#new album it's good to be here

[lock-my-feelings-in-a-jar]

Russ Ballard

[amali4m]

y'all remember when dante wrote a fanfiction of the bible and then hozier wrote a fanfiction of said fanfiction?? iconic if you ask me

[tenvishund]

F I S S I O N - Why the hell do you hurt yourself for this?

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I know you don't like discussing the muses but i love your takes and perspectives and i had to ask you about this. after listening to ttpd, did you have the impression that she really loved matty more than any of her exes/previous relationships?. And listening to the whole album as a whole would you call it the ''matty album'' or do you think there are more prominent themes in there than their period together?. (hope this doesn't bother you, feel free to delete if you don't feel like answering it)

hey anon! You're right, I don't really like to get into the muses as I don't really think there's anything to add to the conversation at this point, and ultimately I don't think it matters.

That being said, and with the caveat that I am not Taylor and I do not know Taylor so I cannot speak to her thoughts and can only make relatively educated guesses based on being an avid consumer of her work and a student of the human condition (lol), no I do not think Taylor loved Matty more than anyone else. I think there was maybe a brief period in the thick of things where she *thought* she did because she was not thinking clearly and was in full-on denial, but to me the message that is loud and clear in the album (and more or less explicitly stated in the epilogue) is that it was not any kind of real love affair. It was certainly infatuation and lust and the promise of something more, and there may have been some love as well, but he was in no way the love of her life by any measure.

I would call it a "Matty album" insofar as they're about events in which he was present, sure. But I feel it much more as a Taylor album, if that makes sense, even though I know that's a cop out because every album is to a degree. I can't explain it well, but I don't see TTPD as a Matty (or Joe) album in the way that I would maybe say Red is a "Jake" album or 1989 may be a "Harry" album or even Lover being a "Joe" album whatever, because even if they don't figure in all the songs, that kind of heartbreak permeates so much of the material.

The thing about TTPD and the Matty situation is that the Matty situation is really a Joe situation (which in some ways is actually partially a Jake situation). I always say I hate treating Taylor like a character so I hate speaking about her and her work in this way, but you don't get the Matty situation without the Joe situation precipitating it. It's @taylortruther's now-infamous donut vs. hole analogy. The reason Taylor makes the choices she does with Matty is directly tied to what happened with Joe that made her feel she needed to. Which is not to say Taylor isn't responsible for her own actions or doesn't have agency in her own life, but I mean it in that the situation in which she found herself with Joe, and the pain it caused, is what made the alternative so comforting and perhaps even necessary in her mind. It's why it makes it so hard to "paternity test" the album, because the stories are inherently intertwined and you don't get the former without the latter.

The major "theme" of the album to me is the loss of a very specific, very personal dream, and the way in which she lost it, and the way in which grieving that loss drove her to make the choices she did. We're all talking very delicately about it because it's a sensitive topic, but it's late on Friday and few people are going to see this, so I'm going to say it: it's the give you my wild, give you a child of it all. The yearning she expresses both overtly and sub-textually for having a family in the album is palpable in a very iykyk kind of way, and it's the realization that those plans are not going to come to fruition in the way she had once imagined that drives a lot of the pain she experiences, and makes her jump at the chance to find that again with someone else.

I started a draft post about the theme of womanhood and motherhood on TTPD three months ago that I never finished because I ran out of time and ran out of steam, but it was the most striking thing to me on the album, not because I didn't know that she wanted those things because that's been obvious for years (definitely since Lover, and again, peace put it all on the table), but because the vulnerability she expressed about it on the album is incredibly moving, and it's so generous of her to trust listeners with those feelings and experiences.

Again, it's the thirtysomething of it all.

She is in relationship A which she at one point believes is forever, one which she at one point believes is going to lead to marriage and children. She is so committed to that dream that she either ignores or tries to fix serious issues that may otherwise lead others to think the two people in the relationship are incompatible, both because she loves the person deeply and because she feels that this is meant to be the way she achieves that dream. She gives it her everything, and it still dies a slow, painful, onerous death, and she feels like it may take her along with it. The dream of getting married and presumably having a family gets taken off the table: how we don't know and will likely never know because that is private between the parties involved. All that matters in the context of the album is that those plans never come to fruition and never would.

Then you have relationship B, an old flame who knows just enough buttons to push both to trigger and to flatter. A person who she presumably trusts with very sensitive, personal information as her life slowly crumbles, and this person is telling her all the things she wants to hear because he knows about what is happening in relationship A because she's told him. Person in relationship B doesn't get an "in" with her and sell her this dream unless what happens in relationship A precedes it. It's not a grand love affair for the ages, it's not a mutual decision on building their own dream together. It's Person B learning about what is happening with Person A and saying "I can do that!" even if he can't or doesn't. The dream he sells her is a rental car; it's not his own, he's just borrowing it from someone else and selling it back to her.

And the reason she falls for it is because it is what she aches for the most in her personal life, and she is grappling with it disintegrating, so she (unfortunately for her) falls for the easy way out, and in turn sells herself a story about how this must be fated, and this must be meant to be, because this person wants all the same things she does and she didn't even have to bargain for it! Well, yes, because she fed him the dream in the first place. (Like a mark falling for a sleeper cell spy.) It's too good to be true because it isn't true. IMO Person B doesn't come running out of the gate with the marriage/baby/dream life promises unless he knows that is what she most desires. But what's left unsaid out of all of it is that: those dreams were her dreams because they were her dreams with Person A. It was a whole life they had together, and a whole life they had planned for in some fashion, and a whole life that has to be dismantled in the aftermath.

So all this to say, yes, on the surface, Matty is a "main character" on the album, but truly he's a side character to Taylor as the narrator and person experiencing it and Joe as the ghost bit-player-who-haunts-every-scene. (Again, I hate referring to real people as characters, it gives me the absolute ick, but in this case it's the only way to answer the question.) I jokingly call it the Matty album for shorthand or when I want to say something out of pocket, but really, it's a disservice to the album to say that because it's not a muse album as in it's about the romance (like, say, Red often is), it's about a soul-crushing heartbreak that goes beyond it. The romance is the symptom, not the cause.

The loss of youth is tied in with all this: she's not 22 anymore. She isn't even 32 anymore. She had a very specific idea of what her life was going to look like at this point and had planned for that life, and it goes up in smoke. But again, to bring the womanhood into it all: there is, unfortunately, a deadline for these things. You're with someone for over half a decade you think is going to be your life partner and father of your children and and then he's not. You spent half a decade building this relationship for it to crumble, but now you're in your mid-30s and you don't necessarily have another half-decade to build that trust and faith in someone else before being ready to start a family. And maybe you're scared that anyone else who may become your partner will need that much time to build that trust and faith, because that's kind of all you've ever know in relationships. But lo and behold, someone comes into your life you once had feelings for and maybe now do again and is offering you everything you want and thought you'd have by this point in your life right now. It feels like an elixir that as we find out is actually poison.

That youth is not just the chance for motherhood, but it's also the hopes and idealism and belief in the future that often gradually erodes as we age. But for Taylor as well, it's also tied into the trauma of what she went through particularly in 2016, which kicks off a lot of things on the album as well (her retreat, her relationship with Joe, the pivoting in her career, etc.). That event caused a pretty clear before/after in her life (like a few other events, I suspect), and another major theme in the album is her finally grappling with the full weight of that. They're all different branches of the same tree of the story of TTPD and her life.

I could talk about this stuff forever, but I'm going to stop here because it's long enough and I should save stuff for one of the dozens of drafts I have half-baked lol. But this is just something I needed to get off my chest perhaps.

[greg-montgomery]

can i request a fic where reader is a huge swiftie and now that 1989 TV has been released, reader is so excited and you're explaining to aaron about the songs, why taylor is re-recording (although aaron might have already known about it because he searched up taylor to keep up with your favorites because he knows how much you love taylor and her music and so he pretends he doesn't know because he can see just how excited you are to share your interest with him and he just looks at you with so much adoration as you react to the songs and talk with him 🥺💗) it could even be a pre-established relationship where he's just pining over reader, whatever you prefer to write!! if you don't want to write, then it's alright!! <33

“Hotch, you really don’t have to. I’ll be fine”

“No. I’m driving you home,” he argued, grabbing your jacket and handing it to you.

“But-”

“No buts,” he interrupted you. “I’m not letting you take the train, it’s raining.”

You gave up; partly, because he was stubborn and partly because you wanted nothing more than to be in the car alone with him.

The rain falling on the roof of his car wasn’t loud enough to cover the sound of the music that was coming from his radio. You didn’t recognize the song, but even if you did, you’d still have no interest in it. There were only a few very specific songs you wanted to listen to at that moment.

Aaron could probably see you staring at the radio, so you assumed that was the reason he made you an offer.

“You can play your songs if you want.”

“Do you really not mind?” you grinned, already opening your Spotify app.

“Of course,” he chuckled. “Go ahead.”

“Taylor released a new album and with work I haven’t had the chance to listen to it properly yet.”

“Is that why you had headphones on all day at the office?”

“I was lucky it was paperwork day.”

He shook his head in delight, and let you connect your phone to his car. You bit your lip trying to hold back a smile at the thought that he didn’t need to ask who Taylor was. And at the fact that you were certainly the reason why.

“How do you know the lyrics by heart already?” he asked, only one song in.

“Not all songs are new.”

“How does that work, I thought you said it’s a new album?”

“Okay so, it’s basically a rerecording of an old album. And she added a few new songs in as well. So even if it’s an old album it feels new,” you said. “She is rerecording all of her old albums that she doesn’t own. Because even though she wanted to buy them they were sold to somebody else. Someone who had not been good to her.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yeah…But because she wrote them she has the right to record them again.”

“Oh…Good for her.”

“Yes. All Swifties listen to her versions.”

“Do they?” he said, laughing.

“Yes,” you said proudly.

“And which one is your favorite?”

“From this album?” you asked.

“Mhm…”

“I’ll just play it for you.”

It was hard to miss his shy smile when he saw the title ‘You Are In Love’ flash across the screen.

Maybe he was in love too.

[maximura]

[traumainpyjamas]

JENO \\ NCT DREAM 엔시티 드림 'Smoothie' MV

[thatgoddamngingerundercut]

Agust D ‘Amygdala’ MV & Jacket Shoot Sketch

[retrowebz]

My god, my universe

[statementlou]

BSE (best speech ever!!)

[canesshuga]

wonderful nothing by glass animals.................soooo real

[lock-my-feelings-in-a-jar]

Russ Ballard

[nosygay]

hm btw remember the "once it's all ok I'll bake a cherry pie" post I was talking about the other day. ive decided my metaphorical cherry pie is cramming in as much new music as I can into a day so does anyone want to drop their suggestions ✌️

[xhfics]

Besties how are we feeling about all the new songs~?

[hopeinthebox]

tagged by the gorgeous and fabulous @cordiallyfuturedwight and @aprylynn for february's roundup:

tagging the usual music favs: @jiminsproof @thvinyl @jimin-gaon @visionsofgideontheninth @spicyclematis @kimchokejin @jihopesjoint @monismochi plus @kimtaegis for the amy macdonald of it all 💜 and also you, dear reader. MWAH

[elenadoeslife]

never thought this day would come. here we go! 🎧