#broken music posts

[br0-k3n-sch00lb01]

ALWAYS WATCHING- LYRICS (Full)

ALWAYS WATCHING- an omori fansong by me! (or BR0K3N-. on spotify, if you’re picky.)

The actual song is a work in progress currently! But the lyrics are finished, so I hope they’re enjoyable!! thank you…. <3

[[VERSE ONE- STRANGER]] I’m watching, I’m watching

I’m watching you and your misery

I can’t imagine why he’d send you here to my world

of darkness and suffering…

I can’t imagine why he’d put his friend through so much pain…

but I’m sure he had his reasons.

[[BRIDGE]]

maybe i could talk some sense into him, but i’m afraid he’ll just

turn back time

and forget everything that i said-

no-

he’s okay, i’m okay, you’re okay-

EVERYTHING IS GONNA BE OKAY-

[[CHORUS]]

I’m watching

I’m always watching

I’m watching as he punishes you

I’m watching,

I’m always watching

I’m watching as he punishes you

Just for knowing the truth.

I’m watching,

and i’m seething

He’s smiling as you scream

Everything will be okay,

even if it’s all tearing at the seams.

[[VERSE TWO, SWITCH TO HS BASIL]]

He’s watching, he’s watching

he’s watching me, I can feel it

I can’t imagine why i was sent here…

to this world of

terror and shadows and fear.

did i see something i shouldn’t have seen?

is he tired of me?

[[BRIDGE II]]

couldn’t you talk some sense into him?

don’t be afraid

i’m sure he’ll realize his mistake

no?

well- …oh.

he’s not okay, i’m not okay-

NOTHING WILL EVER BE OKAY-

[[CHORUS II]]

He’s watching, always watching

he’s watching as i’m suffering

he’s watching, and he’s seething

don’t just smile, PLEASE DO SOMETHING!

Nothing will ever be okay…

‘cause it’s all tearing apart at the seams.

[[OUTRO]] (spoken to screams)

everything is gonna be okay… everything is gonna be okay… everything is gonna be okay… EVERYTHING IS GONNA BE OKAY!!

[sadmages]

Finally found a bit for my Durge

[throwbackblr]

Seether - Broken (feat. Amy Lee) (2004)

[extraelodee]

“ took you long enough to find me ”

(20th November)

[misosuper]

Shoutout to me during lockdown for having nothing better to do than transcribe the TMA fluff intro 🙏 Go forth and fluff

[tabooiart]

bestie @op3ra and I did an art trade where we drew each other's Demeter designs!!! This was so sooo much fun yippee def go check out opera's half of the trade because i love it so so soooooo much <3

[averlym]

"one day, i cut him an apple. when he saw it, he laughed" (click for better resolution!) ,,, tag from @elliotly

[katyagrayce]

If I had the time, and the resources, I would write an entire PhD about how Taylor Swift’s relationship with her fans has been variably represented through her songs, and how that representation has in turn shaped that relationship. And I have neither of those two things, but I do have the next-best options – a free evening and a Tumblr account. So here we go. As far as I can remember, there are only six songs where Taylor directly addresses her fans: Long Live, mirrorball, Dear Reader, and now But Daddy I Love Him, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? and I Can Do It With a Broken Heart. I could be missing a few, because the woman does have a 20-year career. But even so, I think it’s telling that those are the six songs that come to mind: one huge feel-good ballad released when she first made it really big; then nothing for 10 years; then two quiet songs buried in their respective albums; and then, out of the blue, three loud, unforgettable bops released at the same time. From that alone, it’s pretty clear that Taylor has something that she wants to tell her fans – whether consciously or not, something about her relationship with them is increasingly weighing on her mind. And it doesn’t take much to figure out that said relationship is changing.

In Long Live, the fans are addressed mostly as a ‘we’ – a part of a collective that also includes Taylor, her band and her team, all of them with equal status and common goals. ‘Long live the mountains we moved / I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you.’ Later, those dragons are further described, are established as factions of the general public whom the fans stand separate from, in opposition to – ‘The cynics were outraged / Saying “this is absurd”.’ Basically, Taylor’s fans are shown to be fighting for her like an army ‘on the history book page’, which is not an uncommon metaphor in pop culture. But this is where things get interesting. Because, although Taylor creates that image of the army, she doesn’t structure it in the traditional way. Her fans are not footsoldiers defending her throne – they too are ‘the kings and the queens’, the ‘heroes’, hearing their names read out and holding up trophies. And because of that – because they stand equal with Taylor – they don’t look up to her even in victory, and she doesn’t claim to be anything more than a member of their bedraggled mob. Even at her pinnacle, she’s simply part of ‘a band of thieves in ripped-up jeans [who] got to rule the world.’

There’s only one point in Long Live where this total equality fractures – where the ‘we’ splits into a ‘me’ and a ‘you.’ And it’s in the bridge, where, for just a moment, Taylor steps outside of the present – she imagines herself and her fans growing up in the future. ‘Promise me this / That you’ll stand by me forever / But if, God forbid, fate should step in / And force us into a goodbye / If you have children someday / When they point to the pictures / Please tell them my name.’ This is usually the part of the song where you see audiences crying, and it’s easy to understand why – because even when Taylor separates herself from the fans, even when she doesn’t explicitly share her title of ‘queen’ with them, she still portrays them as the ones with the power. She asks them to stand by her, then to remember her. Scratch that, she pleads for them to do it. She’s expressing that she needs her fans, deeply. They’re not looking to her for guidance – it’s the other way around.

Fast forward 12 years, to Dear Reader, and you wonder how the hell did we get here?

Dear Reader is the exact opposite of Long Live. The fans are never part of a ‘we’ – in fact, they don’t play an active role in the song at all. All that they are is an omnipresent but silent entity, the titular ‘readers’, who hover offscreen as Taylor sings verse after verse of advice, then spends the chorus telling them not to follow it. This is Taylor as the long-crowned queen in the history book – the ex-thief, the grown-up revolutionary, who realised at some point that no matter how equally you fought alongside your people, no matter how young and inexperienced you all were, at some point they will need a ruler and then they will all look to you. Inch by inch, you will find yourself climbing up onto the throne, and you will be alone up there. The words you speak will fall down on the subjects sitting by your feet, and their power will be absolute, even when you didn’t mean them that way – even when they don’t have any conscious meaning, are just ‘desperate prayers of a cursed man / spilling out to you for free.’ And in the end – just like before – all you can do to rebalance the power is plead. ‘Darling, darling, please / You wouldn’t take my word for it / If you knew who was talking.’

And of course, this plea is interesting in itself, because it’s also the exact opposite of the plea in Long Live. In Long Live, Taylor is asking her fans to immortalise her in the future, to pass on her memory – the underlying assumption is that they can do this because they were there with her, they know her. But here, Taylor says that her fans wouldn’t listen ‘if they knew who was talking’, which implies – well, they don’t know. They don’t know the person behind the words. Despite all the mountains they moved – all the magic they made. Despite all the games they played together, the secret sessions, the Easter eggs, the friendship bracelets. Despite the songs spilled out like confessions. Despite it, or because of it. They don’t know her. They don’t know Taylor Swift.

In Dear Reader, this concept is portrayed as tragic. There is a lot of sadness in that image of Taylor alone above the crowd, a perceived ‘guiding light’ that is actually so lonely and broken in the way it shines – which is a good segue back to an earlier song on our list, mirrorball. The metaphor there was very similar to in Dear Reader, but the plea Taylor made was more in tune with Long Live – she begged for her fans to keep standing by her, keep listening to her. ‘When they called off the circus, burnt the disco down / When they sent home the horses and the rodeo clowns / I’m still on that tightrope, I’m still trying everything / To keep you looking at me.’ Basically, in mirrorball, she begs her fans to stay with her despite the new gap growing between them; in Dear Reader, she begs them to take a step back, to acknowledge that the situation is becoming toxic. And then, we get to the songs of The Tortured Poets Department. And Taylor isn’t begging anymore. If anything, she is screaming.

TTPD was marketed as Taylor’s saddest album, but to me, it’s more obviously her angriest. Rage is not a new concept in her songs, but it’s previously always been directed at very specific people – Kanye West in Look What You Made Me Do, the online haters in You Need to Calm Down, Jake Gyllenhaal in We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together and I Bet You Think About Me and All Too Well (10 Minute Version). Alternatively, it’s been couched in fiction, like how the story of Rebekah Harkness couches mad woman. But in TTPD, there is no couching – the very marketing leans into how personal each song is for Taylor – and nobody is safe. For the first time, Taylor’s fans are not represented as a separate entity protecting her against the rest of the world – they themselves are a part of that roiling mass whom she needs protection from. That message becomes very pointed in the third line of But Daddy I Love Him, ‘I just learnt these people only raise you / To cage you.’ That line flags the entire song as directed not towards strangers, but towards the people who have surrounded Taylor since she was 16, who have shaped her career, who claim to care about her – the army of Long Live, the audience of mirrorball, the listeners of Dear Reader. Those people are the ‘Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best / Clutching their pearls, sighing “what a mess.”’ And that makes sense when you remember that it was Taylor’s fans who were most critical of her relationship with Matty Healy, and even with Travis Kelce. But it doesn’t make the song any less uncomfortable to listen to. For the first time, the ‘you’ Taylor is yelling at is actually you, and maybe that’s why she’s so unguarded and vicious in her choice of words – ‘I’ll tell you something right now / I’d rather burn my whole life down / Than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning.’ It also brings a new dimension to the lyrics ‘Time, doesn’t it give some perspective? / And no, you can’t come to the wedding’. Because of course, when things are going well in Taylor’s relationships, it’s her fans who want to share in that – her fans who want to hear updates from her, like her social media posts, listen out for wedding bells. And with those lyrics, Taylor’s taking that away from them. No, you don’t get to be there for the good parts. You haven’t earnt it. You weren’t there for me when I needed you. You don’t know me that well.

And that leads, of course, to the ultimate song about Taylor’s fans not knowing her – I Can Do It With a Broken Heart. Arguably, the song doesn’t quite belong on this list, because Taylor never directly addresses her fans either as a ‘you’ or as a ‘we’. But that’s telling in itself, because it’s a song where the fans play an active role in the narrative, and yet where they only appear as a foreign, menacing entity – the crowd that sees ‘all the pieces of [Taylor] shattered’ and responds by ‘chanting “more.”’ There’s been a lot of debate online about whether this song will ever be performed live, and personally, I think that it’ll be just too uncomfortable an experience. Because this song is mirrorball without the plea in it. This song is so self-reflexive, its light burns your eyes. Every single syllable of this song is designed to say what you see is not who I am, and you don’t know me, and what you think is love is killing me. And how can a crowd cheer during a performance when that’s what their cheering means? I love you, you’re falling apart for me. I love you, it’s ruining your life.

Of course, the song was written about a very specific time in Taylor’s life, and I think that’s worth emphasising for every song on this list – they all capture a specific moment, immortalise a specific emotion like fixing a bug in amber, whereas in the real world, emotions come and go. The fact that Taylor felt like this about her fans at one stage doesn’t mean she always feels Iike this about them. The fact that she was hurt and furious doesn’t mean she can’t also be grateful and warm. But what angry songs do is disrupt the assumption that everything’s okay, form a crack in the glass, introduce doubt behind every smile. You only need to see through someone once to never take them at face value again. And when that experience is immortalised in a song, it’s even harder to forget it. What angry songs do is become self-fulfilling prophecies, echoing in the fans’ heads every time they see Taylor until, eventually, some distrust is inevitable. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing – to be more aware of how the mirrorball turns, the illusion of light, the real person underneath. But it’s a change. It’s a change, and even by singing about it, Taylor is ironically making it happen.

Which brings us, finally, to possibly the angriest song Taylor’s ever written – the last song I’m going to be talking about, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? At first glance, this song isn’t necessarily directed at Taylor’s fans. It reuses a lot of imagery from my tears ricochet and mad woman, and it’s easy to write it off as also being about Big Machine Records or her detractors in the general public. But some of the lyrics in the bridge are very, very telling. The most obvious is ‘Put narcotics into all of my songs / And that’s why you’re still singing along.’ Then there are all the veiled references to obsessive people trying to get closer than they should be, closer than any stranger is allowed – ‘So all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs,’ ‘I’ll sue you if you step on my lawn.’ Elsewhere in the song, we also see the circus imagery of mirrorball turned threatening – ‘I was tame, I was gentle till the circus life made me mean’ – and the opening lines of But Daddy I Love Him come back, ‘You caged me and then you called me crazy / I am what I am because you trained me.’ This song has all the evolving messages about Taylor’s fans rolled into one – you don’t know me, you don’t own me, you’re ruining my life, you have no right to criticise. And then, for the first time, she says it in black-and-white – ‘You hurt me.’ No metaphors. No frills. It’s only three words, but it says volumes – You hurt me. You were meant to be on my side. We were meant to be fighting together. But, somehow, we’ve been split apart. You broke the promise I asked of you when I was 19 years old. You turned on me. And it hurts.

TTPD is an incredibly, incredibly angry album. Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? is an incredibly, incredibly angry song. But they are also both incredibly, incredibly sad. Taylor sings ‘Who’s afraid of little old me? / You should be’, when, 15 years earlier, she was singing ‘I’m not afraid / We will be remembered.’ And yes, a song is just a moment in time, but a series of songs – that’s a story. It’s a life. You can play through Taylor Swift’s discography, and you’ll hear the story of a 16-year-old girl whose trust was slowly destroyed. Sure, that might be the story of most 16-year-old girls. But most of them don’t go through it in the public eye. Most of them don’t have to balance being honest against perpetuating the cycle. And most of them listen to sad songs to get them through, instead of being the one putting those sad songs out into the world. ‘You don’t get to tell me about sad,’ Taylor sings, because of course she does. We don’t have to tell her about sad. For our generation, she is one of the people who defined what it means.

~~~

(Disclaimer: This essay is not intended to deal with the actual content of any criticism Taylor received from her fans, or the question of whether that criticism was justified. I’m leaving that discourse to other people. My aim was just to explore how Taylor’s writing about her fans has changed over time, and what that tells us about their relationship and her career as a whole).

[traumatizedjaguar]

I’ll be ok

[liesmultixxx]

“𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘺 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦?”

[br0-k3n-sch00lb01]

Hello, welcome, why don't you take a seat? Get comfortable, relax, take a second if you need to. Now what's bothering you? Well, why don't we start at the beginning… Growing up, how was your relationship with the fundamentals of conscious existence? Did you have xenon orchid sinews spilling down the outer center of your Blooming Escher/Mandelbrot head? And how about claustrophilic tendrils clapping caskets closed on seven-knuckle thumbs? Did you get along well with the Gideon Bugler pineal glands? Your projector eyes casting sci-fi's on your STR'd strands?

Tell me about your nerve to steal nerves of steel from under Bacchus' bloody nose! Did Namibian Himbas tie-dye you, your ears pierced with a Phineas Gage flagpole? Did you die before your day? Thursday traction, Tuesday titration- My hope is to assess through my objective report of Your subjective conjecture Whether this proprietary bled of expertise and seasoning works as well as this Transorbital ice pick-

Holistic ballistics, you got a better idea? It's about the best we could come up with. what, you think ideas spread because they're good? No, they spread because people like them! So now here we are once again, holding As it were, a mirror up to your mirror!

I guess it's just something people do..

[uzi-x33]

literally just my music taste🎀 i love music i literally can’t do anything without it but my music taste is so bipolar💀💀

[daughterofsarenrae]

Kal-El might not be the smartest fish but at least he's pretty!

[synthshenanigans]

Im not prepared for what my spotify wrapped is gonna look like

[thrilling-oneway]

In light of the news about Pusu did you know there’s a bandori song (by PoppinParty) called Setsunai Sandglass that is oddly very similar to donketsu so uhhh yeah. Replacement song. Have fun.

[sonic-adventure-3]

they should do a symphony album for each game or at least era. the symphony is great but ngl the pacing is just way too rapid-fire to really appreciate the music beyond a ‘hey i know that song’ before it’s gone. i wish the songs would get way more breathing room, enough to get full versions of at least some songs. it’s an impossible task to fit all the most recognizable sonic songs into just an hour though, sonic just has way too many games with way too dope music, so i wanna dream of like a dozen symphonies broken up by game/era/thematic throughline rather than time constraints. like: 1, 2, 3&K, CD; sa1, sa2; 06, unleashed, satbk; frontiers. GAH. I JUST WANT OFFICIAL FULL LENGTH ORCHESTRAL ARRANGEMENTS OF SONIC MUSIC SO SO SO BAD