#nashville string machine

[mitjalovse]

The 90's of Prince presented us with the problems the superstars of the previous eras had despite the fact most of them had many favourable circumstances then. Still, there were some cases, such as The Beach Boys, which made you sigh then. The group I mentioned, for instance, had a reputation, though the latter was built on their past. Stars & Stripes Vol. 1 showed that and, to be honest, they did have a correct idea, i.e. they covered their own hits with some modern country singers. However, they botched this principle immensely, because the entire thing feels like a fan karaoke at some times. Sure, there are some collaborations, such as the piece you hear on the link, where you can trace the best possible version of Stars & Stripes Vol. 1. Sadly, even these settled for good enough.

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: Bonnie “Prince” Billy feat. Tim O’Brien - “Our Home”

Never one to sit still musically, Bonnie “Prince” Billy takes his music to the front porch with “Our Home.”

Featuring Tim O’Brien on mandolin and co-lead vocals, “Home” heralds the Jan. 31, 2025, arrival of the Purple Bird. It’s a fast waltz, with acoustic instrumentation, lead fiddle, handclaps and multiple voices on the titular refrain:

Harvest the honey and string up the beans/that’s how we make it our home/do it by hand and screw the machines/that’s how we make it our home, goes one stretch.

Billy and producer David “Ferg” Ferguson pulled together “the best band you can get in Nashville right now,” Domino Recording Co., said in a statement, while calling the Purple Bird “simultaneously like and unlike other BPB records.”

That sounds about right. And “Our Home” sounds about perfect.

Grade card: Bonnie “Prince” Billy feat. Tim O’Brien - “Our Home” - A

10/22/24

[gerogerigaogaigar]

Portishead - Dummy

Trip hop is one of those genres where there are like three artists in the whole scene and all of them are legendary. That was kind of an early 90s mood honestly what with grunge being the same. Portishead's sound may be indistinguishable from their contemporaries for a lot of listeners but where Massive Attack and Tricky are coming from a hip hop sound Portishead has more in common with dub and jungle. They have slowed down the breakbeat to the point that its more implied than extant. Dummy develops a spacey, smokey atmosphere thats a little more tripped out and mellow than any other trip hop artist.

Prince - 1999

Yes! YES! In a sane world this would easily be Prince's best album. It's only by the grace of some flamboyant fag god that it isn't. 1999 is filled with huge funky beats and extremely corny synth lines. All the while Prince sing about what Prince knows best: sex. A third the album is made up of seven plus minute funk jams. Three in a row in fact. You'd think that going from the seven minute Let's Pretend We're Married to the eight minute D.S.M.R. to the nine minute Automatic would be tiring, but there is nothing tiring about 1999. This album which ranks 2nd or 3rd in Prince's discography for me would easily best most other artists best work by a mile.

Pink Floyd - The Wall

Roger Waters clearly decided at the height of Pink Floyd's popularity that, instead of going to therapy, he should just get all his problems out in the form of a sprawling concept album. The Wall is lyrically and thematically dense and careful in its use of musical motifs. The four note riff that accompanies main character Pink at every turn becomes a musical symbol of his downfall. And lyrically Waters is working through so many things. His feeling toward his dad, war, stardom, and his fans. His hatred for Thatcherism and the boarding school syatem. Disillusionment and the desire to escape. It may be a lengthy album, but it still packs a lot into that time. The Wall weaves a rich tapestry, its a lot to take in, but there are enough catchy songs to make the first listen as enjoyable as hundredth.

Queen - A Night At The Opera

It seems like a crime to separate A Night At The Opera from its sister album A Day At The Races, but this is the only one that critics liked. A Night At The Opera is a deliciously eccentric album. Its content to jump back and forth between ripping hard rock solos, jaunty little ukelele tunes, prog rock epics, and other miscellania. The whole thing really earns the right to be named after a Marx Brothers film with all the camp and it does feel as dramatic as an opera at times. Nearly every song feels like it could be the centerpiece to a different album. Most people probably consider meme legend Bohemian Rhapsody to be the album's centerpiece, but for me it has to be The Prophet's Song because not a lot of songs can pull off the transition from prog rock number to acapella fugue and back with such ease and style. Everything is so tight and ao technically proficient. The whole album is a well oiled machine that just produces serotonin.

Ray Charles - Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music

In an era when soul, gospel, and R&B were still called 'race music' it was an incredibly bold move to release this record. Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music consists of lush soul covers of contemporary country ballads. Not only was this the most popular album of Ray Charles' career it also revitalized interest in country music. Where the nashville sound is lush he went lusher with more strings and backup vocalists. Where country musicians croon he croons like he was trying out for the rat pack. He takes everything that country music does well and then does it better as a soul songs. This man outdid an entire genre of music! This album has the biggest dick energy in musical history probably.

Mary J. Blige - My Life

Mary J. Blige is back and her second album brings more of the R&B with hip hop beats rhat we saw on her first album. Although there is more neo soul style crooning and less funkiness which makes My Life a little less interesting than her debut. Its still a pretty great album though if you liked Whats The 411? then you'll probably like My Life.

Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique

This is the most nonsensical, unfocused, chaotic, and stupid album in the entire Beastie Boys catalogue. It is one of my favorite hip hop albums of all time. The rowdy childlike goofiness is so fucking infectious. I dont know how they get away with singing an entire song about eggs and then asking me to take anything seriously ever again. I love it. The beats are next level though. Look up a list of the samples used on Paul's Boutique and you'll be floored by the sheer number. The Sounds Of Science samples five different Beatles songs and then also samples Isaac Hayes, James Brown, Pato Bantin, and Boogie Down Productions. It feels like they chose half their samples strategically to make brilliant beats and then a few goofball choices like the theme from Magilla Gorilla or Folsom Prison Blues. The incredibly vortuosic production combined with the childlike off the cuff sound is really amazing. They worked so hard to make it sound like they weren't even trying.

U2 - Achtung Baby

[tswiftcore]

Taylor Swift Interview - Marie Claire - June, 2009

Taylor Swift loves a lot of things, but maybe nothing quite so much at this moment as her new Prevost tour bus. "It's amazing!" she says, bounding through the backstage labyrinth of the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California, where she'll be performing tonight — long Goldilocks curls bouncing behind her as she goes. "My mom and I just redid the whole thing. Come see!"

Inside, the bus is a lush girly fantasy in chocolate brown and peacock blue, complete with a tufted brown velvet couch and pearly blonde laminated wood paneling, an electric fireplace ("Because I'm always freezing!"), a big champagne marble bathroom, and a Star Trac treadmill that folds up like a Murphy bed. "We bought the old bus from Cher," explains Swift's mom, Andrea, who goes on every tour, watching from the sidelines, keen-eyed and silent as an eagle. "So it was all black and gothic." For the new bus, she says, "We wanted to brighten things up."

In Swift's bedroom, a big turquoise satin jewelry box has the word Barbie written across it in rhinestones, and Swift's first two multiplatinum albums shine above her silky, pillow-piled turquoise-and-brown bed like twin full moons. A sign over the door reads Never, Never, Never Give Up in curling bronze script.

"Did you have that made?" I ask her.

"No. I got it from T.J. Maxx," chirps Swift, who may be the world's least snobbish pop princess. In Taylor Swift's world (or "Taylor Nation," as fans call it), Urban Outfitters T-shirts and $900 Christian Louboutin stilettos are embraced with equal fervor. All the crew members are presented with cakes on their birthdays and serenaded by Swift herself. And everyone — literally everyone — is greeted with a hug and an enormous smile. It's kind of like meeting Mickey at Disney World. The weeping 8-year-old fan in a pink cowboy hat gets a hug. The mayor of Fresno gets a hug. Even the sweaty, walrus-shaped teenage boy with the slightly crazed glint in his eye gets a hug — though when he starts pawing Swift and kissing her all over her face, two beefy security guys step in and carry him off. "It scares the daylights out of me when she goes around hugging everybody," says Scott Borchetta, who signed Swift to his then-newborn record label, Big Machine, in 2005. "I have to turn my head when she does it during the concerts. But you couldn't stop her if you tried; she's just a born hugger."

Swift's gasping love for most things she sets eyes on (Starbucks coffee, low-fat strawberry Pop-Tarts, and members of the band Def Leppard included) might get old quickly if it weren't accompanied by a big winking dose of sass that gives her a Tinker Bell-ish quality. At 20, she is tall and skinny as a string bean, with long, gangly white arms and a plump, angelic face. Her eyes are blue as forget-me-nots, with a slightly Asian tilt and thick curling lashes that she flirts with expertly and shamelessly, like Scarlett O'Hara.

Though Swift was born in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, and lived there until she was 14, there is a specifically Southern flavor to much of her appeal. She loves flouncy miniskirts and candy-colored strapless dresses and halo-style headbands with silk flowers sewn on. She says "Y'all" and "Thay-nk ewe!" She prays. She bakes. (When she's home in Nashville, she regularly delivers homemade pumpkin-spice cookies with cream cheese frosting to the construction guys working on her new condo.) But there's a clear-eyed, laser-focus quality to Swift's attention, too — you sense there's a mighty brain ticking beneath all those blonde curls. "I love having a goal, feeling like I'm on a mission," says Swift. "I love trying to beat what I've done so far."

At the moment, that's a tall order. Swift's second album, Fearless, was the best-selling album of any genre in 2009. An addictive confection of country/pop love songs, Fearless stole the hearts of little girls and not-so-little girls all over America, sitting at number one on the Billboard Top 200 for 11 weeks, which is longer than any other album in the last decade. Come awards time, Swift took home four Grammys (including Best Album of the Year) and the MTV Moonman for Best Female Video (aka The Kanye Incident) — along with a truckload of other trophies, including the CMA award for Entertainer of the Year in 2009. Tickets for Swift's recent concert at L.A.'s Staples Center sold out in two minutes. Last year, she earned $18 million from albums and touring alone.

Suddenly, Taylor Swift is an enormous star. Like, the kind of star people have started comparing to Michael Jackson and Madonna. The kind of star who tours with nine buses and several purple trucks that have her face plastered on the side. The kind of star about whom Borchetta says, "Look, if she can produce a superior third album, one that's as big as the last two ... well, when's the last time somebody did that?"

Fresno is an interesting place to see Swift perform. Basically, the whole town has gone bananas over her — including the mayor, who has officially proclaimed today "Taylor Swift Day." (In part, this may be an attempt to distract residents from the fact that Fresno was recently rated the number one Drunkest City in America by Men's Health magazine, but still ...) A dusty farm town in the middle of California, Fresno is the land of monster trucks and short-haired, churchgoing ladies in ruffled homemade aprons and Easy Spirit shoes who sell their crafts at the Big Hat Days festival in neighboring Clovis. Swift, who does not drink or swear or flash cleavage, is huge here.

Outside the Save Mart Center, near the herd of Taylor Swift tour buses, a local radio station has set up its own bus and is broadcasting live all afternoon from a big loudspeaker. What seems like thousands of little girls and teenage girls and middle-aged girls are milling about in the parking lot — some dressed in homemade versions of the oversize "Junior Jewels" T-shirt and black nerd glasses that Swift wears in her "You Belong With Me" video — carrying huge "Taylor" signs and screaming "Taylor!" from time to time.

"I like her because she's young and pretty and she writes stuff we can relate to," says pretty, freckle-faced Caroline Meyers, whose mother has driven her and her best friend, Lexi Kraft, here 240 miles from Colusa, California. Both girls are 17. Both are wearing T-shirts that say "I drive by my ex-boyfriend's house too!" — something Swift admitted to doing in a CMT interview. "She's a good role model," adds Kraft. "Also, she's really pretty."

Swift has performed in Fresno before — but never like this. The first time she played here, in 2006, it was at Cali's Frozen Custard Creamery out on Blackstone Avenue. Swift, then 16, was in town for a promotional radio tour. She and her band stopped off for frozen yogurt and ended up playing an impromptu concert. The second time was two years ago, when she opened for Rascal Flatts. So when Swift appears later in the afternoon for a meet-and-greet backstage with the various radio people of Fresno and says, "I can't tell y'all how long I have been waiting for this night!", you actually believe her.

For Swift, performing seems not so much a profession as a calling. Like being a nun or a Jedi Knight. It's the only thing she's ever wanted to do, at all. Ever. "I have been singing randomly, obsessively, obnoxiously for as long as I can remember," says Swift, who grew up on an idyllic Christmas-tree farm in rural Pennsylvania with her own pony. The oldest child of well-to-do parents (her father, Scott, is a stockbroker; her mother, Andrea, quit her job as a mutual fund marketing executive to raise Swift and Swift's little brother, Austin), Swift insists that although her parents believed in her completely, the burning need to sing in public was entirely her own. "My parents have videos of me on the beach at, like, 3," she continues, "going up to people and singing Lion King songs for them. I was literally going from towel to towel, saying, 'Hi, I'm Taylor. I'm going to sing I Just Can't Wait to Be King for you now.'"

We're sitting on the couch in her backstage dressing room, which she shares with her brunette backup singer, Liz Huett, and her redheaded fiddle player, Caitlin Evanson, who are also two of her best friends. They both feature prominently in the homemade videos that Swift posts regularly for fans on the taylor swift website and Facebook, and they flank Swift like handmaidens. A big rack of bright, silky dresses stands against one wall; a forest of Louboutins is spread out over the floor. A giant soda from In-n-Out Burger sits melting on the coffee table.

"It's very Taylor to want to share her dressing room," Swift's publicist, Paula Erickson, said earlier. "She just likes having her friends around." And while that's true, it's worth noting that toward the end of every concert, Evanson and Swift have a spectacular, hair-thrashing drumming battle on two big steel garbage cans during the song "Should've Said No." (Swift always wins.)

It's about 5:30 in the afternoon, and Swift has just finished her preconcert rehearsal. She does not seem nervous at all. In fact, she seems downright relaxed. Dressed in a loose gray miniskirt and black Rag & Bone dance shoes with patent leather tips, she has been trying to explain to me what it's like to be born with such an intense sense of destiny, and how completely it has defined and driven her life so far. "It's literally all I've ever dreamed of," she says.

By the time she was 10, the details of Swift's future had begun to fall into place. She knew she wanted to be a country singer. She knew she needed to go to Nashville to make it happen. She'd discovered karaoke and was teaching herself to sing like Faith Hill and the Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain. She had taken to performing at any event she could find, including garden clubs and Boy Scout meetings, which made her seriously unpopular at school. Swift didn't care. She was on a mission. "I knew that everything I wanted to happen could happen in Nashville," she says. "So it became my number one goal to get there somehow."

[sidthorne]

stats • pinterest • connections

name: Sid Thorne age & birth date: 30 years | October 30th, 1992 ☼ scorpio ☾ capricorn ↗ libra height: 6’4” occupation: musician, songwriter, co-owner of bad omen music, lead singer of crimson crypt likes: the color black, music in all aspects, jewelry made from old guitar strings, his wife, goth punk aesthetics, batman, horror movies, breaking gender barriers, tattoos, guitar riffs dislikes: complete silence, most people, happy families, exercise, restriction, black coffee, the system, assholes, eating breakfast, soprano opera, drum machines, high standards, money good qualities: creative, ambitious, direct, protective, meticulous bad qualities: cynical, withdrawn, anxious, obsessive, temperamental orientation & status: demisexual, married to juliet thorne place of birth: detroit, michigan time in nashville: 12 years

diving deeper -

tw: addiction, terminal illness, death, overdose

born and raised in detroit, michigan to a single mother and an absentee father. they lived in a rough neighborhood. his father only occasionally was in sid's life, he had another family with three children who were his main focus. his mother more than made up for it though

from a very young age he was performing and as he aged it was the only thing he ever wanted to do so he practiced at it every chance he got whether that was singing, playing instruments, putting on shows, writing lyrics, etc.

he never fit in much, he painted his nails black, wore eyeliner, clothes never fit right because they were thrifted or hand me downs, he struggled to follow lessons, and he was always getting into some kind of trouble. he stayed isolated from the crowd. between that and his father, it led to added anger and resentment that he still carries a lot of to this day

his mom passed away from a terminal illness when he was sixteen, it was devastating for him. he took off to memphis to live with his cousin then later moved to nashville to pursue his music career

formed the Crimson Crypt and immediately started making music, playing gigs, and grinding their way through the underground - eventually they started collecting a following and got signed though they remained having mixed reviews

with little to no social skills and thrust into an environment with no experience was rough for sid. he was on tour constantly, opening for bigger names, playing festivals, and small gigs throughout the country met with a mixture of love and hate

sid became a garbage disposal for substances to deal with the anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and the undealt with grief of losing his mother mixed with the anger he'd harbored from a young age. he developed an addiction which got worse over time.

he started fighting concert goers that would hate on the band, withdrawal only made him worse, getting into fights with people in the crowd or at bars that dared to show any kind of dislike for him or the band or even looking at him wrong

juliet came into his life somewhere between it going from bad to worse and between her and the band he realized his problem. when he tried to stop the managers and label encouraged his drug use to get through shows. eventually he ended up in the hospital after a public overdose.

they left the label, sid went to rehab, got married, and started a new label with other fed up rock bands.

since then things have gotten better, he's still a work in progress with a couple relapses but he has 3 years of consecutive sobriety under his belt and he's trying to work on his other issues but it's been slow

the band is doing much better, having a few very successful albums - he lives in a penthouse downtown with his two black cats who are like children named onyx and poe and his wife juliet.

he smokes like a chimney, generally looks angry or apathetic, still barks at people when he gets overstimulated but doesn't fight as much. he still has the goth/punk aesthetic and is hard to miss between how he dresses and his height.

[frankchurchillsaysrelax]

here you go nonnie. sorry it took awhile hopefully you’re still around. this was fun, i’d forgotten what songs a few of these came from. these are just the fics with titles from songs like you asked. full masterlist which is sorted by fandom can be found here and my ao3 is here.

and it seemed everlasting that you would always be mine // if you’re determined to leave girl I will not stand in your way - always need my baby by david cook

if you knew how happy you are making me - feels like home by chantal kreviazuk

if only new york wasn’t so far away - already home by a great big world

it’s destiny that you’re next to me, i’m in love with you - sun comes up by john legend

we got a candy apple red sweet steady as a heartbeat love - we got a love from nashville

maybe if i don’t cry i won’t feel anymore - stone cold by demi lovato

when nothing you do can change my mind - that's when i love you by aslyn

months and months of back and forth - clean by taylor swift

this was the very first page not where the story line ends - enchanted by taylor swift

leaving these broken pieces behind you - requiem from dear evan hansen

oh, if the right one came along - i've got this friend by the civil wars

fifteen there’s still time for you - 100 years by five for fighting

even when my body blows away my soul will stay - home by ingrid michaelson

open your eyes then you will see - only by imagine dragons

still got a lot of soul underneath my skin - is that who i am from nashville

wherever you’re going i’m going your way - moon river by audrey hepburn

something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire // chains around my demons, wool to brave the seasons // one single thread of gold tied me to you - invisible string by taylor swift

would you give me your self or turn and run - every letter from cyrano

i might lose everything if i lose the pain - overcome from cyrano

why you can’t raise your voice to say - run by snow patrol

with the beast inside there’s nowhere we can hide (one) // with the beast inside there’s nowhere we can hide (two) - demons by imagine dragons

build a bridge to my heart and lead the way (one) // build a bridge to my heart and lead the way (two) - can't love me by novi feat. tyler blackburn

i’m a rusty set of strings that i keep windin’ (one) // i’m a rusty set of strings that i keep windin’ (two) - broken song from nashville

flash forward and we're taking on the world together - mine by taylor swift

when all those shadows almost killed your light - safe & sound by taylor swift feat. joy williams and john paul white

i’m on the bench, but coach just put me in the game - say my name from beetlejuice

took ‘em down but they’re still in their frames - never not by lauv

catastrophe it reigns (one) // catastrophe it reigns (two) - hold you in my arms by ray lamontagne

is your mouth a little weak - my funny valentine from babes in arms

the signal’s got speed but there’s no real connection - i heard your voice in a dream from smash

and every color illuminates - spectrum by florence and the machine

let me photograph you in this light (in case it is the last time) (one) // let me photograph you in this light (in case it is the last time) (two) - when we were young by adele

a heart is drawn around your name in someone's handwriting, not mine - all of the girls you loved before by taylor swift

didn't i, didn't i, didn't i see you cryin' - i want you to want me by cheap trick

it is the only thing makes us feel alive - photograph by ed sheeran

sink me in the river at dawn - if i die young by the band perry

like a heart without a beat, like a beat without a song - where would i be without you by kendall k

grab your soul, won't let go, and be with you when you're wide awake - dreams from nashville

let me tell you about the call that changed my destiny - the call by the backstreet boys

taxi cabs and busy streets that never bring you back to me - come back...be here by taylor swift

your eyes can close you don't have to do a thing but listen to me sing - orpheus by sara bareilles

[khamsinband]

We’re back home from tour and have another stacked Nashville date for ya’ll!🧵 Our friends in String Machine have put out one of my favorite records of the year; hop over to @theunderdognashville on June 12th to catch us with them, The Homeless Gospel Choir, and Brother Bird! (at The Underdog) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd8fSEsrOMD/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ethtyn]

taglist for mobile

PERSONAL POSTS (#vonswayenthusiast.txt)

ANSWERED ASKS (#vonswayenthusiast.answers)

IMAGE POSTS (#vonswayenthusiast.png)

ACCESSIBLE POSTS (#transcribed / #captioned / #image description in caption / #image description in alt)

100+ NOTE POSTS (#popular? i know about popular.)

QUEUE TAG (#abandon hope⸒ ye queue enter here)

TEXT POSTS (#.txt)

VIDEO POSTS (#.mp4)

GENERAL MCYTBLR (#mcytblr)

NOT MCYT (#not mcyt)

I'M GOING FERAL ABOUT THIS (#this gave me rabies.)

HERMITCRAFT (#hoimycraft)

bdubs (#no. 1 ethogirl ♡) / shove him saturday (#happy shove him saturday!! 💖✨‼️) / building with bdoubleo (#building with boo)

cleo (#a love this deep won't stay buried; the zombie song - stephanie mabey)

cub (#here in my kingdom‚ i am your Lord; i order you to cower and pray - the mind electric - miracle musical)

doc (#the goatfather)

etho (#please. my father’s name is mr. slab. call me etho.)

false (#queen of hearts‚ heads‚ and body parts ✨)

gem (#i live to let you shine; boats and birds - gregory and the hawk)

grian (#look inside my heart & find a perilous ravine; creature - half•alive)

grumbot (#🧨 LET'S GO OUT WITH A BANG; bang! - ajr)

impulse (#caffeinated animated redstone innovator)

joe (#joe hills of the nashville tennessee variety)

mumbo (#touch me‚ midas; make me part of your design; my ordinary life - the living tombstone)

pearl (#we burn ourselves to ashes and use the rubble for the parts; mile magnificent - molly ofgeography)

ren (#renthewhore (affectionate))

scar (#i am not immune to the good times.) / jellie (#jelliecat) / sea shell scar saturday (#happy sea shell scar saturday 💖✨‼️)

tango (#[tango noises])

xisuma (#sheshwammyvoid)

zedaph (#waiting for my chance to see stranger things; stranger things - survival kit)

bdubs, keralis, & tango (#team big eyes)

bdubs, etho, & ren (#monolith roomies)

pearl, gem, & impulse (#soup group soup group soup group‼️)

ren/bdubs (#rendubs - to be changed eventually)

grian/mumbo (#grumbo ♡)

hermitcraft charity stream 2022 (#hccs22)

EMPIRES (#esmp)

fwhip (#everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around; we want a rock - they might be giants)

gem (#i live to let you shine)

jimmy (#sometimes i wish i could take a new form‚ switch out some parts and become like the norm; blow my brains out - tikkle me)

joel (#joel beans 🫘)

lizzie (#i just wanna cause a little entropy ♡; entropy - awkward marina)

oli (#oli what if i put YOU in the babygirlification machine. what then.)

pix (#but maybe it's time to let time pass through; passing through (can't the future just wait) - kaden mckay)

sausage (#tell me what you know about dreaming; pursuit of happiness - kid cudi)

scott (#i'm the gap between a tragedy and comedy; the main character - will wood)

shubble (#and i'm not your protagonist, i'm not even my own; sweet hibiscus tea - penelope scott)

jimmy/joel (#smallidarity - to be changed eventually)

fwhip/jimmy (#fwhimmy - to be changed eventually)

HERMITCRAFT X EMPIRES (#hermitpires crossover)

The Polycule™ (#hermitpires polycule)

TRAFFIC SMP (#🚦smp)

etho/bdubs (#it's not love, i swear; it might be closer to despair; despair - leo.)

cleo/etho/bdubs (#clethubs)

impulse/bdubs (#team homewreckers ♡)

scar/grian (#make me love myself so that i might love you; saint bernard - lincoln)

joel/etho (#smalletho - to be changed eventually)

ren/martyn (#treebark - to be changed eventually)

jimmy/tango (#team ranchers / #solidaritek - to be changed eventually)

bdubs, etho, skizz, & tango (#team best ✩)

martyn (#get back, put your hands up; kinda messed up, but it's tough luck; killer in the mirror - set it off)

RATS SMP (#ratsmp)

owen (#flowers in my hair makes me wish that you were here; flowers in my hair - wes reeve)

MCC (#mcc)

mcc 28 (#mcc 28)

mcc 27 (#mcc underdogs)

DSMP-RELATED (#dsmp /)

tubbo & scar (#slushie duo)

AMONG US (#friday night stabby)

CREATE SMP (#create s2)

MINDCRACK (#potato on a stick)

team canada (#the maple leaf boys 🍁)

bdubs, guude, & etho (#ooge)

MISC MCYTERS

ivorycello (#ivorycello)

kolanii (#kolanii)

waxfraud (#waxfraud)

MINECRAFT (#block game)

taglist in progress as i reblog things that need tags. thank you for your patience.

[bananaofswifts]

Taylor Swift Turns on a Facsimile Machine for the Ingenious Recreations of ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’: Album Review

Swift recreates her entire 2008 album literally down to the last note, then gives herself room for stylistic latitude on six never-before-recorded "vault" tracks.

By Chris Willman

Swift recreates her entire 2008 album literally down to the last note, then gives herself room for stylistic latitude on six never-before-recorded "vault" tracks.

There is no “best actress” award at the Grammys, perhaps for obvious reasons, but maybe there should be this coming year. And the Grammy would go to… Taylor Swift, for so persuasively playing her 18-year-old self in “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” her beyond-meticulous recreation of the 2008 recording that did win her her first album of the year trophy back in the day. It’s impossible to overstate just how thoroughly the new version is intended as an exact replica of the old — all the way down to her startling ability to recapture an untrained teen singing voice she’s long matured and moved on from. It’s a stunt, to be sure, but a stunt for the ages — mastering the guile it takes to go back to sounding this guileless.

There are two different, very solid reasons to pick up or stream “Taylor’s Version,” regardless of whether you share her ire for the Big Machine label, whose loose ways with her nine-figure catalog precipitated this, the first in a six-album series of remakes where she’ll be turning on the facsimile machine. One is to marvel at her gift for self-mimicry on the album’s original tracks, where she sounds as possessed by her younger self as Regan ever was by Pazuzu. The other reason is, of course, to check out the six “vault” numbers that Swift wrote during that time frame but has never released before in any form, which dispenses with stylistic fealty to the late 2000s and frames her “Fearless”-era discards in production and arrangements closer to “Folklore.” Those half-dozen (kind of) new tracks really do sound like modern Taylor Swift covering her old stuff.

But those original lucky 13? It’s the same damn record… which is kind of hilarious and marvelous and the kind of meta-ness that will inspire a thousand more think-pieces than it already has, along with possibly efforts at forensic analysis to figure out how she did it.

It would not be surprising if, as we speak, Big Machine was putting a combined team of scientists and lawyers on the case of the new album’s waveform readouts, to make sure it’s not just the original album, remixed. Honestly, it’s that close. The timings of the songs are all within a few seconds of the original tracks, if not coming in at exactly the same length. The duplication effort doesn’t allow any detours. If “Forever and Always” had a cold open then, it’s going to have a cold open now. If the 2008 “That’s the Way I Love You” had slamming rock guitars with an almost subliminal banjo being plucked beneath the racket, so will the 2021 “That’s the Way I Loved You.” A drum roll to end the old “Change”? A drum roll to end its body-snatcher doppelganger. And if she chuckled before the final chorus of “Hey Stephen” 13 years ago, so will that moment be cause for a delighted giggle now.

Of course, much analysis will be put into whether the new laugh is a more knowing-sounding laugh. And that will be part of the fun for a certain segment of audiophile Swifties who will go looking for the slightest change as evidence of something meaningful. When “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” first came out weeks back to preview the album, there were reviews written that swore she’d subtly changed up her phrasing to put a contemporary spin on the song. And maybe they were right, but, having done a fair amount of A/B testing of the two versions of the album, I found myself feeling like I do when vinyl buffs insist there are significant sonic differences between the first stamper version of an LP and one that was pressed a year later. If you can spot those very, very, very modest tweaks, go for it.

But my suspicion is that if Swift has decided to turn a phrase a little differently here or there on this album, or done anything too differently aside from brighten the sound, she’s doing it more as an Easter egg, for the people who are on that kind of hunt, than anything really designed as reinterpretation. Because the last thing Swift wants most of her fans doing is A/B-ing the two versions, the way I did. The whole point is to have folks retire the OG “Fearless” from their Spotify playlists, right? The Swift faithful were already threatening to rain down damnation on anyone caught sneaking an audio peek at the old version after midnight. What she intended was to come up with a rendering so faithful that you would never have a need to spin the vintage album again. In that, she has succeeded beyond what could have been imagined even in the dreams of the few self-forgers who’ve tried this before, like a Jeff Lynne.

Is there any reason to find value in the new versions if you couldn’t care less about the issues of masters and contracts and respect in business deals that made all this strangely possible? Yes, with the first one being that the new album just sounds like a terrific remastering of the old — the same notes, and you’d swear the same performances, but sounding brighter and punchier just on a surface level. But on a more philosophical one, it’s not just a case of Swift playing with her back catalog like Andy Warhol played with his soup can. It’s really a triumph of self-knowledge and self-awareness, in the way that Swift is so hyper-conscious of the ways she’s matured that she has the ability to un-mature before our very ears. With her vocals, it’s virtuosic, in a way, how she’s made herself return to her unvirtuosic upstart self.

On Swift’s earliest albums and in those seminal live shows — at the time when she was famously being told she “can’t sing,” to quote a song from the follow-up album — there was a slight shrillness around the edges of her voice that, if you lacked faith, you might’ve imaged would be there forever. It wasn’t. That was partly youth, and partly just the sheer earnestness with which she wanted to convey the honesty of the songs. She’s advanced so much since then — into one of pop’s most gifted modern singers, really — that the woman of “Folklore” and “Evermore” seems like a completely different human being than the one who made the self-titled debut and “Fearless,” never mind just a woman versus girl. It wouldn’t have seemed possible that she could go back to her old way of singing at the accomplished age of 31, but she found and recreated that nervous, sincere, pleading voice of yesteryear. And maybe it was just a technical feat, of temporarily unlearning what she’s learned since then, but you can sense that maybe she had to go there internally, too, to the place where she was counseling other girls to guard their sexual virtue in “Fifteen,” or wondering whether to believe the fairy tale of “Love Story” or the wakeup call of “White Horse,” or proving with “Forever & Always” that writing a song telling off Joe Jonas for his 27-second breakup call was better than revenge.

If at first you’re not inclined to notice that Swift has re-adopted a completely different singing voice for the “Fearless” remakes, the realization may kick in when those “vault” tracks start appearing in the later stretch of this hour-and-50-minute album. The writing on the six songs that have been pulled up from the 2008 cutting room floor seems primitive, even a little bit by the standards of the “Fearless” album; there are great lines and couplets throughout the rescued tracks, but you can see why she left them as works-in-progress. But she doesn’t use her youthful voice on these resurrections, nor does she employ the actual style of “Fearless” very strictly. Of course, she feels more freedom on these, because there are no predecessors in the Big Machine catalog she’s asking you to leave behind. Her current collaborators of choice, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, divided the co-producing work on these fresher songs, as they did for the two all-new albums she released in the last year. (The “Fearless” recreations are co-produced by Swift with Christopher Rowe, someone who worked on remixes for Swift back in that era.) They co-produce the vault songs in a style that sounds somewhere between “Fearless” and Folklore”… a more spectral brand of country-pop, with flutes and synths and ringing 12-string guitars and a modicum of drum programming replacing some (but not all) of the acoustic stringed instruments you’d expect to be carried over from “Fearless” proper.

Of the previously unheard tracks, Swift was right — she’s always been her own best self-editor — in putting out “You All Over Me” first, in advance of the album. With its imagery of half-muddy stones being upturned on the road, this song has advanced lyrical conceits more of a piece with the level of writing she’s doing now than some of the slightly less precocious songs that follow. Still, there’s something to be said for the sheer zippiness with which Swift conveys teen heartbreak in “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” which has a lyric that shows Swift had long since absorbed the lessons Nashville had to offer about how to come up with a high-concept song — the concept, in this case, being just to stick the word “mister” in front of a lot of phrases relating to her shallow ex, as if they were honorary titles to be conferred for being a shit, while she employs the “miss” for herself more sparingly.

Some of the remaining outtake songs go back more toward the sedate side of “Fearless”-style material; she didn’t leave any real bangers in the can. “We Were Happy,” the first of two successive tracks to bring in Keith Urban (but only for backgrounds on this one), employs fake strings and real cello as Swift waxes nostalgic for a time when “you threw your arms around my neck, back when I deserved it.” It’s funny, in a good way, to hear Swift at 31 recreating a song she wrote at 17 or 18 that pined for long-past better times. The next song, “That’s When,” brings Urban in for a proper duet where he gets a whole second verse and featured status on half a chorus, and it’s lovely to hear them together. But, as a make-up song, it doesn’t feel as real or lived-in as the more personal things she was writing at the time — and the fact that its chords are pretty close to a slightly more balladic version of the superior “You Belong With Me” was probably a pretty good reason for dropping it at the time.

the 18-year-old Taylor Swift is a great place to visit, but “Folklore” and “Evermore” are the place you’ll want to return to and live, unless you have an especially strong sentimental attachment to “Fearless”… which, sure, half of young America does. It’s not irreconcilable to say that the two albums she issued in the last year represent a daring pinnacle of her career, but that “Fearless” deserved to win album of the year in 2008. Has there been a greater pop single in the 20th century than “You Belong With Me”? Probably not. Did the album also have lesser moments you probably haven’t thought about in a while, like the just-okay “Breathe”? Yes. (I looked up to see whether Swift had ever played that little remarked upon number in concert, and according to setlists.fm, she did, exactly once… in 2018. Because she’s Taylor Swift, and of course she did.) It’s not certain that her duet with Colbie Caillat really needed to be resurrected, except it’s fun, because hey, she even roped former duet partners back into her time warp. But there are so many number that have stood the test of time, like “The Way I Love You,” an early song that really got at the complicated feelings about passion and fidelity that she would come to explore more as she grew into her 20s… and just kind of a headbanger, too, on an album that does love its fiddles and mandolins.

It doesn’t take much to wonder why Swift put up “Fearless” first in this six-album exercise; it’s one of her two biggest albums, along with “1989,” and it’s 13 years old, which does mean something superstitious in the Taylor-verse. In a way, it’ll be more interesting to see what happens when she gets to more complicated productions, like “1989” or “Reputation.” But maybe “Fearless” did present the opportunity for the grandest experiment out of the gate: to recreate something that pure and heartfelt, with all the meticulousness a studio master like Swift can put to that process now, without having it seem like she’s faking sincerity. Let the think-pieces proceed — because this is about six hundred different shades of meta. But, all craftiness and calculation aside, there’s a sweetness to the regression that’s not inconsequential. It harks back to a time when she only wondered if she could be fearless, before she learned it the harder way for sure. What they say about actors “disappearing into the role”? That really applies to Taylor Swift, playing herself.

[krispyweiss]

Album Review: Margo Price - Strays

Margo Price is making a play for radio play with the pop-leaning Strays.

And while the album is a departure for the singer/songwriter, the destination is well-trod. Straddling her hometown of Nashville with feet planted in Laurel Canyon to the west and on E Street to the east, Price channels Joni Mitchell on “Country Road” and Bruce Springsteen on “Time Machine.”

Lucius lend their shimmering harmonies to the dreamy, George Harrison-inspired “Anytime You Call,” a Strays highlights and one of three song with guests, alongside the poppier “Light Me Up” with Mike Campbell and “Radio” with Sharon Van Etten.

“Lydia” is the gem of Strays. It’s a classic contemporary country song; half-spoken over acoustic guitar and strings and set in an abortion clinic in a neighborhood swimming in opioids.

A long life ahead to live with yourself/so think about it, Lydia, Price advises.

This one’s not getting on the radio. Which is a shame because it’s Price’s most-important song to date.

Grade card: Margo Price - Strays - C+

1/25/23

[mydisenchantedeulogy]

No Strings Attached [Chapter One] The Stakes [Chris Redfield]

Warning(s): weapon use, double agent OC, and blackmail.

The small-bore rifle rattled and kicked as it fired; its 22 LR bullet pierced a target sheet near the center, but Céline was unimpressed. Her score was short of her expectations. She needed more practice and an environment to shoot in that was less strenuous.

There were eyes on her, watching her every move.

Céline turned on the safety and sat the rifle and the earmuffs down on the table in front of her, returning to the facility, a private gun range in Tennessee. She was more or less alone but aware of the cameras on her; the executives in the Connections were always watching.

Buying a bottle of water from a vending machine, she heard her ringtone go off – she set her phone to vibrate in case she missed the call – and retrieved the phone from her back pocket, glancing at the screen.

It read: Unknown Number.

Céline answered the call.

"Miss Durant, have a seat. We need to have a word," the caller ordered.

The voice was protected by a modulator, making it sound both masculine and feminine to her.

As it always is, she thought, sitting at a table in the breakroom.

"You have my attention," Céline declared.

The line cracked, then the voice began to explain.

"We have a particular job we need you to complete. It's of utter importance."

As if she could decline.

"Another human B.O.W. is running feral, I assume," Céline remarked.

The voice hummed. "Yes. D-001, otherwise known as Dahlia. I am sure you heard about her predecessor, E-001, the bioweapon terminated in Louisiana last October. D-001 is not as unique but just as deadly as her."

"And the Connections wants her terminated?"

Why else would an executive call her? She was a trained member of the H.C.F., not an agent. It was her job to terminate failed experiments, not collect samples.

"That is correct," the voice answered back. "D-001 was located in Loclare, England two weeks ago when she attracted the attention of the BSAA's European branch. You are to go there and terminate her."

Céline tapped her finger in annoyance. How was she supposed to do that? If the BSAA was involved, the area was most likely quarantined to keep the Mold from spreading. She was one person against hundreds of trained soldiers, like herself. It was a suicide mission.

"Am I expected to sneak in?"

The line cracked again.

"Mission details will be provided during transit to the quarantined area," the voice answered back. "Be at the Memphis International Airport at 0600 hours."

Céline sighed. "Understood."

"And Miss Durant," the voice called, stopping her before she ended the call. "Keep in mind what is at stake should you fail."

The line went silent.

Céline slammed her phone onto the table in annoyance, but a ring informed her of a private message. She checked it, seeing a picture of her sister Fae in her scrubs in front of VUMC in Nashville. Tears filled her eyes.

How could she forget? Fae's life was at stake.

[gaylorlyrics]

Folklore Songs - what are they about??

This is a developing thread, but I’ve been listening all day so I’m taking a stab at it.

1."The 1"  

Common consensus is that this is about Dianna Agron and what they could have been. Telling lyrics are the general idea that the relationship wasn’t truly given a chance (”it would've been sweet, If it could've been me”) and “Roaring Twenties”, referring to the below circus themed party pics with Diana dressed like a flapper

tbh im not totally sold on this - most because it seems more recent with lyrics like, “In my defense, I have none for never leaving well enough alone” sounds like a reference to ME! and “Roaring twenties” sounds like a reference to something that happened this year (2020). Also “throwing pennies in the pool” could be a reference to throwing Penni (Karlie’s agent) in the pool. Finally, Route 1 is the road along California’s coast, where Tay & Karlie drove on their legendary road trip...this makes my lil Kaylor heart worry. 

2. Cardigan

This is the first installment in the Teenage Trio, which also includes August and Betty, and is told from the perspective of Betty. It’s about feeling so loved by someone but then being betrayed by them (”Chase two girls [Betty + August’s narrator] lose one”). The line ”And you'd be standin' in my front porch light” foreshadows to James professing love in “Betty”. Potentially Taylor is Betty - but I’m still thinking about that theory.

3."The Last Great American Dynasty"  

We <3 a Rhode Island throwback. Here Taylor tells the story of her house in Rhode Island that Rebekah “Betty” (??!?!??!! more on that later) Harkness used to live in. Rebekah married an heir to Standard Oil which made her one of the wealthiest women in the USA at the time. She was also known for making a scene (”She had a marvelous time ruining everything”). Additionally, she founded the Harkness Ballet (”And blew through the money on the boys and the ballet”). After Rebekah’s death Taylor purchased the house and it is now best known as the place of many epic 4th of July parties.

4. Exile

Such a sad song! This is a duet between Taylor and Bon Iver, telling the story of a failed relationship that they have tried to mend many many times. Interestingly, this is also about a love triangle (like the teenage trio) -  "I can see you starin' honey/Like he's just your understudy." This line specifically feels like it could be about bearding, and seeing someone else with the person you love, but feeling like - or knowing - it’s fake. “You were my town Now I'm in exile seein' you out” references and end to the relationship Taylor discussed in False God “Staring out the window like I'm not your favorite town I'm New York City”. To me this indicates that it is about Karlie and them breaking up or going through a rough patch - continually trying to fix things - and eventually being unsure that it could ever be repaired.

5."My Tears Ricochet"

This is pretty clearly about Scott & Scooter - “And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake? Cursing my name, wishing I stayed” and “You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same” seem to be a reference to them trying to exploit her work and how her leaving Big Machine really ruined the business - plus there’s some LWYMMD imagery. “You wear the same jewels that I gave you as you bury me” also seems to be a clear reference for trying to use Taylor’s own work against her, taking the profits, and pushing her out of the deal. As if we needed more evidence “You hear my stolen lullabies” clearly references her stolen masters.

6."Mirrorball"  

Big 80s prom vibes from this song. Mirrorball is about being famous and all of her work - her most personal thoughts and dreams - just becoming different ways for other people to see themselves once she releases her music into the world. Part of being an artist is knowing that your work will reflect more of who the viewer is than who you are yourself. Here she uses the metaphor of a disco ball to explore that idea, and worries that she is losing her own identity through it “I'm still trying everything to keep you looking at me”. She also alludes to her fears that she will age out of relevancy “I know they said the end is near”, something she discussed in her documentary Miss Americana. Obviously this is internalized misogyny because we love Taylor and will listen to her music always and do not subscribe to the belief that women need to be young to be relevant because if they were a man then they'd be the man, and tay’s the man <3 

7. “Seven”

Personally, this is one of my favorite songs on the album. It’s so sweet and pure and lovely. This is about young love, with imagery of summer, toys, and child’s dreams to runaway together. Many people have speculated that it is about the same girl that the two unreleased Taylor songs “Sweet Tea and Gods Graces” and “Me & Britney” are about. 

[Side note: initially I wondered if Me & Britney was about Britany Maack, Taylor’s long time friend who recently got married, but the names are spelled differently. Also the line in Seven “I can’t recall your face” indicates that this is about someone who Taylor is not currently in touch with.] 

Both M&B and STAAG seem to be about the Seven relationship because there are general parallels with outdoor scenery, childlike wonder, and ( in the case of STAGG) sweet tea. Also all three songs indicate a gay relationship: STAGG - “And you can love like a sinner and lose like a winner”, M&B - “That boy she went ran off with, well, I thought he was crazy. Maybe I was just jealous that he'd come between me and Britney”, and Seven - “You won't have to cry or hide in the closet And just like a folk song our love will be passed on”.

8. “August”

This is the second installment in the Teenage Trio, told from the perspective of the “other woman” who James meets while on summer vacation. The other woman (she doesn’t seem to have a name...unless it is August...which it could be? idk) is in love, but realizes that James isn’t in love with her - “Will you call when you're back at school? I remember thinkin' I had you”. The line “Remember when I pulled up and said "Get in the car" references the same incident which is retold in Betty, but this time with James telling Betty it was just a summer fling that didn’t mean anything.

9. This Is Me Trying

Here we have a break up song, about Taylor trying to win her lover back and feeling completely lost without them, unable to concentrate or be around people, and turning to self sabotage. It’s about the general loneliness that one feels when they’ve lost someone they truly love, and the miscommunication that can happen in a relationship when you’re not understanding each other or receiving love in the same way (hence the song’s title). I think this could be about Karlie, it seems clear that their relationship has not been smooth and that they have had many on-and-off times. It could also be serving a purpose of building the Joe break up narrative, but only time will tell for that.

10. “Illicit Affairs”

Taylor loves her secret love - this song reads like a sad version of “I Know Places”. It seems clear that this is about Karlie Kloss. “Tell your friends you're out for a run” is one of my favorite lines because Karlie started Klossy run club, where you commit to running a certain distance in a month - and she posts about it on instagram CONSTANTLY. But overall, the song details a relationship of a woman being with someone she doesn’t love (kushnerd) and sneaking around to meet up with the person she does love (tay!). The line “Tell yourself you can always stop” is so sad to me, the idea that Karlie got into this and keeps telling herself that it will only be a little longer and she can leave when she wants, but staying in her fake marriage anyway.

11. Invisible String

This is pretty much the only pure love song on the album - about feeling connected to someone throughout your whole life, knowing that that somebody is out there, and then finally finding them. Taylor talks about being in Centennial Park in Nashville as a teen, and then eventually showing her lover around. The song is really self referential, with lots of easter eggs for her past work, including Bad Blood and Delicate. She also references Joe Jonas with the line “Cold was the steel of my axe to grind For the boys who broke my heart Now I send their babies presents”.

Some people have pointed out that there is a similar idea presented in Jane Eyre - when the protagonist says to her love interest “I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you."

12."Mad Woman"  

Another Scooter one - “It's obvious that wanting me dead has really brought you two together”. “The master of spin” is word play referencing the masters records scandal. “Watching you climb over people like me” points out that agents and labels are making money off the performers they find and pushing them around. There’s also a reference to Scooter’s wife Yael and how he cheats all the time, but she doesn’t do anything likely because of her own internalized misogyny - “has a couple side flings. Good wives always know. She should be mad, should be scathing like me”.

13. “Epiphany”

The first verse of this touching ballad is about Taylor’s grandfather in WW2, storming the beaches at Normandy - “Crawling up the beaches now "Sir, I think he's bleeding out"”. The second verse is about a nurse helping patients with Covid-19 - “Holds your hand through plastic now "Doc, I think she's crashing out"”. The bridge here talks about wishing there was some great epiphany, some magical solution for the suffering in the world. The chorus refers to experiencing trauma with others and staying loyal even in the hardest times, even if it means literally dying. Although this seems like a departure from the themes of rest of the album, the whole album examines loyalty and considering what you would do for the people you love - so I really don’t think it’s a departure at all.

14. “Betty”

Obviously this is the gayest song on the album and an early fan favorite. It is the final song in the teenage trio, told from the point of view of James, going to win Betty back after betraying her and sleeping with someone else (August!?) over the summer. The line "Will you kiss me on the porch in front of all your stupid friends?”, a line that is very clearly about wanting to kiss a woman, is especially striking (& gay!) when sung by Taylor. The clearest version of this plot is someone begging for forgiveness after betraying the person they love.

There is also a bit of a nod to a line in “Picture to Burn”, a break up song off Taylor’s first album. In PTB Taylor says “So go and tell your friends that I'm obsessive and crazy that's fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay”. This lyric has since been changed in versions available online, but on the original album that's what it was. This is interesting because she’s calling attention to knowing that someone is gay and hasn’t told their friends...which you would definitely know if you had dated them.

The names “James” and “Inez” are both mentioned in the song, which are the names of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynold’s daughters. James was already featured on a Taylor Swift album, as the lil baby voice at the beginning of “Gorgeous”. Worth noting that “James” is traditional a male name, but that this character is named after a female.

ALSO I have this theory I’m working on that Taylor is Betty and this whole album is in the same world with the same people, but WILL POST MORE ON THIS LATER.

15."Peace"  

Ok - this is Archer 2.0 for me, about how she is worried about how no one will ever love her or stay with her because its too much work - “the rain is always gonna come if you're standin' with me” and “No, I could never give you peace” are pretty telling lines about her concerns that people will think it is not worth it to be friends with or in a relationship with her due to all of the baggage that comes with it. 

The opening lines - “Our coming-of-age has come and gone Suddenly this summer, it's clear” feed into my emerging theory that all of these songs exist in the same universe and are about the same three characters...but I’m still figuring that one out. The line “And you know that I'd swing with you for the fences Sit with you in the trenches” reference Seven and Epiphany, respectively - further supporting that all of these songs are in the same world.

16. “Hoax”

Out of all of the songs that make my little Kaylor heart ache - this is the most heartbreaking. Specifically the line “My eclipsed sun” refers to Karlie, who Taylor has called “sunshine” on multiple occasions, and her light being covered up by her contract with Kushnerd and Scooter. The line “Don't want no other shade of blue But you” makes it clear that this song is in reference to the muse for the album “Lover” - aka Karlie. 

However, this is a song about betrayal and completely trusting someone, only to find that they stabbed you in the back, as is clear by the line ”Your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in”.

Additionally, the line“You knew it still hurts underneath my scars” seems to again feed into the idea that all of the songs on the album involve the same characters. This one is a bit more clear, it seems that - if this theory is correct - Betty is the narrator of this song, as she referenced her scars before “Drew stars around my scars” in Cardigan.

OK- I'm going to go deep into song by song later, but I just wanted to get something out there!!! Also def interested in hearing what everyone else thinks!

EDIT: I just found some lyrics from The Lakes in an article from Billboard. I wanted to add them in even though we don’t have the full song because I felt like we really ended on a sad note with hoax and then when I saw these I was like there is hope!!

SO the lyric Billboard included in their review was “A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground / With no one around to tweet it” which is a continuation from the line from “Hoax” - “ This has frozen my ground”. What I’m taking from this is that in the final song Taylor finds hope <3

[makistar2018]

It's a Love Story: The History of Taylor Swift's Fiercely Tight Bond With Her Parents

by NATALIE FINN Aug. 13, 2019

Taylor Swift has gotten a ton of musical mileage out of the romantic relationships that have come and gone in her life, but those guys haven't been the truly essential players in her journey to the top of the pop star pyramid.

Instead, it's Scott and Andrea Swift, Taylor's parents, who have championed their daughter since day one, believing in her so much that they left their palatial house in Reading, Penn., for Nashville, where a determined 14-year-old Taylor felt she had to be to make her dream a reality.

Talking to CMT, she said her parents weren't just indulging her for the sake of being supportive. "My parents actually believed it," she said.

Before her Reputation Tour touched down in Philadelphia last year, she took a few friends to visit her childhood home, a Christmas tree farm in Wyomissing, where the new owners were apparently happy to let the famous former resident in to take a look at her old room.

"I went to the house I grew up in. I got emotional when I went into my bedroom, and there's another little girl's things in there," Swift told the sold-out crowd one night at Lincoln Financial Field. "It's not my family farm anymore. We sold it when we went to Nashville. I've been thinking about how cool it is to be back where I started writing songs."

She told CMT that, back in the day, her parents never pushed her, but "I would not leave them alone."

Taylor was barely out of grade school when Andrea Swift (née Gardner Finlay) first took her to Nashville to drop off the CDs she had made of her singing karaoke with record labels, having seen in documentaries about Shania Twain and LeAnn Rimes that Music City, U.S.A., was where she needed to be.

"My mom waited in the car with my little brother while I knocked on doors up and down Music Row," Swift recalled to Entertainment Weekly in 2008. "I would say, 'Hi, I'm Taylor. I'm 11; I want a record deal. Call me."'

Well, the world wasn't ready for it just yet.

"She came back from that trip to Nashville and realized she needed to be different, and part of that would be to learn the guitar," Andrea told EW. "Now, at 12, she saw a 12-string guitar and thought it was the coolest thing. And of course we immediately said, 'Oh no, absolutely not, your fingers are too small—not till you're much older will you be able to play the 12-string guitar.'

"Well, that was all it took. Don't ever say never or can't do to Taylor. She started playing it four hours a day—six on the weekends. She would get calluses on her fingers and they would crack and bleed, and we would tape them up and she'd just keep on playing. That's all she played, till a couple of years later, which was the first time she ever picked up a six-string guitar. And when she did, it was like, 'wow, this is really easy!'"

Swift performed in venues all over Pennsylvania, wherever she could get a gig, and wrote her little heart out.  She went back to Nashville at 13 and got a development deal at RCA Records, which she declined to re-up after a year, wanting to record only songs that she had a hand in writing. At 14 she became the youngest person in the roster at Sony/ATV Publishing.

So, the whole family—Scott, Andrea, Taylor and her brother, Austin Swift—eventually relocated to Hendersonville, about 20 miles outside Nashville, in 2003. But they didn't explicitly put it that way at the time.

"I knew I was the reason they were moving," Taylor later told Self. "But they tried to put no pressure on me. They were like, 'Well, we need a change of scenery anyway,' and 'I love how friendly the people in Tennessee are.'"

"I never wanted to make that move about her 'making it,"' Andrea explained to EW. "Because what a horrible thing if it hadn't happened, for her to carry that kind of guilt or pressure around. And we moved far enough outside Nashville to where she didn't have to be going to school with producers' kids and label presidents' kids and be reminded constantly that she was struggling to make it. We've always told her that this is not about putting food on our table or making our dreams come true.

"There would always be an escape hatch into normal life if she decided this wasn't something she had to pursue. And of course that's like saying to her, 'If you want to stop breathing, that's cool.'"

Swift ended up fatefully signing with Big Machine Records, run by Scott Borchetta, who had just left Universal Music Group to start his own label.

"They only had 10 employees at the record label to start out with, so when they were releasing my first single, my mom and I came in to help stuff the CD singles into envelopes to send to radio," Taylor recalled to EW. "We sat out on the floor and did it because there wasn't furniture at the label yet."

Meanwhile, Scott and Andrea—formerly a marketing manager at an advertising agency—had already set up Taylor's website and MySpace page (with Taylor writing her bio, updates and responses to fans herself, of course).

"The mom and dad both have great marketing minds," Rick Barker, Swift's manager at the time, told EW. "I don't want to say fake it until you make it, but when you looked at her stuff, it was very professional even before she got her deal."

Andrea said that her daughter relished the recognition, the selfie requests and the otherwise positive attention from fans of her music, "but she never in her life ever said, 'I want to be famous' or 'I want to be rich' or 'I want to be a star.' Those words absolutely never came out of her mouth. If they had, I would have said, 'Honey, maybe you're doing it kind of for the wrong reasons.'

"For her, the happiest I ever see her is just after she's written a killer song. As a parent, I felt really good about that. If that's where she draws happiness from, she'll have that the rest of her life. She's not always gonna have the awards, or the attention, or the celebrity, but she will always have the ability to write a song."

Swift has credited her mother for instilling in her the importance of maintaining her independence, financial and otherwise, saying, "She raised me to be logical and practical. I was brought up with such a strong woman in my life and I think that had a lot to do with me not wanting to do anything halfway."

Andrea's mother, Marjorie Finlay, was a professional opera singer and a magnetic presence in every room—a quality Taylor shared with her grandma, Scott Swift once said. "The two of them had some sort of magic where they could walk into a room and remember everyone's name," he said. "Taylor has the same grace and physique of Andrea's mother."

Taylor described her dad, meanwhile, as "just a big teddy bear who tells me everything I do is perfect." That being said, she added, "business-wise, he's brilliant."

Once Taylor's career started to take off, Scott, who had relocated his business to Nashville, stayed in town with Austin while Andrea accompanied their daughter on tour, helping her finish high school on the road.

"She was always singing music when she was 3, 5, 6, 7 years old," Scott, an investment banker with Merill Lynch who ran The Swift Group under the company's umbrella, told the University of Delaware's UDaily in 2009. "It's Taylor doing what she likes to do." (When she was quite little, Taylor recalled, she would tell people she was going to be a financial advisor, even though she didn't know what that meant.)

"We had a kid that was really passionate about it," he said. Getting that first deal at 13 "was the confirmation that maybe she wasn't crazy, because her writing is why she got it."

Swift was 16 when her self-titled debut album came out in October 2006. Less than a year later, she opened for Brad Paisley at the Allentown Fair, a big-ticket gig in her home state.

While "Tim McGraw," her first-ever single, eventually drew the most attention, her second single, "Teardrops on My Guitar," was her first top-15 single (peaking at 13) and the next, "Our Song," became her biggest hit on country radio to date, her first No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart.

Scott Swift hasn't had to do much lately when it comes to Taylor's ridiculously successful career, but he helped out where he could early on (not including the unconfirmed reports that he advised Harry Styles to not rush things when he and Taylor started dating). He told UDaily that he helped arrange Taylor's prime-time gig singing the national anthem during Game 3 of the 2008 World Series, a home game for the Philadelphia Phillies (who went on to beat the Tampa Bay Rays in five games). Scott went to college with the Phillies' facilities manager.

"The reason she sang the anthem is because two University of Delaware alumni kept in touch over the years," Scott told the paper. But as time went on, Taylor's reputation preceded her. "I've heard from a lot of great alumni, and I'm convinced they live in every city, because whenever Taylor's rolling into wherever she is, we'll hear from them," her dad said. "It's really powerful."

Scott and Andrea are hardly the unsung heroes of Taylor's life, though—quite the opposite, in fact.

You'd have been forgiven for assuming that "The Best Day," off of 2008's Fearless, centers on the father-daughter bond (going by the line "I have an excellent father / His strength is making me stronger"), but it's really a sweeping ode to Andrea, the one who waited in the car while tween Taylor knocked on doors.

"'The Best Day' is a song that I wrote without telling my mom," Swift shared in 2011. "I wrote it in the summertime, and I recorded it secretly, too. I had this idea that I wanted to play it for her for Christmas. So, when I got the track I synced up all of these home videos from when I was a little kid to go along with the song like a music video, and played it for her on Christmas Eve and she was crying her eyes out."

She eventually had to stop playing it live because Andrea was always dissolving into tears backstage.

Taylor continued, "Remembering all the times that we had when she was my only friend when I was 13 and I couldn't understand why my friends were being so mean to me. She would just take me on these adventures and we would drive around and go to towns we'd never seen before.

"Those adventures and those days of just running away from my problems—you're not supposed to run away from your problems, but when you're 13 and your friends won't talk to you and they move when you sit down at the lunch table, and your mom lets you run from those problems, I think it's a good thing... My mom was my escape in a lot of ways."

Andrea recalled the days when Taylor's friends seemed to be turning on her, telling Elle Girl she'd have to "pick [Taylor] up off the floor," she was hurting so badly.

When she was 21 she bought her parents a $1.4 million house in Nashville, around the same time she bought her first house in Los Angeles.

By 2011, the Taylor road show ran like a well-oiled machine, in no small part because of Andrea's watchful eye.

"Well, you know, she's just been doing this for so long that, to me, this is just like soccer practice," Swift's mom shrugged to the New Yorker in a 2011 profile.

After which Scott quipped, "I'm not taking her money, if that's what you're saying."

The writer noted that at least either her mom or dad was at every show that she attended, but Taylor said that they were "staying home more" than they used to.

Through the years, Andrea has become a familiar face to everyone who follows Taylor's career, from the Swifties to the paparazzi, but neither mother nor daughter has made a habit of sharing too much personal information about their family—and they, unlike some celebrities' parents, Andrea and Scott haven't been clamoring to share the spotlight.

So it was only under the greatest of emotional strains that Swift shared in 2015 that Andrea was battling cancer.

"Usually when things happen to me, I process them and then write music about how I feel, and you hear it much later," Swift wrote on Tumblr. "This is something my family and I thought you should know about now." She explained how she had encouraged her mom to go to the doctor, "just to ease some worries of mine. She agreed, and went in to get checked. There were no red flags and she felt perfectly fine, but she did it just to get me and my brother off her case about it. The results came in, and I'm saddened to tell you that my mom has been diagnosed with cancer."

Part of the message was to explain why Andrea wouldn't be at as many shows as usual, so enmeshed she was in the Taylor tour fabric.

"I'd like to keep the details of her condition and treatment plans private, but she wanted you to know," Swift explained. "She wanted you to know because your parents may be too busy juggling everything they've got going on to go to the doctor, and maybe you reminding them to go get checked for cancer could possibly lead to an early diagnosis and an easier battle."

A little over a week later, Andrea introduced her daughter at the Academy of Country Music Awards, where Taylor was one of seven being honored with the Milestone Award.

"I've watched this milestone artist from the time she was a tangled-hair little girl...Full of imagination and creativity until right now when she prepares for her next world tour," Mama Swift said. Tears starting to build, she concluded, "I'm a very proud mom."

The whole family gathered a month later to cheer Austin's graduation from Notre Dame.

On Mother's Day in 2015, Taylor personally responded to a message from a fan who had lost her own mom and was understandably having a rough day. The singer wrote back on Tumblr, "I love you so much and can't imagine what you must be feeling today. You've lived through my worst fear. I'm so sorry you can't spend today with her. It's not fair, and there's no reason why you should feel okay about it. No one should ever expect you to feel normal today."

Andrea sightings did become less frequent, but when she was spotted (having dinner with Taylor and Tom Hiddleston in L.A. in the summer of 2016, for instance), she looked like her usual self. And in 2017 she was by Taylor's side in Colorado when her daughter's dueling lawsuits with a D.J. she had accused of groping her went to trial.

Andrea testified that Taylor had told her right away that the D.J.—who sued Swift for $3 million after he was fired over the incident, after which she countersued, alleging sexual assault—had grabbed her butt while they were taking a photo during a meet-and-greet in 2013.

Explaining why they didn't immediately report him to police, Andrea said, "I did not want her to have to live through the endless memes and GIFs and anything else that tabloid media or trolls would be able to come up with...making her relive this awful moment over and over again."

"I was upset to the point where I wanted to vomit and cry at the same time," she added. "We felt it was imperative to let his employers know what happened."

The jury decided in Swift's favor, awarding her the symbolic $1 in damages she had asked for.

Andrea successfully completed treatment, but Swift revealed in March in her "30 Things I Learned Before Turning 30" essay for Elle that the cancer had returned. And, she shared for the first time that her dad had battled cancer as well.

"Both of my parents have had cancer, and my mom is now fighting her battle with it again," she wrote. "It's taught me that there are real problems and then there's everything else. My mom's cancer is a real problem. I used to be so anxious about daily ups and downs. I give all of my worry, stress, and prayers to real problems now."

Still, the now almost 30-year-old artist—winner of 10 Grammys, seller of millions of albums—won't go into too much detail when it comes to her parents' personal lives.

"There was a relapse that happened," Swift told Vogue for its 2019 September issue when asked about her mom's health. "It's something that my family is going through."

And that's a whole other kind of love story.

E! News

[dk-thrive]

What if honoring the gift of our only life in this gorgeous world means taking time every week to slow down?

My great-grandmother was a lifelong Baptist who spent the last four decades of her life worshiping with the Methodists because by then there was only church left in that tiny farming community in Lower Alabama…She was so quiet in her convictions that I was 10 or 12 before I noticed that she went straight back to her room after church every Sunday. On other days, she was always busy — shelling peas or snapping beans, crocheting or quilting or sewing — but on Sunday her hands fell still, and her sewing machine sat silent. The foot-pedal Singer she’d ordered from a catalog sometime during the early 20th century was still in daily use until a few weeks before her death in 1982, but she never sewed on Sunday.

When I went looking for her help with a tatting project one Sunday afternoon, I found out why. Tatting is a kind of lace made of tiny knots tied in very fine string. The trick is to tie the right kind of knot without tangling the string into the wrong kind, but I had made so many of the wrong knots that I couldn’t even figure out how to unpick the tangle and start again. I found her sitting in a chair under the window, her Bible in her lap. The book was very old, with edges so worn they curved inward toward the pages, as soft as a puppy. I knocked on the open door. “Mother Ollie, can you help me with this?”

All these years later, I think about the heartache it must have cost my great-grandmother, the one whose bedroom I shared whenever the house was full, to disappoint a child she loved so much. But that day she could not help me with my needlework. “Not today, honey,” she said. “The Lord tells us not to work on the Sabbath.” And handwork, by definition, is work.

I’ve thought of that conversation many times over the years. Sunday has never been a day of rest for me. I’ve always used at least part of the day to catch up with work, with email, with the myriad responsibilities that fall to people in the sandwich generation. I don’t know anyone who takes Sunday off anymore. If we aren’t doing professional work, we’re doing the housework that won’t get done once we leave for work on Monday morning.

But it’s not as though the world stopped on Sunday in Lower Alabama, either. The crops — and the weeds — in my grandfather’s fields continued to grow, whatever the day. My grandmother still had papers to grade and lessons to plan. The peas in the bushel basket on the back porch would not shell and can themselves. Nevertheless, my people put their work aside on Sunday to nap on the daybed or sit on the porch and rock. They didn’t ask themselves, as I do, whether they could “afford” to rest. God obliged them to rest, and so they did.

There are many, many people for whom this kind of Sabbath is not an option. People who work double shifts — or double jobs — just to make ends meet, truly can’t afford to rest, but I could reorganize my life if I tried. I could focus on priorities, spend less time on things that matter little to me and make more time for those that matter most. Somehow I had simply reached the age of 57 without feeling any obligation to sit still.

That changed the day after my book tour ended last week. Possibly I am just too old to learn the art of solo travel: of lying in a different bed night after night and actually sleeping, of finding my way through new cities and new airport terminals. I love meeting book people with all my heart, but by the end of book tour all my body was in revolt.

I sat on the sofa with my laptop, planning to get started on the 90 million emails that had piled up in my absence, but instead I fell asleep. I tried the wing chair next to the sofa with no better results. When I found myself looking at the one clear spot on my desk as a good place to lay my head, I gave up and went back to bed, rousing myself barely in time for supper. Then I slept 11 hours more.

Nothing in the third commandment identifies which day of the week should be the Sabbath. It doesn’t even mention the need to attend church. Its chief requirement is to rest. “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy,” reads Mother Ollie’s Bible. “Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.”

Reading those verses again made me wonder: What if resting, all by itself, is the real act of holiness? What if honoring the gift of our only life in this gorgeous world means taking time every week to slow down? To sleep? To breathe? The world has never needed us more than it needs us now, but we can’t be of much use to it if we remain in a perpetual state of exhaustion and despair.

The next day, I didn’t even try to work. I took a walk around Nashville’s Radnor Lake, the best possible way to celebrate a day of rest. The temperatures here have finally dropped, the rains have finally come, and Middle Tennessee is now serving up one fine October day after another.

At Radnor, the beauty-berries were gleaming in all their purple ripeness, and the asters and the snakeroots were still in bloom. Behind its mother, a fawn was foraging, its springtime spots just beginning to fade. A great blue heron was standing on a downed tree at the edge of the water, preening each damp, curling feather and sorting it into place. A fallen log just off the trail boasted a glorious crop of chicken-of-the-woods, and the seedpods of the redbud trees were ripe and ready to burst. At the lake’s edge, the sound of a lone cricket rose up from the skein of vegetation next to one of the overlooks. Its song was as beautiful and as heart-lifting as any hymn.

~ Margaret Renkl, from “What if resting, all by itself, is the real act of holiness?” (NY Times, October 21, 2019)

[grinningelvis]

A Decade of Forgetting: The Best Music and the Worst Impulses

John Prine Tree of Forgiveness 2018

I had no knowledge of John Prine prior to college, and I discovered him on a drive from school back to my parent’s house on a cold winter afternoon playing on public radio. The song was “Hello In There”, and like most people hearing the song for the first time, I cried and walked through my parent’s door a little more bashful about all of the things I’d been taking for granted. A few days later, I bought my first John Prine album.

It’s a minor miracle that we had new music from Prine to celebrate in 2018. Faced with an seemingly endless string of ailments (including several forms of cancer) in the ten or so years that had passed between his last collection of original material, Prine’s touring had ceased and part of his jaw and tongue had been removed. But it’s obvious to anyone who has listened to and cherished “Tree of Forgiveness” that Prine wasn’t resolved to the graveyard. He has a lot more to say.

Released in late August in the throes of bleakly divided, American reality, “Tree of Forgiveness” is an album that whispers back death. It is obsessed with mortality, memory, and contradictions of time. But it is also a thoroughly joyful, funny album featuring some of the strongest, simplest material Prine has ever written.

“I once had a family/but they up and left me/with nothing but an 8-track/ ‘Another Side of George Jones’” he sings with a smile on the album’s opening moments. “Knockin’ On Your Screen Door” is a seemingly minor addition to the Prine catalog, but the essence of the artist –the cantankerous drunken postman, too clever and ornery to spend too much time in any one job, or genre, or marriage – flows breezily through the laundry drying on the line. Laundry is a reoccurring theme in the record. Damp swim suits are a desperate attempt to hold onto youth in “Summer’s End” (maybe the album’s darkest and most spiritual song). On “Boundless Love”, the singer needs to roll his heart around in a washing machine “til his soul comes clean.” Prine is constantly cleaning and remembering, often suggesting that what’s “dirty” about his reverie no longer requires a cleansing, but an understanding. It’s no surprise that the album’s two most affected tracks are its best. “Egg & Daughter Nite” is a retirement-home recollection of teenage lust, maybe the most innocent song anyone has ever written about an engorged penis. “Lonesome Friends of Science”, the album’s centerpiece, deserves to be recognized as one of Prine’s funniest, thorniest songs. It’s a song about forgotten gods being retired as much by an indifferent public as by stuffy scientists. Prine sings about Pluto losing its title and curious statues dedicated to cultural aphorisms and sophistications long forgotten by the smartphone generations who can’t be bothered to Google ‘Vulcan’, none of which bothers the singer, whose pride is his nebulous family and a dog that can smell hurricanes coming. It’s the kind of  whip-smart, ironic song that Prine has perfected over the years – the same kind of song that’s kept him right on the fringes of stardom.

Nashville had little to no use for Prine, and the art-folk scene of the late 60’s and 70’s were far too stuffy for Prine’s particular sense of humor and politics. Here now, Prine stands as the last gasp of the American Dream- as a singular artist who has lived long enough to see his failures turn into great successes, who succeeded despite the increasingly forgetful culture around him. He’s written timeless songs that, nonetheless, define this period of American decay. Prine’s answer to changing America is not a retreat into angry revitalism of old themes like Dylan, nor is it the embracing of spiritual release, like, say, the latest releases from 70s apocalypticos like Bill Fay. Prine chooses to face death with a revelation: it was a mess and it was all worth it, it was a disaster and I want more of it.