office, just a few doors down the hall from the leather couch in the lobby.

"We probably played that song four or five times," Borchetta recalls. "I’m jumping around playing air guitar, she’s singing the song back to me, and it was just one of those crazy, fun, Taylor teen-age moments." And then it got serious. "I said, ‘Keep going,’ " Borchetta says. "She kind of looked at me like, ‘You’re challenging me.’ And I said, ‘Yeah. You’ve found true north here. Keep going.’"

Taylor will talk about being challenged by Borchetta to write more for Speak Now during the Red Era:

“During Speak Now, when I went to (label head) Scott Borchetta and said, 'The album's finished,' he said, 'No, it's not -- you need to keep writing.'”

Early March 2010: According to Scott Borchetta, shortly after he challenged Taylor to write more, she finishes writing Innocent, which she had started 6 months prior.

"Innocent," written after the VMA incident with Kanye West, for example, didn't come to Swift quickly. "Some songs take 30 minutes to write, and some take six months, which was the case with 'Innocent.'

“It took a while to write that song," Swift says. "That was a huge, intense thing in my life that resonated for a long time. It was brought up to me in grocery stores and everywhere I went, and in a lot of times in my life, when I don’t know how I feel about something, I say nothing. And that’s what I did until I could come to the conclusion that I came to in order to write ‘Innocent,’ " she says. "Even then, I didn’t talk about it, and I still don’t really talk about it. I just thought it was very important for me to sing about it.”

March 24, 2010: Taylor has lunch with Taylor Lautner. This meeting is likely what inspires Back To December. (thanks to @backup-baby-backup for locating the article)

[Interview Clip] Transcript: “‘Back To December’ is a song that addresses a first for me, in that I’ve never apologized to someone in a song before. This is about a person who was incredible to me- just perfect in a relationship, and I was really careless with him. So, this is a song full of words that I would say to him that he deserves to hear.”

[CBS Interview] She explained in the interview that she based the song on a conversation she had with the guy about whom she's singing. "It's not loosely based," she revealed. "It's almost word-for-word. It is a song and a conversation that needed to happen, because I don't want to hurt people. If you unintentionally do so, you've got to make that better."

April 3, 2010: Paramore's member Josh Farro marries Jenna Rice. Taylor attends the ceremony. She also goes to the studio in the morning.

[From Twitter] "Nathan you smell really good! Is that a new cologne?" "Thanks! Actually it's a two in one shampoo and soap. From Dial." My producer rules."

April 13, 2010: Taylor comes up with the title "Speak Now" after Scott Borchetta rejects "Enchanted". She also writes in her journal about getting tired of songs.

[From a Lover Journal] “So I've been obsessing over the new records to the point where it's all I can focus on. I'm majorly stressed and borderline losing it, with all these lists and chronic dissatisfaction. Perfectionist-ness. I keep growing tired of songs because I know I've raised the bar and I can beat half of the songs. Scott and I had lunch the other day. We were talking about the record and I had this epiphany. I didn't talk about it in interviews about how I felt about much of what has happened in the last 2 years. I've been silent about so much that I'm saying on this album. It's time to Speak Now. Scott freaked out. He loved it. We have a title, ladies and gentlemen!”

[Scott Borchetta Interview] “At one point, the record was not called ‘Speak Now.’ It was called ‘Enchanted,'” Big Machine president/CEO Scott Borchetta said. “We were at lunch, and she had played me a bunch of the new songs. I looked at her and I‘m like, ‘Taylor, this record isn’t about fairy tales and high school anymore. That’s not where you’re at. I don’t think the record should be called ‘Enchanted.'” Swift excused herself from the table at that point. By the time she came back, she had the “Speak Now” title, which comes closer to representing the evolution that the album represents in her career and in her still-young understanding of the world.

June 5, 2010: End of the Fearless Tour. Around this week, Taylor writes Long Live, scrabbling the chorus in her journal.

“This song is about my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick. The fans, the people who I feel that we are all in this together, this song talks about the triumphant moments that we’ve had in the last two years. We’ve had times where we just jump up and down, and dance like we don’t care how we’re dancing, and just scream at the top of our lungs, “How is this happening?” And, I feel very lucky to even have had one of those moments, nonetheless all the ones that I got to have. ‘Long Live’ is about how I feel reflecting on it. This song for me is like looking at a photo album of all the award shows, and all the stadium shows, and all the hands in the air in the crowd. It’s sort of the first love song that I’ve written to my team.”

“"Long Live," (in parentheses "We Will Be Remembered"), is the first song where I've ever had parentheses in the title. Besides that, though, this song is about my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick. The fans, the people who I feel that we are all in this together, this song talks about the triumphant moments that we've had in the last two years. We've had times where we just jump up and down, and dance like we don't care how we're dancing, and just scream at the top of our lungs, "How is this happening?" And, I feel very lucky to even have had one of those moments, nonetheless all the ones that I got to have. "Long Live" is about how I feel reflecting on it. This song for me is like looking at a photo album of all the award shows, and all the stadium shows, and all the hands in the air in the crowd. It's sort of the first love song that I've written to my team.”

June 9, 2010: Night of the CMT Music Awards, held in Nashville. 'CMT Music Awards' is the secret message of The Story Of Us.

“‘The Story of Us’ is about running into someone I had been in a relationship with at an awards show, and we were seated a few seats away from each other. I just wanted to say to him, ‘Is this killing you? Because it’s killing me.’ But I didn’t. But I couldn’t. Because we both had these silent shields up. I went home and I sat there at the kitchen table and I said to my mom, ‘I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room.’ Then I got up and ran into my bedroom, as she’s seen me do many times. And she probably assumed I had come up with a line in the song.”

“'The Story of Us' is a song that I wrote about an awkward situation where, well… Let me just preface by saying that I have happened to run into exes in strange places lately. This is about one of those situations where the strange place that I ran into him was an awards show. I was seated a couple of seats away from him and there was so much that needed to be said, and neither one of us was willing to say it. We were both acting like we were engaged in conversations with people that we don't even know. It was just miserable. I was telling my Mom about it later, and I said I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room. And then I was like, "Gotta go. Bye!" And my Mom is used to that at this point so, that's what this song is about.”

June 13, 2010: Taylor premiers Mine during the 13-hour Meet & Greet at the CMA Music Festival. Fans ask a lot of questions about Sparks Fly.

“'Sparks Fly' is a song I wrote a few years ago and played in concert. You guys have learned it and I think like it, which makes me really happy. When we did the 13-hour Meet and Greet at the CMA Fest, there was a comment I got over and over again. You guys were saying, 'So what about 'Sparks Fly?' Is it going to be on the next record? [...] I played that song at maybe one or two shows, and you guys just jumped on it and really made it something that I had to put on the album because you really showed interest in it.”

Comparison between the 2007 live version and the final one:

First verse: You say my name for the first time, baby, and I fall in love in an empty bar -> You’re the kind of reckless that should send me runnin’, but I kinda know that I won’t get far.

Second verse: So reach out open-handed and lead me out to that floor / I don’t need more paper lanterns / Take me down, baby / Bring on the movie score / ‘Cause my heart is beating fast and you are beautiful / And I could wait patiently, but I really wish you would... -> My mind forgets to remind me you’re a bad idea / You touch me once and it’s really somethin’ / You find I’m even better than you imagined I would be / I’m on my guard for the rest of the world / But with you, I know it’s no good / And I could wait patiently, but I really wish you would…

Bridge: Just keep your beautiful eyes on me / Gonna strike this match tonight / And lead me up the staircase / Won't you whisper soft and slow / I’d love to hate it, but you make it like a firework show -> Just keep on keepin’ your eyes on me, it’s just wrong enough to make it feel right / And lead me up the staircase / Won't you whisper soft and slow / I'm captivated by you, baby I’m captivated by you baby, like a fireworks show.

Speculation: I think that the line "I'm on my guard from the rest of the world" from Sparks Fly being written after "And you figure out why I'm guarded" from Mine is very telling of what Taylor was going through.

June 16, 2010: [From a Lover Journal] After the CMT Music Awards, Taylor works on The Story Of Us for a few days, before finishing it on June 16th, on her way to Nathan Chapman's studio.

[MTV Interview] “I was at an awards show, and there was a guy there, obviously — it all starts there, doesn’t it? It was a guy I had been in a relationship with, falling out, then we end up at the same awards show, both trying to act like we don’t care, both like, you know, chatting up the people next to us. Afterward, I just felt so empty, like we were both fighting this silent war of pretending we didn’t care that the other was there. And I went home, and I wrote this song about it. And at that point, I had this gut feeling, and I knew the album was finished.”

[Lover Journal Page Transcript] “So I've been a little studio rat since the tour ended [...] I wake up to my cell phone alarm around 9:30 each morning, throw on a sundress, skip makeup, tie my hair in a messy side-braid, and head out the door with no shoes on. Because the only walking outside I'll be doing is from my house to my car, then from my car three steps to Nathan's basement studio. I worked on a song for a few days, then basically finished it in the car on the way to Nathan's this morning. It. Is. So. Good. And I can safely say I am DONE writing this record!! This song is up-tempo, and hooky and sort a torn sounding... like this horrible stressed confusion that comes on when you know the person you're pining away for is in the room. There are these invisible walls keeping things from being okay. So you're not fine. And they're not fine. And I'm happy I wrote that song!! :)”

Video: Making of The Story Of Us Demo

It will be the last song she writes before having a writer's block that will end 6 months later with All Too Well.

[USA Today Interview] [All Too Well] came after a six-month writing drought that followed a particularly toxic relationship. "There's a kind of bad that gets so overpowering you can't even write about it," she says of that time. "When you feel pain that is so far past dysfunctional, that leaves you with so many emotions that you can't filter them down to simple emotions to write about, that's when you know you really need to get out."

June 18, 2010: John Mayer presents Taylor with the Hal David Starlight Award, at the 41st Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards.

John's speech: “You could put her in a time machine in any era and she would have a hit record. Don't confuse everybody loving one thing as hype. Sometimes that's everyone agreeing that it's fabulous.”

From now on, Taylor will only focus on the production of Speak Now, tweaking the songs and overdubbing the instruments.

June 30, 2010: Taylor tweets about Amos Heller recording the bass on Mine at the Blackbird Studio. Clips from this day are also released.

July 8, 2010: Taylor is spotted in Maine, while filming the music video of Mine. The final mix of the song is not ready yet.

[Source] Taylor Swift was in Kennebunk today, July 8, shooting part of a new music video at Christ Church on Dane Street. The Rev. Janet Leighninger, pastor of Christ Church said they had been contacted a while ago by a company that scouts film locations and happened to check the church out one Sunday. “Then they called about a week ago and said could they possibly film here,” she said. Leighninger said she was told it would be a country artist shooting a music video, but not who the artist was. “We wanted to make sure it was appropriate,” she said. On the morning of the shoot, Leighninger discovered the artist was Swift.

[People who were there] "It was a blast to watch! Both Taylor and the guy in her video seemed to be having tons of fun and at one point where he proposes and they kissed he looked up at the camera crew and said 'She said no by the way.' The scene lasted about 30 minutes and then they started filming in the house again."

[Mixer Justin Niebank Interview] "Interestingly enough, I'd done some kind of pre‑mix of 'Mine' for a video thing, with the original drums and bass, and Nathan and Taylor were like: 'This is cool, but we want to go a little bit more for a power approach.' So by the time it got to the final mix they had rerecorded the bass and the drums and it sounded great.

The rough version of the final mix is called "Mine JN Master Mix", where JN stands for Justin Niebank. You can also see "SF" which stands for Shannon Forest, the drummer. The old stems played by Nathan are also visible.

To sum up all of the known Mine demos:

First demo: Recorded in March 2010; all instruments played by Nathan Chapman; Mixed by Nathan.

Second demo: Mixed in June 2010, made for the Music Video; all instruments still played by Nathan Chapman; Mixed by Justin Niebank.

Third demo: Called "JN Master Mix": Mixed on July 21, 2010, bass played by Amos Heller, drums played by Shannon Forest, mixed by Justin Niebank, mix ready or almost ready to be mastered.

July 15, 2010: Taylor and Toby Hemingway are spotted shopping in West Hollywood. This is also the day when the orchestra strings for Back To December and Haunted are recorded, arranged by Paul Buckmaster. Taylor's interview in the studio here.

“I wanted the music and the orchestration [for Haunted] to reflect the intensity of the emotion the song is about, so we recorded strings with Paul Buckmaster at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. It was an amazing experience – recording this entire big, live string section that I think in the end really captured the intense, chaotic feeling of confusion I was looking for.”

Late July 2010: In the meantime, Justin Niebank completes the definitive mixes. Mine is completed on July 21st specifically.

[Nathan Chapman] For Speak Now we had to mix 17 songs in three weeks, and I knew that I would want to go back to tweak some of the songs we had mixed earlier, and I did not want to have to recall the mixing board every time. There just wasn't time for that.

July 2010: Taylor moves out to her own condo in Nashville.

“This summer I've been 99 percent focused on my new record and one percent focused on the fact that I actually just moved into my first place. I'm officially moved in! I'm so excited! As you know, I've been constantly talking about how I've been antique shopping and non-stop planning and construction on this place. It's been really awesome to figure out what it's like to be on your own, just cooking and stuff. I'm having such a blast with it.”

The Never Grow Up secret message is: "I moved out in July".

July 2010: Shooting of the Speak Now Photoshoot with her band, The Agency.

August 4, 2010: Mine is released. It was supposed to be released on August 15th, but since it had leaked its release was anticipated.

August 31, 2010: The Mine Music Video is released. Taylor has a get-together at her home in Nashville with the kids in the video and their families.

Taylor broke down the music video in 2012 in this very funny interview for Vevo Certified;

Behind The Scenes Footage: PART 1, PART 2, PART 3 from the Speak Now Deluxe Edition/Target. This is very unhinged.

[Director Roman White comment] Creating this piece was beyond fun, and I’ve honestly never had a better time on a shoot. Was it crazy hot? Yes. Were there tons of bugs? Yes. Was all of this offset by the insanely gorgeous scenery? 100% YES! We shot the entire piece near Portland, Maine and much lobster was eaten! My AMAZING producer, Tameron Hedge, actually got accosted by a HUGE seagull who took off with her lobster roll (that’s how good they were). Other than that one little incident, Maine was absolute perfection. On the first day, we shot on a private estate with more than 2,000 acres and a private beach, rounding out the second day in a small harbor town. There was a lot going on, and I had a BLAST with the entire gang!

September 12, 2010: Taylor premiers Innocent at the VMAs, a year after the Kanye incident.

“You have to try really hard to regulate what you feel, what you let in, and what you don’t… but then when it comes to making an album, if you make everything general and kind of gloss over your actual, raw feelings, that doesn’t benefit anyone. As far as what to feel and what level to feel it, I can’t really control any of that. It’s just how things hit you, and what you let in is definitely something you’ve got to find a balance for.”

“I think a lot of people expected me to write a song about him. But for me it was important to write a song to him.”

October 25, 2010: Speak Now is finally released.

“There is also the fact that the album is called 'Speak Now,' and that pertains to the album as a concept and as an entire theme of the record, more than I can even tell you," she says. "I've been working on it for two years. Ever since we put out 'Fearless,' I've been writing for this record and conceptualizing it and putting it together in my head, what I wanted it to be. I like to take a lot of time between albums to work up the next one and see what it is. We did the same thing with 'Fearless.' We put two years in between it [and her self-titled debut album] and that gives enough time for me [to] write everything that I live. You have got to give yourself time to live a lot of things, so you can write a lot of things.”

“I wrote all the songs myself for this record. It didn't really happen on purpose. It just sort of happened that way. I'd get my best ideas at 3:00 AM in Arkansas, and didn't have a co-writer around and I'd just finish it. And that would happen again in New York; that would happen again in Boston; that would happen again in Nashville. The songs that made the cut for the albums are the ones that I wrote by myself so – wish me luck!”

“In life you have a lot of situations that pop up and people that come into your life, and sometimes you don’t get to tell them what you wish you would have told them,” Swift said. “This album is my opportunity to do that track-by-track. Each song is a different confession to a different person.”

“Some of the things I wrote about are things everyone saw me go through,” she added. “Some of the things I wrote about are things nobody ever knew about. I’m beyond excited for you to hear these stories and confessions.”

Bonus: The Vault

“My favorite thing to do is make a list of what the album can be, even when I'm in the beginning stages of writing the album and I've got three songs on the list. I still make a list of what the track listing would be like. Which [song] is track one, two or three. And then you keep writing more songs and writing more songs and all of a sudden you've got a list of 25 songs. What I would do is keep bumping off songs that I felt I had overwritten. As you keep writing more songs, your list gets better and better and better. And I did that so many times I can't even count!”

The Vault Titles:

Castles Crumbling

Someone Just Told Me

His Lies

Wonderful Things

I Can See You

Let's Go

Foolish One

Timeless

Bother Me

Electric Touch

When Emma Falls In Love

All of them are self-written.

This post will be edited once we will have additional info on the songs, especially the Vault Songs. Thank you for reading!

[newhope8]

Xiumin 😎😎😎

@vanillacupcakefrosting Here's Xiumin from the Don't Mess Up My Tempo album! 😎😎😎 I hope these give you some lovely inspiration for writing your next piece! 🥰🥰🥰💕💕💕

@itsseohannbin @channieandhisgoonsquad @frenchkisstheabyss @queenmea604 @minnieprincess85 @moonlightndaydreams @hyunsvngs

[lifemod17]

I don't think I ever said why I love W,B! and why it's so important to me? Sooooooo

Wasteland, Baby! and why it means a lot to me... Today (March 01) is actually the record's 5 year anniversary!! I would say this album is easily #2 on my all time favorite albums (This Place Will Become Your Tomb by Sleep Token is #1). How I would summarize this album and what it feels like to me is: "LOVE THROUGHOUT THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD". We live in this messed up world where so many things often go awry and while it gives us countless reasons to remind us how fucked up our home is- that there can always be a silver lining. That there will always be hope and something to give you a reason to keep going. That the right person can make you feel like being alive isn't the worst thing because you have someone that makes you feel loved amidst all the shitty things. <<< Classic me to have that mentality/how I look at life, so naturally I resonate IMMENSELY with it.

I've been listening to it for a while, a few years now actually, but my love for this record came to me in the most unexpected of times- I was doing laundry haha and I remember having a very exhausting day and the title track came on shuffle, and it was instantly one of those times where I had to stop what I'm doing and just EXIST IN THE MOMENT WHILE THIS SONG PLAYS.

The entire record is beyond beautiful and so well made but the title track specifically is so important to me because that was one of the few times I had heard this GORGEOUS love song -the kind that tugs at your heart, with lyrics literally saying "wasteland, baby, I'm in love, I'm in love with you"- and nobody came to mind. I was just at peace and was happy to be hearing those soft vocals and soothing humming. This song to me, quite literally feels like a long, warm, soft hug. The kind that rids me of all the bad shit that happened. It feels like the kind of embrace where I immediately felt safe.

This song is not everyone's cup of tea may it be because of it's tempo or the voice effects. I personally love the fact that it is drowning in all that reverb because it adds to this effect where it feels like hearing sounds WHILE YOU ARE UNDERNEATH THE WATER. There's no crazy instruments, just Andy and his ethereal vocals.

And if you did not know, yes Andrew is actually underwater in that album art cover! And YES his mother OIL PAINTED THAT WITH ALL THE TINY DETAILS!!! There's also a really sweet sunset line so you know I am a massive sucker obviously!

But yeah, it is SO VERY important to me. And the fact that THERE WAS A NEW SONG THAT CAME OUT FOR THE 5YR ANNIVERSARY *AND* THAT THERE'S GOING TO BE A DELUXE VERSION ON APRIL 19!!??!!!! Seeing that made me so happy 🥰

[a-kookie-with-my-tae]

Befallen: Chapter 1

Pairing: Idol!Jungkook x Music Producer!Reader

Genre: Fluff and not really Angst but like all the sexual tension

Word Count: 2.5K

Warnings: Y/N doesn't know how to feels, sexual tension, Jimin is a chaotic mess, the main couple has a staring problem, what even is this

A/N: This chapter takes place 6 months after the prologue. I am really happy with how this turned out. I actually had this chapter written last week, but my OCD made me do a million edits before I could post it. I think you guys will enjoy! Don't forget to comment and reblog if you like it. Let me know what you think!

Masterlist

Mellifluous: a sound that is sweet and smooth, pleasing to hear.

I sit in frustration as I stare at the multiple monitors in front of me. This song has had me stumped for the better part of the day, and I have absolutely no idea what to do with it. It's supposed to be relieving my stress from the new album about to drop, but it seems to be doing a terrible job at that. I've tried rearranging the melodies, changing the synth tracks, even adjusting the tempo of the whole song itself. But it still doesn't sound quite right.

I tweak the backing drum track a bit in the chorus, making it a bit heavier before I start the track from the beginning, leaning back against the leather and closing my eyes in focus as I listen intently.

The track starts off slow, almost like a whisper of guitar echos before the drums come in softly. It has an almost metallic feel to it, even though it is supposed to be a synth pop track. After about half a minute I sigh and pause it. It sounds of a different era, but I can't quite seem to put my finger on it. 

As it is, it sounds great. But, great has never been enough for me. It has to be perfect. So, I lean forward to get back to work when a soft voice speaks behind me. 

"You should add whispers to the beginning of the track."

I jump in my seat as I swivel around, facing the intruder with wide eyes.

An all-too-familiar face leans against the doorway, seemingly comfortable in my space even though he's never once stepped foot in this studio. He's dressed comfortably, albeit stylish with a long sleeve white tee, baggy black cargo pants and black Timblerlands. His biceps flex which brings my attention to the rings that adorn his very tattooed fingers wrapped around his crossed arms. The ink swirls up and disappears into the rolled up sleeve of his shirt.

I can't help but wonder what he's doing here. In my six months of working here we've never run into each other, within reason. He's the golden boy of the company, part of one of the biggest bands in the world right now. The fact that he's leaning against my doorway is an improbable occurrence. I half convince myself that I'm imagining things. What reason would he have to be here when his personal studio is on the other side of the building. Even the practice rooms he frequents aren't anywhere close to here. 

I don't have time to think about the reasoning behind his presence as he stares at me back, peculiarity in his gaze. 

He clears his throat, which brings my attention back to his face. His hair is unstyled and wavy, almost covering his big doe eyes. Supple lips pulling into a smirk as he watches me admire him. His jawline is sharp and angular. I knew he was handsome, having seen enough pictures around the building and circulating the internet, but basking in it in person is a whole different level of beauty. He almost seems inhuman.

It feels like an eternity has passed in those few seconds.

I snap myself out of my trance as I reposition myself in my chair.

"What?" I can barely get my voice cooperate with me as I speak softly, the one syllable somehow stuck in my throat.

He chuckles softly, his head turning down toward the floor. His smile is radiant, and something in my chest flutters at the sight of it. 

Calm down, Y/N. Shut that shit down.

He raises his head once again as our eyes make contact. 

"I said, you should add whispers to the beginning of the track." He speaks a bit louder this time, although he already knows that the volume of his voice wasn't the reason I couldn't comprehend the words.

I lean back and cross my arms as my brows furrow slightly. 

"What do you mean?" I ask.

He smiles softly before stepping toward me. I tense up as he he grows closer.

"Here." He says before leaning around me and grasping the mouse on my desk. I quickly swivel around in my chair, staring at him incredulously as he focuses on the monitors in front of us. The mouse clicks and the track once again starts playing from the beginning and the echoes of the guitar fill the room.

He waits a couple of seconds before speaking. "Right here. A conversation."

He turns back toward me and I inhale sharply, not noticing before how close in proximity he was.

"Just a few lines, spoken softly." He says. 

I just stare at him, waiting for him to continue on his analysis of the track.

"And right here," the drums come in as he speaks, signaling the start of where I was planning to have the first verse, "is where the vocals come in. Soft and sweet."

All that can be heard is the quiet sound of the track. But even that fades to the background as I gaze into his eyes. It feels as if I could get lost in those chocolate orbs forever, something swimming in them that I can't quite put my finger on. 

"What makes you say that?" My voice is but a whisper, but to him it's as clear as if I were projecting across an auditorium. 

"This song is meant to send a message." He begins, "I just don't know if you've quite figured out what it's supposed to be, yet."

His words envelop me as I comprehend their meaning. Every song I write is meant to convey a deeper meaning, a true heartfelt message for the world to hear. But, with the other producers and the stylistic choices of the bands they go to... that message always seems to get muddled. None of the artists I work with have ever heard my raw music. To have him recognize that, even before it's finished, makes me feel seen in a way I never knew was possible.

I stare, awestruck at his statement for what seems like hours, even though only a few seconds must have passed. His eyes glance at my lips, so quick that if I hadn't been so aware of his every movement I would've missed it. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can the door of the studio swings open. 

"'Sup, bitch! Whatchya wor-" Jimin comes barging in the room, unknowingly interrupting the unwelcome moment between his bandmate and I. My head quickly swivels over to the doorway to where my best friend now stands. His eyes almost bug out of his head as his lips freeze puckered out in an "o" shape for a few seconds before he recovers swiftly, eyeing me knowingly as he crosses his arms. 

I adjust myself in my seat, turning my body away from the bunny-toothed man next to me and toward him. He dons a sly smirk as his eyes dart between the two of us.

"Oh, sorry. I didn't realize you had... company." He says with a certain connotation that I choose not to pay mind to. 

I roll my eyes as I stand up to welcome him. Jimin has become my closest friend here in Korea. Sure, I'm friendly with a few of the other producers and some of the stylists and makeup artists that work with the bands here, but Jimin has become quite a confidante for me. We share everything with each other, from the smallest crushes to the weird moments that happen in our day to day lives. It's the former that I'm worried about at the moment. He's the only one here that knows about my reasoning behind coming to Korea, and definitely the only member of his band that even knows of my existence. 

Well, until now.

I stand up from my chair and step toward him, partly to welcome my friend but also to get as much distance between me and the handsome man that has been invading my space for the past few minutes. 

Jungkook's brows furrow in confusion as he looks between Jimin and I. 

"You guys... know each other?" He asks incredulously. 

"Of course!" Jimin wraps his arm around my shoulders, tugging me against his side as he speaks with pride in his voice. "Y/N is one of the producers here. She's awesome. Maybe even my favorite even though she won't show me any of her secret tracks she works on when she doesn't have a company project."

He half-jokingly pins me with a glare, pouting before smiling wide, pearly whites shining for the world to see and eyes disappearing into his cheeks.

Although he says it teasingly, I know that me not sharing my raw music with him is a sore spot for the guy. Since music is such a big part of my life and all. Seeing Jungkook in here, seemingly helping me with one, must sting a bit no matter what facade he puts up. His eyes tell.

"Ah, you must be new here." Jungkook says, looking at me with a welcoming smile on his face.

Jimin laughs, holding onto me for support as his knees give. Jungkook's brows furrow in confusion at the state of his friend. I roll my eyes at the display. Jimin has always had a flair for the dramatic, laughter always sending him falling out of chairs or onto the floor. Him leaning on me for support is a common occurrence. 

He sniffles and wipes metaphoric tears away from his eyes before speaking, "Y/N? No..."

Jimin says it as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, which I guess for him it is, as Jungkook raises an eyebrow at him, questioning his friend even further.

"She's been here since... when was it Y/N? Like... April?" He turns toward me for confirmation and I nod my head softly. 

"Oh." Jungkook's eyebrows raise in surprise before confusion settles into his features. "How have we not worked together before?"

"Jimin wants me all to himself, apparently." I say sarcastically. 

"No..." Jimin whines at the accusation, stomping his foot like a toddler. "I just happened to stumble into the wrong studio when trying to find Hyowon-ssi. These hallways can get confusing..." 

His bottom lip juts out in a pout. I laugh lightly at his antics. 

"Yeah, because you haven't been to one of our head producer's studio before and couldn't remember that it was room 102 and not 201." I deadpan before looking back in Jungkook's direction. The confusion in his eyes muddles with amusement at our antics.  

"In all seriousness, I just don't think I'm high enough on the food chain here to really work with the golden band of the company." I drift my eyes away from him, the words rushing through my mind making him seem even more unreachable. "After all, you guys have had your main producers, the best of the best here, for years. I'm practically a nobody, I mean, I've only been here for six months."

"Almost seven!" Jimin jumps in, as if a couple more weeks of experience here really makes a difference in the grand scheme of things.

I laugh and shake my head at him. Always so quick to defend my honor, even when it isn't necessary. 

"Fine... almost seven months." I correct, smiling at him before turning back toward Jungkook. "But I mostly work with the newer bands with a few of the other producers here. Right now, I'm actually working with TXT on their newest album."

He gazes at me in curiosity. I don't even want to think about the thoughts that are swimming through his mind right now, the obvious tension in the room before Jimin thankfully came in and the new information about me racing through it. 

"What you were playing before doesn't really seem their style..." He doesn't say it as a question, rather than a fact. 

"Yeah, that's.. um..." I look apologetically toward Jimin as I speak. I see the hurt in his eyes as he knows what I've must've been working on. "No one was really supposed to hear that."

Jungkook's eyebrows jump up in realization. "Oh! That was..." His eyes flash toward Jimin before looking back at me.

"Anyway," I start, "I need to get back to work, so..." I shrug as I straighten my spine and stuff my hands in my pockets, avoiding his gaze. 

Jungkook nods before stepping toward the door, pausing right before to address me. 

"For what it's worth, Y/N," my eyes dart back to his as he speaks with a serious tone. "I hope you find the message you're looking for."

As soon as the door shuts, Jimin is starting his assault. 

"What was Jungkook doing here?" He trails behind me as I sit back in my chair, finding a seat on the couch adjacent to me. 

"He stumbled in here randomly and almost gave me a heart attack while I was working. I honestly don't even know why he was in the area. He's never in this part of the building."

"Yeah, that is weird..." He agrees, thinking deeply for a moment.

"But," he pouts once again, this time in focus instead, "I thought you didn't have any new projects right now, with TXT prepping for the release of the album?"

"I know... I was just trying to de-stress a bit. Work on something that wasn't... that." Not that I didn't love the new album, I was very proud of the work I did along with a few of the other producers in the company. But working on the same eight songs over and over for months on end gets a little tiring real quick. 

"No fair!" He stomps his foot almost childlike and crosses his arm,  pouting jokingly even though his eyes show the sting of hurt at the realization . "I've been your best friend for months and I haven't heard any of these secret tracks of yours. Jungkook was here for thirty seconds and he got to..."

I smile, knowing I'm eventually going to give in to Jimin's demands, but wanting to see his dramatics play out for a little while longer,  But he's right. Even though Jungkook barging into my space and hearing what I was working on was unintended at best, it still happened. As my self-proclaimed best friend, he has a right to hear it, too. 

"...it's best friend code, Y/N.... I think. If not, it should be! The right thing to do would be to show me, too." He nods to himself, determination written on his face. "Yeah. You gotta show me what you were working on when he came in."

"Will that make you feel better?" I ask, chuckling quietly, already prepping to restart the track so he can hear. 

His eyes sparkle in response as his face lights up. 

"Yes!" He stands up and stumbles his way to my desk in excitement. "Show me, show me, show me!" 

The smile doesn't leave my face as I turn my chair around to face the monitors yet again. 

[all-will-be--well]

The Maybe Man

ok no one asked, but here is my AJR album review, song by song:

🌀 Maybe Man: I love this. I have a special place in my heart for all their album openers, they always give me chills. I can't wait to see them open with this live, especially when it goes so hard at the end! I've danced to this a lot already. Also learning that each verse references one song on the album! like a table of contents! I love them so much.

💔  Touchy Feely Fool: Very cute, and fun to sing along with. Probably like a solid 7 or 8 out of 10. Great to listen to, and has grown on me after listening to that Zach Sang interview and learning a little backstory

👍  Yes I'm A Mess: One of my faves from the album. I feel like such a badass walking around listening to this. Wish I could whistle!! The only thing i can't stand is the very end. I don't mind the tempo change but I don't like the slo mo voices that sound like a toy running out of batteries

🤓 The Dumb Song: More mid-tier for me. Got a great swing to it, and the instrumental breaks are really fun to dance to like a total idiot. I like to try out the lamest dance moves and just really commit to it. Lyric-wise, it's cute but reminds me of male weaponized incompetence (I know this isn't the intention, just what i think about), so it makes me feel a little weird if I think about it too much. Can't wait to hear a whole crowd scream "You should nooooot have done that!"

▶️ Inertia: Currently, this is my FAVORITE song on the album. It's fun, it's meaningful, it's got a great beat, and there are sounds that bring me back to past albums so it feels almost nostalgic. They used the instrumentals a lot in their promos for this album, and I can see why. It's both angelic with the choir sounds, and dark with the reverb/bass sounds. So good.

🧍‍♂️ Turning Out Pt iii : Always appreciate the Turning Out songs. Personally, the original is still my favorite. But even that one took me listening to it a dozen times before it really HIT, and then i was crying in the car. So maybe the same will happen with this one someday! Also if i'm not mistaken it's Ryan on vocals? So that's fun to have a change (though honestly he and Jack sound so similar)

🧠  Hole in the Bottom of My Brain: Gosh, so fun! Has that kind of nursery rhyme theme where it builds on itself (swallowed the spider to catch the fly, etc). However, unlike a nursery rhyme, the lyrics are kinda complicated to it's hard to sing along to. I'm sure people will be singing along by the time they're performing it live, like everyone memorizing the rambling line from Karma.

💿 The DJ is Crying for Help: I want to like this one more than I do. Don't get me wrong, I do like it! I think I just find it a little auditorily overwhelming. Like the string arpeggios are awesome, but I can't listen to that and the back up vocals and other sound effects at the same time. idk. To quote my favorite movie, Amadeus: "There are simply too many notes"

🙅🏻‍♂️ I Won't: This one has been out for a while so I feel like I've listened to it a lot already. Definitely makes me swagger walking around my apartment like I'm a total badass. Doesn't get my blood rushing like some of the others, but again that might just be because I've heard it a lot already.

🎡Steve's Going to London: Took me a few play-throughs to actually realize it wasn't just a nothing song! I appreciate them kinda breaking the 4th wall in a very AJR way. This song has grown on me with each listen! Very fun to sing and dance to, and has a great beat. My prediction is that this song will have a lot of special effects when they perform it live. We'll see...

💜 God is Really Real: RIP Gary ❤️ I love that their dad became a beloved part of the fandom. Very touching that they released this song early when it became clear they didn't have much longer with their dad. Beautiful, meaningful addition to the album.

🍂 2085: Perfectly packages up the album! The lyrics say that the old-timey voice says "You are not alone, young child, young child" which is NOT what it sounds like?? So hopefully that gets cleared up. I've seen some claiming it's a Yanny/Laurel situation, and tbh i wouldn't put it past the boys to find a way to do that on purpose. (I hear "You are my heart grown, just know, just know" which i know doesn't really make sense, but it's sweet to me) But the lyrics at the end "You've gotta get better, you're all that I got" give me chills. And then switching to "I gotta get better, I'm all that I got" 😭 . Also loves that it connects so perfectly back to Maybe Man so I can just listen to the album on repeat without interruption

 THE END

[2802t]

lee taeyeon, a comprehensive timeline, pt. ii (2020— 2023)

2020

taeyeon gets really into caffeine this year.

he gets a girlfriend, too, an actress a few years older than him, who doesn't mind that he doesn't have the emotional capacity or the actual physical time to be in her lap every other day, which is nice. the sex is good, objectively speaking, but they fight a lot and rumors spread when they get cast on a short-lived variety show together. fortunately, people buy into the mentor story, especially when taeyeon's legitimate debut as an actor is announced - a lead this time, no less. only filming happens this year, thankfully. promotion is a problem for next year's taeyeon.

he also starts to hear whispers of a solo debut in the works, but he's not so sure it's because they see his true potential as an individual act, what with his brand reputation being on a consistent upward trajectory, never straying far from the top ten, or if another way to bleed him dry monetarily came to them in a dream. either way, they hand him a pen and tell him to start jotting "things" down. ideas. maybe so they can go for the self-written angle, but anyway. they call it a vague someday, promising starlight in inevitability, but indigo is still young, all things considered, not even five years old, and taeyeon can barely stomach the work he does divided among four other people, so he takes it for what it is. a bone, motivation to keep eating when his plate is already full - metaphorically, of course. they keep him frail. it looks better on camera.

he writes a lot, raps a lot, sings a lot, especially when he and his girlfriend inevitably crash and burn. most of it ends up on love yourself: tear. it feels appropriate. his emotion drips over every track and blues, bless their hearts, praise him for his growth as an artist.

he starts kissing boys. fever bleeds out. he'll worry about it later.

highlights: first male muse of bobbi brown cosmetics, joined the cast of "master in the house", won the rookie award at the 2020 sbs entertainment award for his role on the show, writing credits on every album that indigo released that year (love maze, airplane, pt 2, outro: tear (love yourself: tear), sign, 24/7 (don't mess up my tempo), oasis (love shot repackage), let me in (20 cube) (border: day one), fever (single); worked with samsung, polham and chaumet

2021 - 2022

merging in as an artist under infinite entertainment is something that is very much outside of his scope of culpability or concern, but like any competent employee, he makes it a point to get in good with the people that work with them. incidentally, he makes some of his dearest friends behind the curtain and finds that it's a lot easier to feel like lee taeyeon, just-some-guy than lee taeyeon, global idol, in modest company. modest, of course, being relative, but appropriate.

in all other aspects of his life he feels raw.

the year they're in the thick of the infinite world tour is coincidentally the year their musical identity wavers somewhat, in taeyeon's opinion. he's sure there's no correlation.

he does a lot more modeling, but also finds it pivotal to reach new heights as a dancer. it's probably the most determined and ambitious that taeyeon is in his career thus far, but is simultaneously the sickest he's ever been. he spends more of his time in places that he can grow, studios, the gym, with choreographers in as many stops as he can. he looks in the mirror and sees less and less of himself, but it all comes to a head when he passes out after one of indigo's sets.

it's a necessary wake up call when he comes to and still sees black spots swimming in front of his eyes, when pulling in breath hurts his lungs. he chooses healing, realizes that he's not any good to anybody dead. to be clear, he doesn't heal in the holistic sense, but he finds a secret thrill in doing things he shouldn't be. in the latter half of the year, he opens up some, to new people, new substances, and new experiences, and mourns a version of himself that had been deprived of living.

he looks into the mirror by the end of it all, more fulfilled and creatively nurtured than he'd been for entirely too long, and sees a softness he thought had been sculpted away, a youth that he'd be neglecting. life.

he falls in love with music again, with words, and decides to use them to make up for lost time.

highlights: face of brand and global ambassador of seoul fashion week spring 2022, muse for yves saint laurent beauty, official brand ambassador and model for versace, prominent commercial endorsements: the north face, gongcha, banila co; cast as "yeon si-eun" in weak hero class 1; became host of radio show "lee taeyeon's best friend"; writing credits on obsession album (ya ya ya, trouble, butterfly effect), gets selected for studio choom AOTM

2023

in may of this year, a thread drops on twitter from an anonymous source attempting to out taeyeon, filled with "evidence" of his sexuality, including creep shots of him with various men and coming in and out of bars that cater to the lgbtq community, using his history in waacking and tutting as fodder for their claims of his "abject femininity". as it were, there's an attempt made to prove that he's in a secret relationship with a man, exacerbating rumors that have surrounded him for years. the initial strategy is to ignore it, which is to say, he's told by infinite higher ups to ignore it while they handle it legally. and, for a while, he does. but when more and more posts start popping up on different platforms, and the tone of indigo's fanbase shifts into something nasty, it stops sitting right with taeyeon and he takes it upon himself to post on instagram condemning the original poster for treating being gay like it's something dirty or immoral, explaining that he's not secretly dating anyone and that even if he were gay, it wouldn't be anyone's business or any reason to look at him any differently as an artist. he finishes his statement off by commending and recommending numerous out queer artists to his fans and reiterating that his interest is in cultivating a community of kind, open-hearted individuals, not bigots.

his post is received mostly positively, but is controversial enough that things take a pretty abrupt halt. the solo debut that he'd been working on for the better part of the last two years gets vaulted and his socials go dark. it's as good as being put in time out in idol terms, and with 2023 being indigo's least active year in their entire lifespan, he's essentially left to rot and reflect. he doesn't feel bad about it, continues to work with and endorse brands that have shown him love, and makes it a point to double down during promotions, publicly donating to various organizations. his role is notably lessened for the singular comeback they do have, but for the first time in a long time, he feels a sense of agency over himself and he realizes that living authentically where he is in his career is a real possibility, one that he has every intention of taking.

life goes on.

[aettuddae]

im actually exo-l since tempo era, the first song that I like was gravity, when I first saw the lyrics, suddenly it made me remember the past relationship between Chaeyoung and Serim

And then I started to listen gravity with the scenario what if Gravity was written by Chaeyoung and the song its about her and Serim, with Baekhyun part as Serim part and Chanyeol part as Chaeyoung part

a little side author note: don't mess up my tempo album superiority 😌

this just made my heart small, gravity is one of my top 10 exo songs and the lyrics are heartbreaking. to think about it with chaeyoung and serim in mind it fits so well and is super sad

"you said i was your future, now i am just your past?" "i'm still waiting for you, my heart will always draw you in like gravity" "the you of back then is still lingering around me, so how could i let you go?"

this is SO chaeyoung's song for serim

[exosongtournament]

Round 1 - Don't Mess Up My Tempo/Love Shot - The 5th Album