#taylor swift is so popular at this point she does not have peers. there is no one else at her level | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

endearinglysarcastic · 5 years ago

Text

Taylor Swift’s Current Form of Hell

Some thoughts considering Taylor’s current situation. Feedback is welcome (especially if it can be added to the analysis!), but please don’t @ me to argue that she’s a bully or a bitch. I will eat you.

Firstly, let’s talk about age. Taylor is 29. Scott and Kim are 38, Kanye is 42. Famous was released in 2016, when Taylor was 26 and Kanye 39. So, not only was it released without her permission, not only was she filmed without her permission, not only did it defame her, not only was it implying sexual promiscuity in return for fame, not only was it entirely beyond the bounds of anything she would’ve agreed to regardless of Kim’s ‘proof’, she was 26. Let that sink in. There is more than a decade between her and Kanye - think about someone a decade older that you (a cousin, uncle or friend) and imagine how you would react (me, I’d go all Tangled on them, and hit them in the face with a saucepan; and that’s my calm reaction). Then remember how you were at 19 - considering that, in 2009, when Kanye said ‘imma let you finish BUT’ she was 19. Fast forward a little to 2016, and Kanye has 2 children, a wife and an established music career. He should be the elder, the one that understands the industry, the one that works with RESPECT. Taylor is only just older than his second youngest sister-in-law - and you best believe that if something like this happened to Kendall, Kanye would be coming after them. But this ‘feud’ was deemed appropriate, Famous was deemed ‘funny’. Scooter and Justin Bieber and various radio hosts etc have decided that all this is ‘not a big deal’. But there we were, Taylor was 26 and being TAGGED by people a decade older than her in this revenge porn horridness. Is it because we now think it’s okay to be horrible to white girls? Is that it? Is it because she’s American? She certainly isn’t a Trump fan, so we can rule that out. Maybe it’s because Kanye was threatened - maybe it’s because he was made to apologise by Queen B and he’s been looking to reassert his masculinity ever since. Maybe it’s his own past, insecurities, problems. But that in no means makes it okay; nor does it condone the behaviour of his wife and associates like Scooter. Hence, we have defamation, revenge porn and cyber bullying, all of which started when Taylor Swift, pop princess supreme, was 19, 26 and now 29.

One of the people who brought this 2016 pain about, now owns the rights to her music. Sounds a bit iffy (it still has her name on it! you cry), but let’s think about this legally. This means that if Taylor wants to work with, rerelease, remix or reconsider any of HER prior works, she has to a) work with Scooter, b) have the changes approved by Scooter and c) give a portion of the profits to Scooter. And yes, kiddies, that means concerts too. Performing her music, at her concerts, for her fans, is giving her abuser a profit. Imagine having to do that with a high school bully, or say, prior boss that you never really liked, with a report or a paper. Objectively these things are worth nothing, but you did the majority of the work; despite this, it’s technically part of their group or company, so it’s theirs too. It’s like sharing custody of your child with an abusive and absent ex. Except, that child is worth a literal fortune and took 14 years to create; and you’re well aware that your ex will completely abuse their side of the contract for their own amusement. Furthermore, while she’s sharing those rights, we have to remember that Taylor has no legal recourse - he owns the masters by CONTRACT, that she no doubt signed at one point or another. Now while I have things to say about the lawyers that advised her to sign that contract, please remember that she was just 14 when she entered the industry and that a human female brain does not fully develop until at least 23 (men are develop by 27 but this is about Taylor so I’ll refrain from making that joke today). Business savvy she might be now, but that comes with experience and practice and a good team. People who are good at their job, understand your vision and you trust entirely are hard to find; especially when your vocation is as all encompassing as Taylor’s must be. Perhaps there was a mistake there, perhaps she shouldn’t have signed the contract; but hindsight is 20/20, and perhaps blaming Taylor isn’t the most progressive thing to do. What is both interesting and considerably more gross, is that Taylor was offered a chance to, quote, ‘earn back’ her masters - not only is this bribery, it’s an attempt to further abuse and power over one of the biggest earners in today’s music industry. With such a power over her, there is no way that Big Machine will ever willingly let her go - perhaps they’d enter into a never-ending negotiation; for every album she produces (which would belong to Big Machine), she earns back a prior album that belonged to Big Machine. Sounds fabulous and abusive, doesn’t it? If you are so naive as to think that she was not a guiding factor on the purchase of Big Machine, please reconsider your brain. No one wants to buy the cow if you can get the milk for free - which essentially is what Scooter did, plus now he gets to kick the cow and the calf if and when he wants to. Lovely, right? However, please consider that in signing any new contact under this offer, one can see definite similarities with Kesha’s situation, though the abuse hopefully be only mental and emotional. Taylor has made an incredibly hard and painful choice; she could leave her legacy behind in favour of happier life, or continue with her legacy and ‘earn it back’ and be generally miserable. This desire to make Taylor ‘submit’ is misogynistic, horrible and really really gross. Hence we can conclude that not only has she been abused, bullied and used, we may now note that she has no way of ‘winning’ this argument - in that she may never get her masters back without paying a very serious life consequence.

Taylor has posted a 2 paragraph statement on Tumblr. (Fun reminder - I’m not even halfway done and I’ve written a longer defence that she did.) She is being called attention seeking (‘turning the the public has worked for her before’ - what my local FM radio told me), bullying, gaslighting etc etc. which are all things we’ve heard about before in relation to her. Certainly, Taylor, like other people in the media spotlight, has done things that people don’t approve of or deem problematic (because she, like all others, is just a person) but this by no means should overshadow her present situation. You don’t need to be a Taylor fan to consider this issue problematic; the facts alone are indicative enough. There is no element of like, love, favouritism or adoration that even needs to be considered here. Taylor is being judged, abused and publicly bullied as she dared to speak her mind and feelings about her own works. If Scooter had his way, we would revert to simply calling her hysterical, and strip her of all capacity to reason - god forbid a woman in the music industry be of sane mind and conviction. Despite this, we have to note that these events, this treatment, these discussions have led to one of the most prominent and successful women of the 21st century retreating from public, and posting her defence, in her own words, on TUMBLR, which is widely considered a niche site when compared to say Twitter or Instagram. Hence, we must ask ourselves, why would Taylor choose Tumblr? She has been so widely supported on Instagram and Twitter in the past. Maybe this is where she feels supported and like she is least chance to be attacked; what does that tell you about her headspace? Maybe it’s where she sees the least tagging, comments of ownership, masters related from people who are meant to be her colleagues - cyber bullying is, effectively, so harmful because it can truly follow you anywhere. Imagine the outrage if this had been done to Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes. But it wouldn’t happen to them - not because producers and owners are incapable, but because they do not deem in necessary for them to need to show who the ‘alpha’ is. But having Taylor as the more powerful, pervasive person seems to offend many men to the core. Hence, maybe Taylor posted it is simply for herself, knowing it would be unedited and seen by people who might sympathise without yarns of criticism that related to the anatomy between her legs. Certainly, I know I would want to have my say for my own peace of mind as well as for my mental health - and I’m just a law student with 7 followers. How does someone so wildly popular feel so unsafe in the social media sphere? This. This bs is why.

So why are we just hearing about all this now? Well that’s just it; Taylor. She has brought this to the public attention. She is not so naive as to think that there would be no backlash - she’s been the victim of that too many times. Taylor, despite knowing all of this, despite standing alone, despite the lack of media, social media, peer and male support, has said something. She has expressed her thoughts and feelings, knowing she would be labelled unstable and narcissistic - because that is the fastest way to depreciate and devalue anything legitimate or threatening that comes from a woman or girl. Taylor has, in a sense, reported her abuse; except she reported it to the public. She has been bullied, cyber bullied, defamed, indicted, disliked and gaslighted. In her position, many would be anxious, depressed, scared, paranoid, running crying to their parents (cough me cough). Instead, she has made a rational, intelligent and self-caring decision that led to a well written statement, conveying her feelings in a timely and eloquent manner. She is effectively telling us that Times Up, and it’s coming for the music industry. As always, she has handled this in the most dignified and elegant of ways, while Scooter and his supporters seem to be borderline aroused at the pain they’re inflicting. How anyone can get their kicks out of another persons pain will always be beyond me, though that seems to be the way women are accustomed to men acting. Taylor is, as she has often been, at the forefront of changing social issues and bearing the brunt of the backlash in the public eye. I hope that there are other young women and young artists that are watching and listening - she might very well break the glass ceiling - again.

Taylor has gone through an immense amount of pain throughout her music career - she’s been labelled an attention, money and boyfriend seeking crybaby for over a decade. The behaviour of men in the music industry is neither appropriate or acceptable. I do not accept it - we, the public, cannot accept it.

Although I know it is of little help, I will no longer be listening to or streaming Taylor’s old work in an effort to support her. I will also not be streaming or purchasing any other Big Machine productions until her work is returned to her. I will also be signing this petition in her favour. Please consider doing the same - Katy Perry already did.

I hope Taylor is okay, I hope she is caring for herself, I hope there is some legal action she can take. I hope Lover is wildly successful and her heart is full. Remember that this is not about receipts or feuds or drama. This is about the cruel and unfair treatment of a woman in the music industry and the escalation of that when it became public information. This is about changing the conversation and changing the working conditions. This is for more than just Taylor; this is part changing a toxic culture, where cyberbulling and revenge porn and spiteful purchases for ‘funzies’ (and the torment of others) is appropriate, provided it is against a woman. Whatever you might say or think of her, this is an example of injustices that occur to women everywhere and everyday. We have proven only one thing with these injustices, and that is that you can kick Taylor Swift down are hard as you can - she has discovered feminism and she’s going to get back up. She might not be perfect, she might not be your favourite, but she isn’t a push over. Taylor Swift is taking up space and taking no shit, and I am here for it.

Petition: https://www.change.org/p/taylor-swift-make-taylor-swift-re-release-her-6-albums

You can find Taylor’s statement here: https://taylorswift.tumblr.com/post/185958366550/for-years-i-asked-pleaded-for-a-chance-to-own-my

You can also check her Tumblr out here, though this is less related to this analysis and more if you want a good giggle: @taylorswift

#Taylor Swift #lover #law #scooter braun #kaynewest #kim kardashian #masters #feminism #timesup #famous #rant #analysis

12 notes · View notes

robertjacobsugdens · 6 years ago

Note

robron + fake dating!!! (i already forgot the number because i got so excited about it #rip)

Here you go! Just seventeen years later, I am SO SORRY.07. Fake dating.CW: forced outing, brief discussions of homophobia and biphobia. All of Aaron’s opinions on music are his own and I don’t endorse them nor condone them.

In Aaron’s defense, he’s drunk when it happens.

Technically, Aaron, a music journalist, should be impartial and fair.Practically, he and Robert Sugden, former boybander from the early 2000s gonesolo, have a feud going on. Well, they had one. These days, what with theintermingling of their personal lives, they mostly have a grudging andexpletive-laden acquaintanceship.

Adam once called them “frenemies” but Adam is an idiot and what he saysdoesn’t count.

Aaron can’t quite remember howit started. Probably with him saying something about how Robert’s the BritishTaylor Swift but with none of the emotional range. He might also be in a feudwith Taylor Swift now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure.

It’s all very fuzzy. Theapocalyptic amounts of alcohol he’s been consuming all night probably aren’thelping matters. They are, however, helping with the fact that he’s currently inRobert Sugden’s living room, witnessing all kinds of straight PDA.

There’s a party going on, somekind of celebration because Robert’s been nominated for a music award. Aaronfeels like he should definitely know which one, but it’s escaping him at themoment. What he does know is that it’s one of those cheap ones voted by thepublic, a popularity contest more than anything. Record executives love themthough.

If this lavish party isanything to go by, so does Robert.

Aaron takes a swig of hisbeer. Robert’s a sell-out, nothing new there.

Aaron tries to regain focus.He’s been waiting for Adam and Vic’s make-out session to end for a while now,but it doesn’t look like it’s happening any time soon. When he sees Adam’stongue enter Vic’s mouth for the third time in five minutes he decides to cuthis losses and get up.

He wanders around for a bit,nodding hello to the few people he knows, mostly other music journalists hereto network or just to score some free alcohol and food. Can’t say he blamesthem.

He’s just thinking he hasn’tseen Robert at all, and what a blessing that is, when he does see him. He’swearing a white button-down shirt and jeans, surrounded by people in silks andglitter, but he still stands out the most. There’s something about him thatdraws people’s attention. If Aaron were the sort of flowery writer that editorslove he’d describe it as a ‘magnetic aura’ or something equally stupid. As itis, he’s just annoyed in a way he can’t quite verbalize.

Robert sees Aaron from acrossthe room and smirks at him, a flash of white teeth that’s gone almost as soonas it appears. Aaron turns back. What a wanker.

Aaron wakes up with a bangingheadache and a mouth that feels filled with cotton.

He opens one eye, slowly, andwhen he’s not assaulted by the daylight as he feared, he opens the other one aswell. He notices gladly that the curtains are shut, allowing him some reprieve.Then he remembers that he doesn’t have curtains in his bedroom and a wave ofnausea hits him.

He’s on a bed, diagonally,mercifully alone and fully clothed, shoes included. It’s not his bed though.

Aaron gets up, gingerly, andas he does some of the memories from the night before flood back to him. Heremembers getting drunk, he remembers getting annoyed with Robert aboutsomething but he can’t quite remember what, he remembers wandering onto thesecond floor and into a guest bedroom and then suddenly not reallyunderstanding how locks and doors and handles work anymore.

Not one of his finest moments,admittedly.

So, he’s still at Robert’s, inone of his bedrooms. He takes his phone out of his jeans pocket and looks atthe time, it’s only 10.30 on a Sunday, he’s sure Robert’s still asleep. He canprobably get out of there without even having to see him.

This is fine. This is allfine.

Aaron’s trip downstairs is assilent as he can make it, which, given his current state, is not very silent atall. At one point he even trips on the carpet and barely manages not to fall onhis face, releasing however a string of curses. He sends up a silent prayerthat Robert’s room is very far away and Robert is a very sound sleeper.

“Aaron? Are you trying to giveme a heart attack?” Robert half yells, suddenly and inexplicably at the bottomof the stairs. He’s clutching his chest with a hand in a way that Aaron feelsis way too dramatic for the situation.

He’s wearing an open robe, apair of pajama bottoms and nothing else. Aaron is man enough and hung-overenough to admit that it’s distracting and that’s why it’s taking him forever toanswer. Not that he’s going to let Robert in on that.

“I fell asleep.” Aaron says,crossing his arms. “Why are you already up?” Aaron asks, with way moreaccusation in his tone than is warranted, all things considered.

Robert gestures towards theliving room. Aaron comes down the last few steps and peers into the largeliving room, where a cleaning crew is eliminating every trace of last night’sparty and studiously ignoring them.

“You look like you’re about tothrow up.” Robert says, wrinkling his nose. “Please not on the carpet.”

Aaron grunts at him. He canrecognize a hint when he gets thrown one.

“Fine. I’ll leave you to it.”He says, rushing towards the door, Robert right behind him.

“What?” Aaron asks.

“Last time you tried to leaveyou ended up in my guest bedroom. I’m just making sure you don’t end up in myattic.” Robert says. He looks weird. Sleepy, maybe. Soft. His bare feet barelymaking a sound on the plush carpet and his hair still a mess from the nightbefore.

Aaron idly wonders if there’sanyone upstairs, still in Robert’s bed, waiting for him to be done and get backunder the covers. He shakes the thoughts off. He might still be drunk.

He opens the front door andsteps into the fresh air. It’s cold, but at least it’s making his nausea goaway.

“Aren’t you forgettingsomething?” Robert asks from the door. Aaron turns around and finds himselfface to face with Robert, who’s leaning on the doorframe, robe open in a waythat’s too artful to be casual. It’s a little thing but it reminds Aaron why hedislikes Robert so much. Everything about him is studied and fake.

“What?” Aaron barks out, backon familiar emotional territory.

Robert blinks at him a coupleof times. “Didn’t you have a coat last night? It’s cold.” Robert asks, finallyclosing his robe, as if his words had conjured the chill.

Aaron shrugs. He’s not goingback in.

Robert sighs. He disappearsinside for a few seconds before reappearing with a bundle in his arms.

“Here, take this.” He says,thrusting the thing at Aaron. “You can bring it back to me next time.” Andbefore Aaron can protest or speak, really, he closes the door.

Aaron unfolds the coat, it’sone of those posh ones that cost hundreds of dollars. He shrugs it on.

Aaron does throw up on the wayhome. He’s not sure he can blame Robert for it but he definitely makes avaliant effort.

Aaron manages to drag himselfout of bed on Monday morning, held together by determination, a prayer, and thepromise of coffee.

In hindsight he should havestayed in bed.

It starts with Adam sendinghim a text with an incoherent string of emojis and a link to one of thosegossip sites that he hates. He’s about to ignore the whole thing when he seesthe name ‘Robert Sugden’ in the link. He must still be half-asleep because hejust taps on it, opening a new page.

Aaron’s greeted by pictures ofRebecca White leaving Robert’s house. They’re from the morning before and Aaronquashes the spark of something ugly in his stomach that flares at therealization. She looks okay, surely more put together than Aaron looked in thesame situation. Robert’s robe is mercifully closed.

He’s scrolling through thepictures and asking himself why Adam would ever think he’s interested in themwhen he sees the back of his own head. A picture of it, to be precise. He’sstanding close to Robert, who somehow looks even more naked in the picturesthan he was in real life yesterday morning. He doesn’t remember standing thatclose either, but the angle makes it look like they were only a few inchesapart.

Aaron skims the article, buteven calling it an article feels too much of a concession. It’s a bunch of baselessspeculations about their relationship, Robert’s relationship with Rebecca, andwhat might have gone down the night before. They have even embedded a few ofthe tweets he and Robert have exchanged during the years in for good measure. Thearticle calls them ‘foreplay’ and Aaron doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Robert calls him. Of course,Robert calls him. Tragedies always strike in threes.

It’s five pm and Aaron isabout to call it a night, earlier than usual, just so he can escape the circusthose pictures have created. His co-workers, who are usually to scared to eventalk to him, are openly laughing at him. Well, not so openly anymore after healmost bit Tracy’s head off earlier, but still. There’s definitely somelaughing at his expense happening. His own motherhas called him to laugh at him about it.

He’s just about ready to gohome, drink one or seven beers and go to bed when his phone rings. It flasheswith Vic’s number. He’s seriously tempted to let it go to voicemail, but in theend, he answers it.

He shouldn’t have.

“I’m going to be at your apartmentin half an hour, meet me there.” Robert says, in a tone Aaron can’t quitedecipher, then he hangs up.

Aaron is so incredibly temptedto stand Robert up. He could go to a pub and get his one to seven beers there,go back home once he’s sure Robert’s gone or even crash at Adam’s.

He sighs.

He goes home.

Robert is standing next toAaron’s apartment complex, leaning casually against the wall, a foot proppedback against it. He’s wearing a pair of stupid fake hipster glasses and a hat,trying to blend in. Aaron wants to punch him in the mouth.

He doesn’t even acknowledgeRobert as he goes inside, but he can feel him following. Aaron suddenly remembershe’s still wearing the coat Robert had given him yesterday and feels caughtout, but he’s not sure why. His own winter coat, the only one he has, is stillsomewhere inside Robert’s sprawling mansion, and it’s not like Robert can’tafford a new one if he really needs it.

“I’ll be right back.” Aaronsays before Robert can even open his mouth. He even manages to make it soundlike a warning.

He comes back with a case ofbeer and half a bottle of whiskey. Whatever it is Robert wants, Aaron isresolutely not listening to it sober.

Turns out, Robert wants themto date.

They are both so incredibly,stupidly drunk. They’re on Aaron’s couch and they’ve managed to demolish thealcohol and the meager contents of Aaron’s fridge, which mostly consisted of oldtake-away and a solitary carton of eggs. This is fine. It’s fine.

“So, you want me to, what, beyour reverse beard?” Aaron asks. He’s put Robert’s glasses on, and it turns outthey’re actually prescription glasses and it’s giving him nausea, but it’sbetter than the glasses being on Robert’s stupid face, so he’s keeping them.

Robert shrugs.

“Because between the pressthinking you shagged your ex-wife’s sister and a bloke the latter is… better?”Aaron asks, unsure. He’s, again, extremely drunk, but he’s pretty sure this won’tmake sense even once he sobers up.

“I didn’t.” Robert says,adamant, his eyes glassy from the booze, but intent. “Sleep with her.” Heclarifies.

“I don’t care who you shag,mate.” Aaron says, taking a swig of his beer, but something in his chest feelslooser.

“People do. The Daily Mailcalled me ‘a closet hopping groundhog gay.’” Robert says, finishing off therest of his whiskey. He looks so offended and sad, his hair sticking up indifferent directions from where he’s carded his fingers through it, his shirtrumpled.

Aaron laughs. He doesn’tbother to point out that only idiots read The Daily Mail.

“It’s not funny!” Robertprotests, but he’s laughing too. “I don’t even know what that means.” He continues,more to himself than to Aaron.

Aaron knows it hasn’t beeneasy for Robert to come out. He’s had to put up with his fair share of bullshitand Aaron can relate. Still. This is insane.

“I still don’t get why yougotta date me.” Aaron says with a grimace.

“Haven’t you read thecomments? People like us.” Robertreplies. “The idea of us.” He amends.

Aaron rolls his eyes. Robert’sobsession with what people think of him will lead him to an early grave.Probably by Aaron’s hands.

“Come with me to an event ortwo. A couple of dates. Then we can tell people we split amicably.” Robert says.Aaron gives him a look. “Or with a lot of animosity, whatever works for you.”

The crazy thing is, Aaron isconsidering it. He’s drunk enough to at least admit that to himself, and topreemptively give himself an excuse when he’ll wake up sore and regretfultomorrow.

“You’ll have full access. I’llmake sure you get the exclusive on any new project of the people I know.”Robert continues. He’s blurry and earnest seen through his own glasses. Aaronwants to throw up.

“Fine.”

Aaron wakes up with a crick inhis neck for having slept sitting on the couch and a banging headache, sunlightstreaming in from the windows. He wants to die and throw up. In that order. Hereally needs to stop doing this.

Why did he even do this?

“Would it kill you to buy aset of curtains?” Robert asks, his voice scratchy from sleep and what Aaronhopes is the mother of all hangovers.

Right. That.

Aaron takes two aspirins andstands in the shower for as long as there is hot water. He towels himself dryand puts on some clean clothes. He even manages not to throw up. He takes it asa win.

When he goes back to theliving room Robert is still there, looking intently at Aaron’s recordcollection. There’s not much in the living room, his favorite ones taking upevery available bit of space in his bedroom, these are mostly the spillovers.Still, he figures it must be an interesting collection by the look ofconcentration on Robert’s face.

He’s wearing his glasses again,as well as his stupidly expensive coat and his hat. Despite the hangover, helooks good. Aaron hates him just a little bit more for it.

“Why are you still here?”Aaron asks, weary, but lacking the usual bite. It’s been a long day already andit’s not even nine am.

“You break for lunch, right?”Robert asks, completely ignoring Aaron’s question. Aaron nods. “Okay, Leylasaid we should go for lunch. Seafood.” Robert continues, whipping up his phonefrom his jeans pocket and looking at the screen.

“Did she?” Aaron asks, lookingaround the room trying to locate his own phone in an attempt to not look atRobert anymore. This is insane. In the harsh, cold light of day, this is positivelyinsane.

“She says ‘right now lunch says this relationship is new and lowkey and we’re having fun but within thebounds of respectability politics because we live in a heteronormative society.’I’m quoting.” Robert shrugs. “That must be some fresh fish if it’s saying allthat.”

Aaron groans. “Jokes like that’swhy you need a PR boyfriend instead of having a real one, mate.”

Robert is late. Not that Aaronis surprised. There are many a-Twitter rants from Aaron about Robert’stardiness. Honestly, he’s revising his stance on this, their feud is all Robert’sfault.

Not that there is a feudanymore, not publicly at least. Or privately, Aaron has to grudgingly admit. He’salmost getting used to Robert. It’s disconcerting.

He’s just about to get back insidewhen a sleek silver car parks in front of him. Aaron would recognize that caranywhere. He gets inside.

Robert’s showered and changedclothes. He’s still wearing jeans, but now he’s also wearing a button-downshirt and a blazer. If Aaron were anyone else, he’d probably be feelingunderdressed, but thankfully, he’s Aaron Dingle.

“It’s lunch.” He says pointedly.

“There’ll be paparazzi.” Robert replies just aspointedly, looking Aaron over. It sends something like a spark down Aaron’sspine, he squashes it down. Not in a million years.

The food is good at least. Hecan’t say the same for the company. Robert’s spent the entire time subtlyworking his angles so the paparazzi can get good shots while trying to looknatural.

Every time Aaron thinks hemight actually like Robert, Robert gives him a stark reminder of why he doesn’t.It’s like clockwork.

“Why do you even care?” Aaronasks, brusquely. He’s tired of being ignored, but he hadn’t meant to say it outloud. Still, at least it startles Robert out of his daze.

“What?”

“About all this. It’s mental.”Aaron says. Robert looks like he’s waiting for Aaron to elaborate, but Aarondoesn’t.

“It’s sort of my job.” Robert replies,and to his credit he doesn’t say it like he thinks Aaron is stupid for notgetting it, which must be a struggle for him.

“Making music is your job.”Aaron says, defiant.

Aaron would rather die thanadmit any of this, but Robert has a good voice. He even has the classictraining and the rags to riches story to back it up. Farm boy turned pop star. Ifit were anyone else, Aaron could see the appeal. The fact is, Robert seems toobusy constantly obsessing over his image to actually sing anything worthlistening to and it makes Aaron want to shake him.

“Did you remember when peoplefound out?” Robert asks, and intense look on his face, and he doesn’t have tospecify what, Aaron knows he’s talking about his sexuality.

Aaron does remember. He’s theone who had to break the news to Robert that there were pictures of him with abloke circulating around various gossip magazines. He remembers threatening toquit if the newspaper bought any of the pictures. They had been one of the fewoutlets to not even run a story about it. The fallout hadn’t been great.

Aaron nods.

“How much work do you think ittook to make sure I still had a career after that?” Robert asks, but it’s a rhetoricalquestion.

Aaron gets it, he really does.Music journalism is a difficult world for a gay man to break into, he’s had toadapt, toughen up. It’s messed up that he’s had to do that, but he knew thescore going in. He doesn’t think Robert did. Or maybe he did and had decided along time ago to kill that part of himself was a viable solution. Aaron’s notsure which option would make him sadder.

Then something happens. Robertseems to remember they’re in a public place and there’s people taking theirpictures and he plasters a smile on his face. It’s a good enough imitation ofthe real thing, Aaron will give him that. Aaron knows better, still, he lets itgo.

“When we get out, I’m puttingmy arm around your shoulders.” Robert says, but Aaron knows it’s his way ofasking. Aaron shrugs.

“This is mental, mate.” Adamsays. They’re at work, huddled around Aaron’s phone, looking at the picturesfrom the day before.

Adam knows, because Adam isAaron’s best mate and because Aaron needed to share the insanity with someone andAdam was the best bet. Adam’s sworn not to tell anyone and that’s good enoughfor him. Not that he’s telling Robert that Adam knows. Compared to how Robertfeels about Adam, Aaron and Robert’s relationship is a picnic in the park.

Aaron looks at the picturesand he feels something hot flutter in his stomach. He looks at them and he canfeel Robert’s warmth through their two thick coats and the smell of hisaftershave. Robert’s smiling his real smile at him.

“It’s alright.” Aaron concedes.

After a week or so they manageto graduate to dinner dates, and hey, at least Aaron’s getting free meals outof this. It could be worse.

Tonight, they’re ending theirdate at Robert’s to unwind. Robert is barefoot in the kitchen, cooking, theradio is playing a pop song Aaron would never admit to liking, but he does. It’soddly domestic and it’s making Aaron feel weird. He wants to say he doesn’t likeit, but in the privacy of his own head he has to admit it’s not true.

It’s nice.

“I need the loo.” Aaron says,suddenly overwhelmed.

“Use the one upstairs.” Robertreplies without even turning around. “Try not to get lost again.” Aaron flipshim the bird.

Aaron does get lost again. Inhis defense, Robert’s house his huge. How many bedrooms and bathrooms andbarely used offices does one person need? That’s how he ends up in what he’spretty sure is Robert’s bedroom.

It’s the only one that seemslived in. There are pictures of Robert’s family on the dresser and a few bookslying around, bookmarks sticking out. There are also a few vinyls and a recordplayer. They all look brand new. Intrigued, Aaron picks them up. They’re alltitles from the collection he keeps in his living room. A lot of Fleetwood Mac.

Aaron’s just about to leavewhen he notices a leather notebook on Robert’s nightstand. He picks it up, itlooks expensive and well-loved. He can see post-its sticking from the sides,but it otherwise looks carefully maintained.

“You can open it.” Robert saysfrom the doorway, making Aaron jump.

“I got lost.” Aaron replies,caught out.

“It’s okay.” Robert shrugs,but he seems tense, nervous. Maybe he does want Aaron to open the journal. Aarondoes.

Inside, in Robert’s neathandwriting are songs. Lyrics and music. They’re all dated, some going back towhen Robert first started out. Aaron jumped to the last page, Robert had apparentlystarted working on the last one the day before.

“I didn’t know you actuallywrote your songs.” Aaron says. Robert’s stuff tends to be over-produced garbage,earworms designed to be catchy and meaningless, that’s the kind of stuff that’susually cranked out by over-paid teams of producers.

“I don’t. Not the ones I singanyways.” Robert replies. He sprawls on the bed, facing Aaron. He puts hishands behind his head, exposing a silver of skin between his shirt and hisjeans and wow isn’t that a sight.

Except.

Aaron’s gotten pretty good atreading Robert by now and he can see the tense line of his shoulders, the way he’slooking at Aaron with fake confidence. He’s waiting for Aaron to judge him. Aaronthinks Robert might always be waiting for others to judge him.

Aaron goes back to the journal.He takes his time, reading a few of the lyrics, singing the melodies under hisbreath. They’re unpolished, some of them unfinished, but they’re good. Aaron’sheart feels like it’s going to explode in his chest. They’re good.

“This is the stuff you shouldbe singing.” Aaron says, reverently closing the journal and putting it back onthe nightstand. “It’s great.”

Robert breathes and thetension seems to leave his body completely. Aaron thinks it might have beensome kind of test and he’s irrationally elated he seems to have passed it.

“I’ve been thinking about it.”Robert admits, and the way he says it makes Aaron think it’s probably his firsttime saying it out loud. “Going full Cher.” Robert jokes.

“It might even earn you thefirst good review of your career.” Aaron says deadpan.

Robert throws a pillow at hisface.

They eat dinner, they watch amovie, they drink beer, they sit close, closer than most people do, and then Aaronleaves.

They’re on Robert’s dooragain, shivering against the cold night air, Robert framed by the light comingfrom inside the house.

“I had a good time.” Robertsays.

“I’ve had worse.” Aaronreplies because Aaron is an asshole, but Robert doesn’t seem to mind because hesmiles at him. “You never gave me my coat back.”

“I think the maid threw itout.” Robert says, wrinkling his nose.

Robert reaches towards Aaronand does the zip of Aaron’s coat up higher, well, Robert’s coat really. He patsAaron on the chest once, resting his hand for a second right on Aaron’s heart.

“You can keep this one.”Robert continues.

That’s when Aaron sees theflash go off in the corner of his eye.

Right.

This is fake.

So. Aaron might be in lovewith his fake boyfriend, which is fine and not at all disconcerting. Also, definitelynot as hilarious as Adam seems to think it is.

The thing is: Robert is all action,even when he shouldn’t be. He and Aaron tend to have that in common. Robert’sbeen driving so far. He’s been taking all the first steps. If he had wantedAaron, he would have made it happen by now.

Adam thinks Aaron is an idiot,but Adam doesn’t know anything and he can shut his stupid mouth.

Aaron’s wearing a suit, thenicest item of clothing he’s ever owned, courtesy of Robert’s tailor. They’regoing to the MTV Music People’s Choice whatever – Aaron’s been preoccupied withother matters lately and he usually never covers this stuff anyways – and they’rewearing matching suits. Aaron’s wearing blue and even he has to admit that helooks good.

Robert, however, looks on awhole other level. He’s wearing a color he’s insisting Aaron call “maroon” (it’sdark red), and he looks every bit the star he is. Not that Aaron is evertelling him that.

That said, someone tonight isgoing to test whether people can actually cry from sexual frustration and thatperson is Aaron.

The night is a blur ofperformances and awards and speeches and Aaron finds himself enjoying the experience.Especially whenever Robert leans into him to whisper something mean andsarcastic in his ear. By the time they’re ready to announce Robert’s category,Aaron’s about ready to kiss him or kill him. Whichever option becomes availablefirst, really.

An overly tanned blonde manAaron doesn’t recognize is on stage, opening the envelope with what he mightthink is panache but it’s mostly just making Aaron’s hands itch.

“And the award for maleperformer of the year goes to…”

A beat.

“Robert Sugden!”

Aaron jumps up his seat, theentire room roaring into applause and cheers. It might have been his abuse of theopen bar, or his genuine happiness, or maybe just the fact that he’s been wantingto do this for a while. He grabs Robert by the lapels of his jacket and kisseshim for all he’s worth.

Robert kisses him back.

It only lasts a few secondsbefore Robert has to go accept his awards, but it leaves Aaron’s mouth tinglingand his spine shivering. Aaron can’t hear a word of Robert’s speech, theroaring in his ears too loud.

The after is a blur of congratulationsand drinks and there’s an afterparty to attend, but Robert holds Aaron’s handthe entire time.

The thing is: Robert is allaction, it’s just that sometimes those actions aren’t obvious to the uninitiated.Like buying someone a coat without telling them about it, or asking them to behis fake boyfriend, or opening up to and being vulnerable with them.

“I’ve been trying to date youfor months!” Robert insists, the two of them tangled in bed.

AaronDingle @aarondingledon’t tell @rjsugden I said this, but his new album’s alright

#aaron x robert #writing*#long post #josephtate #ask

104 notes · View notes

makistar2018 · 6 years ago

Link

All 125 Taylor Swift Songs, Ranked From Worst to Best

By NATE JONES April 30, 2019

In this business, there are two subjects that will boost your page views like nothing else: Game of Thrones and Taylor Swift. One of them is a massive, multi-million-dollar enterprise filled with violence and betrayal, and the other airs on HBO. I find it hard to explain why exactly, and I’m sure Swift would, too: Somehow, this one 27-year-old woman from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, keeps finding herself at the center of our national conversations about race, gender, celebrity, victimhood, even the economics of the tech industry. And, outside the legions of fans who eat up everything she puts out, no take on her ever stays solid for long. She was a precocious teenager, and the ultimate embodiment of white privilege. She’s been feminism’s worst nightmare, and an advocate for victims of sexual assault. Some people say she’s a goddess of the alt-right. Other people say she’s Jewish.

And yet, unlike Madonna or Bowie, Swift got through the first 11 years of her career without any major reinventions. (For 1989, she embraced feminism and threw away the last vestiges of her Nashville sound, but those were basically just aesthetic changes.) If the word on her has shifted since her debut, it’s because we’ve changed, not her. Swift — or at least the version of Swift on her albums — has remained largely the same person since her debut: a thin-skinned, bighearted obsessive, with a penchant for huge romantic moments. People don’t slowly ease into a relationship in her songs; they show up at each other’s doors late at night and they kiss in the rain. An unworthy suitor won’t just say something thoughtless; he’ll skip a birthday party or leave a teenage girl crying alone in a hotel room. Listen to her songs and you’ll ache at the resemblance to the most dramatic moments in your own private history. Listen to too many and you might ache again at the nagging feeling that those stories of yours have all been a bit uneventful and drab by comparison. What sort of real life can stand up against fantasies like these?

So, uh, I don’t recommend you listen to this list top to bottom.

But I do recommend sampling as many of these songs as you see fit. Even with the widespread critical embrace of poptimism — a development I suspect has as much to do with the economics of online media as it does with the shifting winds of taste — there are still those who see Swift as just another industry widget, a Miley or Katy with the tuner set to “girl with a guitar.” If this list does anything, I hope it convinces you that, underneath all the thinkpieces, exes, and feuds, she is one of our era’s great singer-songwriters. She may not have the raw vocal power of some of her competitors, but what she lacks in Mariah-level range she makes up for in versatility and personality. (A carpetbagger from the Pennsylvania suburbs, she became an expert code-switcher early in her career and never looked back.) And when it comes to writing instantly memorable pop songs, her only peers are a few anonymous Swedish guys, none of whom perform their own stuff. I count at least ten stone-cold classics in her discography. Others might see more. No matter how high your defenses, I guarantee you’ll find at least one that breaks them down.

Some ground rules: We’re ranking every Taylor Swift song that’s ever been released with her name on it — which means we must sadly leave out the unreleased 9/11 song “Didn’t They” as well as Nils Sjöberg’s “This Is What You Came For” — excluding tracks where Swift is merely “featured” (no one’s reading this list for B.o.B.’s “Both of Us”) but including a few duets where she gets an “and” credit. Songwriting is an important part of Swift’s spellbook, so covers are treated more harshly than originals. Because Swift’s career began so young, we’re left in the awkward position of judging work done by a literal high-schooler, which can feel at times like punching down. I’ll try to make slight allowances for age, reserving the harshest criticism for the songs written when Swift was an adult millionaire.

125. “Look What You Made Me Do,” Reputation (2017): “There’s a mistake that I see artists make when they’re on their fourth or fifth record, and they think innovation is more important than solid songwriting,” Swift told New York back in 2013. “The most terrible letdown as a listener for me is when I’m listening to a song and I see what they were trying to do.” To Swift’s credit, it took her six records to get to this point. On a conceptual level, the mission here is clear: After the Kim-Kanye feud made her the thinking person’s least-favorite pop star, this comeback single would be her grand heel turn. But the villain costume sits uneasily on Swift’s shoulders, and even worse, the songwriting just isn’t there. The verses are vacuous, the insults have no teeth, and just when the whole thing seems to be leading up to a gigantic redemptive chorus, suddenly pop! The air goes out of it and we’re left with a taunting Right Said Fred reference — the musical equivalent of pulling a Looney Tunes gag on the listener. Other Swift songs have clunkier rhymes, or worse production values, but none of them have such a gaping hole at the center. (I do dig the gleeful “Cuz she’s dead!” though.)

124. “Umbrella,” iTunes Live From Soho (2008): Swift has recorded plenty of covers in her career, and none are less essential than this 90-second rendition of the Rihanna hit recorded at the peak of the song’s popularity. It’s pure college-campus coffeehouse.

123. “Christmas Must Mean Something More,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): One of two originals on Swift’s early-career Christmas album, “Something More” is a plea to put the Christ back in Christmas. Or as she puts it: “What if happiness came in a cardboard box? / Then I think there is something we all forgot.” In the future, Swift would get better at holding onto some empathy when she was casting a critical eye at the silly things people care about; here, the vibe is judgmental in a way that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever reread their teenage diary.

122. “Better Than Revenge,” Speak Now (2010): A nasty little song that has not aged well. Whether a straightforward imitation of Avril Lavigne’s style or an early attempt at “Blank Space”–style self-satirization, the barbs never go beyond bratty. (As in “Look What You Made Me Do,” the revenge turns out to be the song itself, which feels hollow.) Best known now for the line about “the things she does on the mattress,” which I suspect has been cited in blog posts more times than the song itself has been listened to lately.

121. “American Girl,” Non-album digital single (2009): Why would you cover this song and make it slower?

120. “I Want You Back,” Speak Now World Tour – Live (2011): Another 90-second cover of a pop song that does not particularly benefit from a stripped-down arrangement.

119. “Santa Baby,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): Before Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me,” there was only one holiday song about falling in love with Santa, and for some reason, we spent decades making all our young female singers cover it. Swift’s version leans out of the awkwardness by leaning into the materialism; she puts most of her vocal emphasis on the nice presents she hopes Santa will bring her. (The relationship seems to be fairly quid pro quo: She’ll believe in him if he gives her good gifts — even at this early stage, Swift possessed a savvy business sense.) Otherwise, this is a by-the-numbers holiday cover, complete with sleigh bells in the mix.

118. “Sweet Escape,” Speak Now World Tour – Live; Target edition DVD (2011): Swift’s sedate cover of the 2006 Gwen Stefani hit — those “ooh-ooh”s are pitched way down from Akon’s falsetto in the original — invests the song with a bittersweet vibe, though like anyone who’s ever tried the song at karaoke, she stumbles on the rapid-fire triplets in the first verse.

117. “Silent Night,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): Swift’s cover of the Christmas classic veers significantly away from Franz Xaver Gruber’s original melody, and even gives it a Big Taylor Swift Finale. Points for ambition, but sometimes you just want to hear the old standards the way you remember them.

116. “The Last Time,” Red (2012): Red is Swift’s strongest album, but it suffers a bit from pacing issues: The back half is full of interminable ballads that you’ve got to slog through to get to the end. Worst of all is this duet with po-faced Ulsterman Gary Lightbody, which feels about ten minutes long.

115. “Invisible,” Taylor Swift: Special Edition (2006): A bonus track from the debut that plays like a proto–”You Belong With Me.” The “show you” / “know you” rhymes mark this as an early effort.

114. “…Ready for It?,” Reputation (2017): The second straight misfire off the Reputation rollout, this one sees Swift try her hand at rapping, with some ill-advised bars about Elizabeth Taylor and a flow she borrowed from Jay-Z. (Try to rap “Younger than my exes” without spilling into “rest in peace, Bob Marley.”) Bumped up a spot or two for the chorus, a big Swift hook that sounds just like her best work — in this case, because it bites heavily from “Wildest Dreams.”

113. “I Heart ?,” Beautiful Eyes EP (2008): Swift code-switches like a champ on this charmingly shallow country song, which comes from the Walmart-exclusive EP she released between her first two albums. Her vocals get pretty rough in the chorus, but at least we’re left with the delightful line, “Wake up and smell the breakup.”

112. “Bad Blood,” 1989 (2014): When Swift teamed up with Max Martin and Shellback, the marriage of their dark eldritch songcraft nearly broke the pop charts. But when they misfire, the results can be brutal. The lyric here indulges the worst habits of late-period Swift — an eagerness to play the victim, a slight lack of resemblance to anything approaching real life — attached to a schoolyard-chant melody that will never leave your head, even when you may want it to. The remix hollows out the production and replaces Swift’s verses with two from Kendrick Lamar; it’s less embarrassing than the original, which does not make it more memorable.

111. “White Christmas,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007):The most bluegrass of Swift’s Christmas tunes, this gentle rendition sees Swift’s vocals cede center stage to the mandolin and fiddle.

110. “Crazier,” Hannah Montana: The Movie soundtrack (2009): When approached by the filmmakers about contributing a song to the Hannah Montana movie, Swift sent in this track, seemingly a holdover from the Fearless sessions. In an admirable bit of dedication, she also showed up to play it in the film’s climax. It’s kind of a snooze on its own, but compared to the other songs on the soundtrack, even Swift’s leftovers shine.

109. “I’d Lie,” Taylor Swift (2006): A bonus track only available to people who bought Swift’s debut at Best Buy. It’s as cute as a study-hall MASH game, and just as easily disposable.

108. “Highway Don’t Care,” Tim McGraw’s Two Lanes of Freedom(2013): After joining Big Machine, McGraw gave Swift an “and” credit here as a professional courtesy. Though her backing vocals are very pleasant, this is 100 percent a Tim McGraw song.

107. “Superman,” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): A bonus track that’s not gonna make anyone forget Five for Fighting any time soon.

106. “Change,” Fearless (2008): A bit of paint-by-numbers inspiration that apparently did its job of spurring the 2008 U.S. Olympic team to greatness. They won 36 gold medals!

105. “End Game,” Reputation (2017): Swift tries out her blaccent alongside Future and Ed Sheeran, on a track that sounds unmistakably like a Rihanna reject. The only silver lining? She’s better at rapping here than on “…Ready for It?”

104. “The Lucky One,” Red (2012): A plight-of-fame ballad from the back half of Red, with details that never rise above cliché and a melody that borrows from the one Swift cooked up for “Untouchable.”

103. “A Place in This World,” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift’s version of “Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” this one feels like it missed its chance to be the theme tune for an ABC Family show.

102. “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever,” Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack (2017): In Fifty Shades Darker, this wan duet soundtracks a scene where Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele go for a sunny boat ride while wearing fabulous sweaters. On brand!

101. “Last Christmas,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): Swift does George Michael proud with this reverent cover of the Wham! classic.

100. “Breathless,” Hope for Haiti Now (2010): Swift covered this Better Than Ezra deep cut for the Hope for Haiti telethon. With only one take to get it right, she did not let the people of Haiti down.

99. “Bette Davis Eyes,” Speak Now World Tour – Live (2012): “There’s some unbelievable music that has come out of artists who are from L.A., did you know that?” Swift asks the audience at the beginning of this live track. The crowd, not being idiots, responds with an enthusiastic yes. This cover loses the two most famous parts of Kim Carnes’s original — the synths and Carnes’s throaty delivery — but the acoustic arrangement and Swift’s intimate vocals bring out the best qualities of the tune.

98. “Eyes Open,” The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond (2012): One of two songs Swift contributed to the first Hunger Games soundtrack. With guitars seemingly ripped straight out of 1998 alt-rock radio, this one’s most interesting now as a preview of Swift’s Red sound.

97. “Beautiful Eyes,” Beautiful Eyes EP (2008): The title track of Swift’s early-career EP finds the young songwriter getting a lot of mileage out of one single vowel sound: Besides the eyes of the title, we’ve got I, why, fly, cry, lullaby, even sometimes. A spirited vocal performance in the outro saves the song from feeling like homework.

96. “The Outside,” Taylor Swift (2006): If you thought you felt weird judging songs by a high-schooler, here’s one by an actual sixth-grader. “The Outside” was the second song Swift ever wrote, and though the lyrics edge into self-pity at times, this is still probably the best song written by a 12-year-old since Mozart’s “Symphony No. 7 in D Major.”

95. “SuperStar,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): This bonus track is a relic of an unfamiliar time when Swift could conceivably be the less-famous person in a relationship.

94. “Starlight,” Red (2012): Never forget that one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2012 contains a piece of Ethel Kennedy fanfiction. The real story of Bobby and Ethel has more rough spots than you’ll find in this resolutely rose-colored track, but that’s what happens when you spend a summer hanging in Hyannis Port.

93. “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” Red (2012): Another glacially paced song from the back half of Red that somehow pulls off rhyming “magic” with “tragic.”

92. “Innocent,” Speak Now (2010): The disparate reactions to Kanye West stage-crashing Swift at the 2009 VMAs speaks to the Rorschachian nature of Swift’s star image. Was Swift a teenage girl whose moment was ruined by an older man who couldn’t control himself? Or was she a white woman playing the victim to demonize an outspoken black man? Both are correct, which is why everyone’s spent so much time arguing about it. Unfortunately, Swift did herself no favors when she premiered “Innocent” at the next year’s VMAs, opening with footage of the incident, which couldn’t help but feel like she was milking it. (Fairly or not, the comparison to West’s own artistic response hardly earns any points in the song’s favor.) Stripped of all this context, “Innocent” is fine: Swift turns in a tender vocal performance, though the lyrics could stand to be less patronizing.

91. “Girl at Home,” Red: Deluxe Edition (2012): This Red bonus track offers a foreshadowing of Swift’s interest in sparkly ’80s-style production. A singsongy melody accompanies a largely forgettable lyric, except for one hilariously blunt line: “It would be a fine proposition … if I was a stupid girl.”

90. “A Perfectly Good Heart,” Taylor Swift: Special Edition (2006): A pleading breakup song with one killer turn of phrase and not much else.

89. “Mary’s Song (Oh My Oh My),” Taylor Swift (2006): This early track was inspired by Swift’s elderly neighbors. Like “Starlight,” it’s a young person’s vision of lifelong love, skipping straight from proposal to old age.

88. “Come in With the Rain,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): An ode to a long-lost lover that follows the Swift template a tad too slavishly.

87. “Dancing With Our Hands Tied,” Reputation (2017): Reputation sags a bit in the middle, never more than on this forgettable ’80s-inspired track.

86. “Welcome to New York,” 1989 (2014): In retrospect, there could not have been a song more perfectly designed to tick off the authenticity police — didn’t Swift know that real New Yorkers stayed up till 3 a.m. doing drugs with Fabrizio Moretti in the bathroom of Mars Bar? I hope you’re sitting down when I tell you this, but it’s possible the initial response to a Taylor Swift song might have been a little reactionary. When it’s not taken as a mission statement, “Welcome to New York” is totally tolerable, a glimmering confetti throwaway with lovely synths.

85. “Tied Together With a Smile,” Taylor Swift (2006): When she was just a teenager with a development deal, Swift hooked up with veteran Nashville songwriter Liz Rose. The two would collaborate on much of Swift’s first two albums. “We wrote and figured out that it really worked. She figured out she could write Taylor Swift songs, and I wouldn’t get in the way,” Rose said later. “She’d say a line and I’d say, ‘What if we say it like this?’ It’s kind of like editing.” This early ballad about a friend with bulimia sees Swift and Rose experimenting with metaphor. Most of them work.

84. “King of My Heart,” Reputation (2017): Swift is fond of saying that “songs are what you think of on the drive home — you know, the Great Afterthought.” (She says it’s a Joni Mitchell quote, but I haven’t been able to find it.) Anyway, I think that’s why some of the love songs on Reputationdon’t quite land: Swift is writing about a relationship from inside of it, instead of with hindsight. It’s a different skill, which could explain why the boyfriend character here is less vividly sketched than some of her other ones.

83. “Come Back … Be Here,” Red: Deluxe Edition (2012): A vulnerable track about long-distance love, with simple sentiments overwhelmed by extravagant production.

82. “Breathe,” Fearless (2008): A Colbie Caillat collaboration that’s remarkable mostly for being a rare Swift song about a friend breakup. It’s like if “Bad Blood” contained actual human emotions.

81. “Stay Beautiful,” Taylor Swift (2006): Nathan Chapman was a Nashville session guitarist before he started working with Swift. He produced her early demos, and she fought for him to sit behind the controls on her debut; the two would work together on every Swift album until 1989, when his role was largely taken over by Max Martin and Shellback. Here, he brings a sprightly arrangement to Swift’s ode to an achingly good-looking man.

80. “Nashville,” Speak Now World Tour – Live; Target edition DVD (2011): Swift gives some shine to singer-songwriter David Mead with a cover of his 2004 ballad. (Listen to the screams during the chorus and try to guess where this one was recorded.) She treats it with a delicate respect, like she’s handling her grandmother’s china.

79. “So It Goes,” Reputation (2017): Unfortunately not a Nick Lowe cover, this one comes and goes without making much of an impact, but if you don’t love that whispered “1-2-3,” I don’t know what to tell you.

78. “You’re Not Sorry,” Fearless (2008): An unflinching kiss-off song that got a gothic remix for Swift’s appearance as an ill-fated teen on CSI. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

77. “Drops of Jupiter,” Speak Now World Tour – Live (2012): The best of the covers on the live album sees Swift commit to the Train hit like she’d written it herself. If you had forgotten that this song came out in 2001, she keeps the line about Tae Bo.

76. “The Other Side of the Door,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): A bonus track saved from mediocrity by a gutsy outro that hints that Swift, like any good millennial, was a big fan of “Semi-Charmed Life.”

75. “Gorgeous,” Reputation (2017): In the misbegotten rollout for Reputation, “Gorgeous” righted the ship by not being completely terrible. Max Martin and Shellback pack the track with all sorts of amusing audio doodads, but the melody is a little too horizontal to stick, and the lyrics have a touch of first draft about them. (You’d be forgiven for preferring the actual first draft, which is slightly more open and real.)

74. “I Wish You Would,” 1989 (2014): Like “You Are in Love,” this one originated as a Jack Antonoff instrumental track, and the finished version retains his fingerprints. Perhaps too much — you get the sense it might work better as a Bleachers song.

73. “Cold As You,” Taylor Swift (2006): A dead-serious breakup song that proved the teenage Swift (with help from Rose, who’s got a co-writing credit) could produce barbs sharper than most adults: “You come away with a great little story / Of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you.” Jesus.

72. “Haunted,” Speak Now (2010): In which Swift tries her hand at Evanescence-style goth-rock. She almost pulls it off, but at this point in Swift’s career her voice wasn’t quite strong enough to give the unrestrained performance the song calls for.

71. “This Love,” 1989 (2014): Began life as a poem before evolving into an atmospheric 1989 deep cut. Like an imperfectly poached egg, it’s shapeless but still quite appetizing.

70. “Untouchable,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): Technically a Luna Halo cover (don’t worry about it), though Swift discards everything but the bones of the original. Her subsequent renovation job is worthy of HGTV: It’s nearly impossible to believe this was ever not a Taylor Swift song.

69. “Wonderland,” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): A deranged bonus track that sees Swift doing the absolute most. This song has everything: Alice in Wonderland metaphors, Rihanna chants, a zigzag bridge that recalls “I Knew You Were Trouble,” screams. As she puts it, “It’s all fun and games ’til somebody loses their MIND!”

68. “Sweeter Than Fiction,” One Chance soundtrack (2013): Swift’s first collaboration with Jack Antonoff is appropriately ’80s-inspired, and so sugary that a well-placed key change in the chorus is the only thing that staves off a toothache.

67. “I’m Only Me When I’m With You,” Taylor Swift: Special Edition(2006): A rollicking pop-rock tune that recalls early Kelly Clarkson. As if to reassure nervous country fans, the fiddle goes absolutely nuts.

66. “Tell Me Why,” Fearless (2008): A bog-standard tale of an annoyingly clueless guy, but it’s paired with one of Swift and Rose’s most winning melodies.

65. “If This Was a Movie,” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): The mirror image of “White Horse,” which makes it feel oddly superfluous.

64. “How You Get the Girl,” 1989 (2014): The breeziest and least complicated of Swift’s guy-standing-on-a-doorstep songs, which contributed to the feeling that 1989 was something of an emotional regression. You probably shouldn’t take it as an instruction manual unless you’re Harry Styles.

63. “Don’t Blame Me,” Reputation (2017): A woozy if slightly anonymous love song that comes off as a sexier “Take Me to Church.” [A dozen Hozier fans storm out of the room.]

62. “The Way I Loved You,” Fearless (2008): Written in collaboration with Big and Rich’s John Rich, which may explain how stately and mid-tempo this one is. (There’s even a martial drumbeat.) Here, she’s faced with a choice between a too-perfect guy — he’s close to her mother and talks business with her father — and a tempestuous relationship full of “screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain,” and if you don’t know which one she prefers I suggest you listen to more Taylor Swift songs. Swift often plays guessing games about which parts of her songs are autobiographical, but this one is explicitly a fantasy.

61. “New Romantics,” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): Like “22,” an attempt at writing a big generational anthem. That it was left off the album proper suggests Swift didn’t think it quite got there, though it did its job of extending the singles cycle of 1989 a few more months. Despite what anyone says about “Welcome to New York,” the line here about waiting for “trains that just aren’t coming” indicates its writer has had at least one authentic New York experience.

60. “Sparks Fly,” Speak Now (2010): This one dates back to Swift’s high-school days, and was destined for obscurity until fans fell in love with the live version. After what seems like a lot of tinkering, it finally got a proper studio release on Swift’s third album. It’s like “True Love Waits,” but with more kissing in the rain.

59. “Me!,” Untitled Seventh Album (2019): Well, what did we expect? The run-up to “Me!” was preceded by a weeks-long guessing game about what precisely would be the nature of Swift’s April 26 announcement. Would she come out? Would she come out and reveal she had once dated Karlie Kloss? Cut to the fateful day, and the news was … Swift, who is a pop singer, was releasing a new pop song. After the Sturm und Drang of the Reputation era, “Me!” is a return to anodyne sweetness, a mission statement that says, “I’m through making mission statements.” The result is blandly inoffensive, emphasis on the bland.

58. “All You Had to Do Was Stay,” 1989 (2014): Just like the melody to “Yesterday” and the “Satisfaction” riff, the high-pitched “Stay!” here came to its writer in a dream. Inspiration works in mysterious ways.

57. “Delicate, Reputation (2017): With multitracked, breathy vocals, this is Swift at her most tentative. Would any other album’s Taylor be asking, “Is it cool that I said all that?”

56. “Stay Stay Stay,” Red (2012): Swift broke out her southern accent one last time for this attempt at homespun folk, which is marred by production that’s so clean it’s practically antiseptic. In an alternate universe where a less-ambitious Swift took a 9-to-5 job writing ad jingles, this one soundtracked a TV spot for the new AT&T family plan.

55. “Call It What You Want,” Reputation (2017): Many of the Reputationsingles aim at sexy; this airy slow jam about losing yourself in love after a scandal is the only one that gets there, though the saltiness in the verses (“all the liars are calling me one”) occasionally betrays the sentiment.

54. “Ours,” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): It’s not this song’s fault that the extended version of Speak Now has songs called both “Mine” and “Ours,” and while “Ours” is good �� well, it’s no “Mine.” Still, even if this song never rises above cuteness, it is incredibly cute. I think Dad’ll get over the tattoos.

53. “The Best Day,” Fearless (2008): Swift’s parents moved the family to Tennessee so she could follow her musical dreams, and she paid them back with this tender tribute. Mom gets the verses while Dad is relegated to the middle eight — even in song, the Mother’s Day–Father’s Day disparity holds up.

52. “Everything Has Changed,” Red (2012): “We good to go?” For many American listeners, this was the first introduction to a redheaded crooner named Ed Sheeran. It’s a sweet duet and Sheeran’s got a roughness that goes well with Swift’s cleaner vocals, but the harmonies are a bit bland.

51. “Today Was a Fairytale,” Valentine’s Day soundtrack (2010): How much of a roll was Swift on during the Fearless era? This song didn’t make the album, and sat in the vault for a year until Swift signed on for a small role in a Garry Marshall rom-com and offered it up for the soundtrack. Despite the extravagant title, the date described here is charmingly low-key: The dude wears a T-shirt, and his grand gestures are showing up on time and being nice.

50. “Last Kiss,” Speak Now (2010): A good-bye waltz with an understated arrangement that suits the starkness of the lyrics.

49. “You Are in Love,” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): The best of Swift’s songs idealizing someone else’s love story (see “Starlight” and “Mary’s Song”), this bonus track sketches Jack Antonoff and Lena Dunham’s relationship in flashes of moments. The production and vocals are appropriately restrained — sometimes, simplicity works.

48. “The Story of Us,” Speak Now (2010): The deluxe edition of Speak Now features both U.S. and international versions of some of the singles, which gives you a sense of how fine-tuned Swift’s operation was by this point. My ears can’t quite hear the difference between the two versions of this exuberant breakup jam, but I suspect the U.S. mix contains some sort of ultrasonic frequencies designed to … sorry, I’ve already said too much.

47. “Clean,” 1989 (2014): Co-written with Imogen Heap, who contributes backup vocals. This is 1989’s big end-of-album-catharsis song, and the water imagery of the lyrics goes well with the drip-drip-drip production. I’d be curious to hear a version where Heap sings lead; the minimalist sound might be better suited for her voice, which has a little more texture.

46. “Getaway Car,” Reputation (2017): Another very Antonoff-y track, but I’m not mad at it. We start with a vocoder she must have stolen from Imogen Heap and end with one of Swift’s most rocking outros, and in between we even get a rare key change.

45. “I Almost Do,” Red (2012): The kind of plaintive breakup song Swift could write in her sleep at this point in her career, with standout guitar work and impressive vulnerability in both lyrics and performance.

44. “Long Live (We Will Be Remembered),” Speak Now (2010):Ostensibly written about Swift’s experiences touring with her band, but universal enough that it’s been taken as a graduation song by pretty much everyone else. Turns out, adolescent self-mythologizing is the same no matter where you are — no surprise that Swift could pull it off despite leaving school after sophomore year.

43. “The Moment I Knew,” Red: Deluxe Edition (2012): An epic account of being stood up that makes a terrible birthday party seem like something approximating the Fall of Troy. If you’re the type of person who stays up at night remembering every inconsiderate thing you’ve ever done, the level of excruciating detail here is like a needle to the heart.

42. “Jump Then Fall,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2006): An effervescent banjo-driven love song. I get a silly kick out of the gag in the chorus, when Swift’s voice leaps to the top of her register every time she says “jump.”

41. “Never Grow Up,” Speak Now (2010): Swift’s songs where she’s romanticizing childhood come off better than the ones where she’s romanticizing old age. (Possibly because she’s been a child before.) This one is so well-observed and wistful about the idea of children aging that you’d swear she was secretly a 39-year-old mom.

40. “Should’ve Said No,” Taylor Swift (2006): Written in a rush of emotion near the end of recording for the debut, what this early single lacks in nuance it makes up for in backbone. I appreciate the way the end of each verse holds out hope for the cheating ex — “given ooonnne chaaance, it was a moment of weeaaknesssss” — before the chorus slams the door in the dumb lunk’s face.

39. “Back to December,” Speak Now (2010): At the time, this one was billed as a big step for Swift: the first song where she’s the bad guy! Now that the novelty has worn off “Back to December” doesn’t feel so groundbreaking, but it does show her evolving sensitivity. The key to a good apology has always been sincerity, and whatever faults Swift may have, a lack of sincerity has never been one of them.

38. “Holy Ground,” Red (2012): This chugging rocker nails the feeling of reconnecting with an ex and romanticizing the times you shared, and it livens up the back half of Red a bit. Probably ranked too high, but this is my list and I’ll do what I want.

37. “Enchanted,” Speak Now (2010): Originally the title track for Swift’s third album until her label told her, more or less, to cut it with the fairy-tale stuff. It’s a glittery ode to a meet-cute that probably didn’t need to be six minutes long, but at least the extended length gives us extra time to soak up the heavenly coda, with its multi-tracked “Please don’t be in love in with someone else.”

36. “I Know Places,” 1989 (2014): No attempts of universality here — this trip-hop song about trying to find a place to make out when you’re a massive celebrity is only relatable to a couple dozen people. No matter. As a slice of gothic pop-star paranoia, it gives a much-needed bit of edge to 1989. Bumped up a couple of spots for the line about vultures, which I can only assume is a shout-out.

35. “Treacherous,” Red (2012): Swift has rarely been so tactile as on this intimate ballad, seemingly constructed entirely out of sighs.

34. “Dress,” Reputation (2017): An appropriately slinky track that gives us an unexpected payoff for years of lyrics about party dresses: “I only bought this dress so you could take it off,” she says in the chorus. The way the whole song starts and stops is an obvious trick, but I like it.

33. “Speak Now,” Speak Now (2010): The rest of the band plays it so straight that it might take a second listen to realize that this song is, frankly, bonkers. First, Swift sneaks into a wedding to find a bridezilla, “wearing a gown shaped like a pastry,” snarling at the bridesmaids. Then it turns out she’s been uninvited — oops — so she decides to hide in the curtains. Finally, at a pivotal moment she stands up in front of everyone and protests the impending union. Luckily the guy is cool with it, so we get a happy ending! All this nonsense undercuts the admittedly charming chorus, but it’s hard not to smile at the unabashed silliness.

32. “22,” Red (2012): Another collaboration with Martin and Shellback, another absurdly catchy single. Still, there’s enough personality in the machine for this to still feel like a Taylor song, for better (“breakfast at midnight” being the epitome of adult freedom) and for worse (the obsession with “cool kids”). Mostly for better.

31. “Christmases When You Were Mine,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): The clear standout of Swift’s Christmas album, with an endearingly winsome riff and lyrics that paint a poignant picture of yuletide heartbreak. If you’ve ever been alone on Christmas, this is your song.

30. “White Horse,” Fearless (2008): You’d never call Swift a genre deconstructionist, but her best work digs deeper into romantic tropes than she gets credit for. In just her second album, she and Rose gave us this clear-eyed look at the emptiness of symbolic gestures, allegedly finished in a mere 45 minutes. Almost left off the album, but saved thanks to Shonda Rhimes.

29. “I Knew You Were Trouble,” Red (2012): The guiding principle on much of Red seems to have been to throw absolutely every idea a person could think of into a song and see what worked. Here, we go from Kelly Clarkson verses to a roller-coaster chorus to a dubstep breakdown that dates the song as surely as radiocarbon — then back again. It shouldn’t hang together, but the gutsy vocals and vivid lyrics keep the track from going off the rails.

28. “Teardrops on My Guitar,” Taylor Swift (2006): An evocative portrait of high-school heartbreak, equal parts mundane — no adult songwriter would have named the crush “Drew” — and melodramatic. It’s also the best example of Swift and Rose’s early songwriting cheat code, when they switch the words of the chorus around at the end of the song. “It just makes the listener feel like the writer and the artist care about the song,” Rose told Billboard. “That they’re like, “Okay, you’ve heard it, but wait a minute — ’cause I want you know that this really affected me, I’m gonna dig the knife in just a little bit deeper.’” (In a fitting twist, “Teardrops” ended up inspiring a moment that could have come straight out of a Taylor Swift song, when the real Drew showed up outside her house one night. “I hadn’t talked to him in two-and-a-half years,” she told the Washington Post. “He was like: ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ And I’m like: ‘Wow, you’re late? Good to see you?’”)

27. “Begin Again,” Red (2012): Swift’s sequencing genius strikes again: After the emotional roller coaster of Red, this gentle ballad plays like a cleansing shower. (It works so well she’d repeat the trick on 1989, slightly more obviously.) Of all Swift’s date songs, this one feels the most true to life; anyone who’s ever been on a good first date can recall the precise moment their nervousness melted into relief.

26. “New Year’s Day,” Reputation (2017): Like a prestige cable drama, Swift likes to use her final track as a kind of quiet summing-up of all that’s come before. Here, she saves the album’s most convincing love song for last: “I want your midnights / but I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day” is a great way to describe a healthy relationship. The lovely back-and-forth vocals in the outro help break the tie with “Begin Again.”

25. “Shake It Off,” 1989 (2014): Swift’s second No. 1 was greeted with widespread critical sighs: After the heights of Red, why was she serving up cotton-candy fluff about dancing your way past the haters? (Never mind that Red had its own sugary singles.) Now that we’ve all gotten some distance, the purpose of “Shake It Off” is clear: This is a wedding song, empty-headed fun designed to get both Grandma and Lil Jayden on the dance floor. Docked ten or so spots for the spoken-word bridge and cheerleader breakdown, which might be the worst 24 seconds of the entire album.

24. “Safe and Sound,” The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond (2012): Swift’s collaboration with folk duo the Civil Wars is her best soundtrack cut by a country mile. Freed from the constraints of her usual mode, her vocals paint in corners you didn’t think she could reach, especially when she tries out a high-pitched vibrato that blends beautifully with Joy Williams and John Paul White’s hushed harmonies. Swift has worked in a variety of emotional palettes in her career, but this is the only time she’s ever been spooky.

23. “Picture to Burn,” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift’s breakup songs rarely get more acidic than they do in this country hit. By the time she’s twanging a line about dating all her ex’s friends, things have gotten downright rowdy. The original lyrics — “Go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy / That’s fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay” — show how far standards for acceptable speech in nice young people have shifted in the past decade.

22. “Fearless,” Fearless (2008): The title track from Swift’s second album has more of her favorite images — in one memorable twofer, she’s dancing in the rain while wearing her best dress — but she invests them with so much emotion that you’d swear she was using them for the first time. The exuberance of the lyrics is matched in the way she tumbles from line to line into the chorus.

21. “Tim McGraw,” Taylor Swift (2006): If you by chance ever happen to meet Taylor Swift, there is one thing you should know: Do not, under any circumstances, call her “calculating.” “Am I shooting from the hip?” she once asked GQ when confronted with the word. “Would any of this have happened if I was? … You can be accidentally successful for three or four years. Accidents happen. But careers take hard work.” However, since the title of her first single apparently came from label head Scott Borchetta — “I told Taylor, ‘They won’t immediately remember your name, they’ll say who’s this young girl with this song about Tim McGraw?’” — I think we’re allowed to break out the c-word: Calling it “Tim McGraw” was the first genius calculation in a career that would turn out to be full of them. Still, there would have been no getting anywhere with it if the song weren’t good. Even as a teenager, Swift was savvy enough to know that country fans love nothing more than listening to songs about listening to country music. And the very first line marks her as more of a skeptic than you might expect: “He said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia pines to shame that night / I said, ‘That’s a lie.’”

20. “Dear John,” Speak Now (2010): “I’ve never named names,” Swift once told GQ. “The fact that I’ve never confirmed who those songs are about makes me feel like there is still one card I’m holding.” That may technically be true, but she came pretty dang close with this seven-minute epic. (John Mayer said he felt “humiliated” by the song, after which Swift told Glamour it was “presumptuous” of him to think that the song his ex wrote, that used his first name, was about him.) She sings the hell out of it, but when it comes to songs where Swift systematically outlines all the ways in which an older male celebrity is an inadequate partner, I think I prefer “All Too Well,” which is less wallow-y. I’ve seen it speculated that the guitar noodling on this track is meant as a parody of Mayer’s own late-’00s output, which if true would be deliciously petty.

19. “Red,” Red (2012): Re-eh-eh-ed, re-eh-eh-ed. Red’s title track sees the album’s maximalist style in full effect — who in their right mind would put Auto-Tune and banjos on the same track? But somehow, the overstuffing works here; it’s the audio equivalent of the lyrics’ synesthesia.

18. “I Did Something Bad,” Reputation (2017): It’s too bad Rihanna already has an album called Unapologetic, because that would have been a perfect title for Reputation, or maybe just this jubilant “Blank Space” sequel. Why the hell she didn’t release this one instead of “Look What You Made Me Do,” I’ll never know — not only does “Something Bad” sell the lack of remorse much better, it bangs harder than any other song on pop radio this summer except “Bodak Yellow.” Is that a raga chant? Are those fucking gunshots? Docked a spot or two for “They’re burning all the witches even if you aren’t one,” which doth protest too much, but bumped up just as much for Swift’s first on-the-record “shit.”

17. “Forever & Always,” Fearless (2008): This blistering breakup song was the one that solidified Swift’s image as the pop star you dump at your own peril. (The boys in the debut were just Nashville randos; this one was about a Jonas Brother, back when that really meant something.) Obligatory fiddles aside, the original version is just about a perfect piece of pop-rock — dig how the guitars drop out at a pivotal moment — though the extended edition of Fearless also contains a piano version if you feel like having your guts ripped out. I have no idea what the lines about “rain in your bedroom” mean, but like the best lyrics, they make sense on an instinctual level. And to top it off, the track marks the introduction of Swift’s colloquial style — “Where is this GOoO-ING?” — that would serve her so well in the years to come.

16. “Mean,” Speak Now (2010): It takes some chutzpah to put a song complaining about mean people on the same album as “Better Than Revenge,” but lack of chutzpah has never been Swift’s problem. Get past that and you’ll find one of Swift’s most naturally appealing melodies and the joyful catharsis that comes with giving a bully what’s coming to them. (Some listeners have interpreted the “big enough so you can’t hit me” line to mean the song’s about abuse, but I’ve always read it as a figure of speech, as in “hit piece.”)

15. “Wildest Dreams,” 1989 (2014): Swift is in full control of her instrument here, with so much yearning in her voice that you’d swear every breath was about to be her last. For a singer often slammed as being sexless, those sighs in the chorus tell us everything we need to know. Bumped up a few spots for the invigorating double-time bridge, the best on 1989.

14. “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” Reputation (2017): Put aside the title, which can’t help but remind me of the time Hillary Clinton tweeted “delete your account.” The same way “I Did Something Bad” is the best possible version of “Look What You Made Me Do,” this is a much better rewrite of “Bad Blood.” Swift brings back the school-yard voice in the chorus, but also so much more: She does exaggerated politeness in the bridge, she spins the “Runaway” toast, she says the words “Therein lies the issue” like she’s been listening to Hamilton. The high point comes when she contemplates forgiving a hater, then bursts into an incredulous guffaw. Reader, I laughed out loud.

13. “Style,” 1989 (2014): The much-ballyhooed ’80s sound on 1989 often turned out to just mean Swift was using more synths than usual, but she nailed the vibe on this slinky single, which could have soundtracked a particularly romantic episode of Miami Vice. Despite the dress-up games in the chorus, this is one of the rare Swift love songs to feel truly adult: Both she and the guy have been down this road too many times to bullshit anymore. That road imagery is haunted by the prospect of death lurking around every hairpin turn — what’s sex without a little danger?

12. “Hey Stephen,” Fearless (2008): Who knew so many words rhymed with Stephen? They all come so naturally here. Swift is in the zone as a writer, performer, and producer on this winning deep cut, which gives us some wonderful sideways rhymes (“look like an angel” goes with “kiss you in the rain, so”), a trusty Hammond organ in the background, and a bunch of endearing little ad-libs, to say nothing of the kicker: “All those other girls, well they’re beautiful / But would they write a song for you?” For once, the mid-song laugh is entirely appropriate.

11. “Out of the Woods,” 1989 (2014): Like Max Martin, Antonoff’s influence as a collaborator has not been wholly positive: His penchant for big anthemic sounds can drown out the subtlety of Swift, and he’s been at the controls for some of her biggest misfires. But boy, does his Jack Antonoff thing work here, bringing a whole forest of drums to support Swift’s rapid-fire string of memories. The song’s bridge was apparently inspired by a snowmobile accident Swift was in with Harry Styles, an incident that never made the tabloids despite what seemed like round-the-clock coverage of the couple — a subtler reminder of the limits of media narratives than anything on Reputation.

10. “Love Story,” Fearless (2008): Full disclosure: This was the first Taylor Swift song I ever heard. (It was a freezing day in early 2009; I was buying shoes; basically, the situation was the total antithesis of anything that’s ever happened in a Taylor Swift song.) I didn’t like it at first. Who’s this girl singing about Romeo and Juliet, and doesn’t she know they die in the end?What I would soon learn was: not here they don’t, as Swift employs a key change so powerful it literally rewrites Shakespeare. The jury’s still out on the question of if she’s ever read the play, but she definitely hasn’t read The Scarlet Letter.

9. “State of Grace,” Red (2012): Swift’s songs are always full of interesting little nuggets you don’t notice until your 11th listen or so — a lyrical twist, maybe, or an unconventional drum fill — but most of them are fundamentally meant to be heard on the radio, which demands a certain type of songwriting and a certain type of sound. What a surprise it was, then, that Red opened with this big, expansive rock track, which sent dozens of Joshua Tree fans searching for their nearest pair of headphones. Another surprise: that she never tried to sound like this again. Having proven she could nail it on her first try, Swift set out to find other giants to slay.

8. “Ronan,” non-album digital single (2012): A collage of lines pulled from the blog of Maya Thompson, whose 3-year-old son had died of cancer, this charity single sees Swift turn herself into an effective conduit for the other woman’s grief. (Thompson gets a co-writing credit.) One of the most empathetic songs in Swift’s catalogue, as well as her most reliable tearjerker.

7. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Red (2012): Flash back to 2012. Carly Rae Jepsen had a No. 1 hit. Freaking Gotye had a No. 1 hit. LMFAO had two. And yet Swift, arguably the biggest pop star in the country, had never had a No. 1 hit. (“You Belong With Me” and “Today Was a Fairytale” had both peaked at No. 2.) And so she called up Swedish pop cyborg Max Martin, the man who makes hits as regularly as you and I forget our car keys. The first song they wrote together is still their masterpiece, though it feels wrong to say that “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” was written; better to say that it was designed, as Swift and Martin turn almost every single second of the song’s 3:12 run time into a hook. Think of that guitar loop, the snippets of millennial-speak in the margins (“cuz like”), those spiraling “ooh”s, the spoken-word bit that could have been overheard at any brunch in America, and towering over it all, that gigantic “we.” Like all hyper-efficient products it feels like a visitor from some cold algorithmic future: The sense of joy here is so perfectly engineered that you get the sense it did not come entirely from human hands.

6. “Our Song,” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift wrote this one for her ninth-grade talent show, and I have a lovely time imagining all the other competitors getting the disappointment of their lives once they realized what they were up against. (“But nice job with that Green Day cover, Andy.”) Even at this early stage Swift had a knack for matching her biggest melodic hooks to sentences that would make them soar; that “’cause it’s late and your mama don’t know” is absolutely ecstatic. She’s said she heard the entire production in her head while writing, and on the record Nathan Chapman brings out all the tricks in the Nashville handbook, and even some that aren’t, like the compressed hip-hop drums in the final refrain.

5. “Mine,” Speak Now (2010): As catchy as her Max Martin songs, but with more of a soul, “Mine” wins a narrow victory over “Our Song” on account of having a better bridge. This one’s another fantasy, and you can kind of tell, but who cares — Paul McCartney didn’t really fall in love with a meter maid, either. Swift packs in so many captivating turns of phrase here, and she does it so naturally: It’s hard to believe no one else got to “you are the best thing that’s ever been mine” before her, and the line about “a careless man’s careful daughter” is so perfect that you instantly know everything about the guy. Let’s give a special shout-out to Nathan Chapman again: His backup vocals are the secret weapon of Speak Now, and they’re at their very best here.

4. “Blank Space,” 1989 (2014): You know how almost every other song that’s even a little bit like “Blank Space” ranks very low on this list? Yeah, that’s how hard a trick Swift pulls off on this 1989 single, which manages to satirize her man-eater image while also demonstrating exactly what makes that image so appealing. The gag takes a perfectly tuned barometer for tone: “Look What You Made Me Do” collapsed under the weight of its own self-obsession; “Better Than Revenge” didn’t quite get the right amount of humor in. But Swift’s long history of code-switching works wonders for her here, as she gives each line just the right spin — enough irony for us to get the jokes, enough sincerity that we’ll all sing along anyway. Martin and Shellback bring their usual bells and whistles, but they leave enough empty space in the mix for the words to ring out. Who wouldn’t want to write their name?

3. “Fifteen,” Fearless (2008): For many young people, the real experience of romance is the thinking about it, not the actual doing it. (For an increasing number, the thinking about it is all they’re doing.) Swift gets this almost instinctively, and never more than on this early ballad about her freshman year of high school, which plays like a gentle memoir. Listen to how the emotional high point of the second verse is not something that happens, but her reaction to it: “He’s got a car and you feel like flyyying.” She knows that the real thing is awkward, occasionally unpleasant, and almost guaranteed to disappoint you — the first sentence she wrote for this one was “Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind / We both cried,” a line that became exhibit B in the case of Taylor Swift v. Feminism — and she knows how fantasies can sustain you when nothing else will. “In your life you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team / but I didn’t know it at 15,” she sings, even though she’s only 18 herself. That there are plenty of people who spent their teenage years making out, smoking cigarettes, and reading Anaïs Nin doesn’t negate the fact that, for a lot of us squares, even the prospect of holding someone else’s hand could get us through an entire semester. Virgins need love songs, too.

2. “All Too Well,” Red (2012): It’s no wonder that music writers love this one: This is Swift at her most literary, with a string of impeccably observed details that could have come out of a New Yorker short story. “All Too Well” was the first song Swift wrote for Red; she hadn’t worked with Liz Rose since Fearless, but she called up her old collaborator to help her make sense of her jumble of memories from a relationship recently exploded. “She had a story and she wanted to say something specific. She had a lot of information,” Rose told Rolling Stone later. “I just let her go.” The original version featured something like eight verses; together the two women edited it down to a more manageable three, while still retaining its propulsive momentum. The finished song is a kaleidoscopic swirl of images — baby pictures at his parents’ house, “nights where you made me your own,” a scarf left in a drawer — always coming back to the insistence that these things happened, and they mattered: “I was there, I remember it all too well.” The words are so strong that the band mostly plays support; they don’t need anything flashier than a 4/4 thump and a big crescendo for each chorus. There are few moments on Red better than the one where Swift jumps into her upper register to deliver the knockout blow in the bridge. Just like the scarf, you can’t get rid of this song.

1. “You Belong With Me,” Fearless (2008): Swift was hanging out with a male friend one day when he took a call from his girlfriend. “He was completely on the defensive saying, ‘No, baby … I had to get off the phone really quickly … I tried to call you right back … Of course I love you. More than anything! Baby, I’m so sorry,’” she recalled. “She was just yelling at him! I felt so bad for him at that moment.” Out of that feeling, a classic was born. Swift had written great songs drawn from life before, but here she gave us a story of high school at its most archetypal: A sensitive underdog facing off with some prissy hot chick, in a battle to see which one of them really got a cute boy’s jokes. (Swift would play both women in the video; she had enough self-awareness to know that most outcasts are not tall, willowy blonde girls.) Rose says the song “just flowed out of” Swift, and you can feel that rush of inspiration in the way the lines bleed into each other, but there’s some subtle songcraft at work, too: Besides the lyrical switcheroos about who wears what, we also only get half the chorus the first go-round, just to save one more wallop for later. The line about short skirts and T-shirts will likely be mentioned in Swift’s obituary one day, and I think it’s key to the song’s, and by extension Swift’s, appeal: In my high school, even the most popular kids wore T-shirts.

Vulture

#taylor swift #rankings #reputation #music

1 note · View note

hoynovoy · 3 years ago

Text

20 Asian American Musicians To Add To Your Playlist Now

Over the past several years, the K-pop industry in the U.S. has grown exponentially. The fan enthusiasm behind bands like BTS has drawn parallels to The Beatles, and so many K-pop groups have received the same passionate reception. The attention is well-deserved, but Asian artists represent a multitude of musical genres (even just within the K-pop industry) — a fact that should not be overlooked. Whether you're a fan of indie rock, R&B, hip-hop, or dance music, you won't want to sleep on these Asian American musicians.

Asian artists have recently received some long-deserved recognition in the entertainment industry, primarily in film. In 2020, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite won big at the Oscars. The following year, Youn Yuh-Jung won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Minari, which also scored The Walking Dead alum Steven Yeun a nomination for Best Actor. However, there's still plenty of work to be done within the music landscape to ensure equal representation is achieved.

BTS, most notably, has seen unprecedented success in the U.S. Still, despite being invited to attend the last three Grammys, they've yet to take home an award, highlighting the discrepancy between their immense success and the Recording Academy's willingness to acknowledge it. Additionally, Asian artists have a harder time landing record deals. As American Idol alumni Paul Kim explained to The New York Times, he was blatantly told by industry execs he would have been signed to a label faster had he not been Asian.

By streaming these artists, you're not only supporting them and their art, but you're subsequently showing industry insiders just how valuable they are. Consider this list sonic proof Asian artists are making exceptional, diverse music that can't be boxed into one genre or sound. Each of these artists prides themselves on breaking boundaries and creating their own rules. You may have heard of a few, but many have been flying under the radar for far too long. Your ears will thank you soon enough.

Melissa Polinar

Polinar got her start in the late 2000s when viral YouTube covers paved the way for success. While artists like Justin Bieber and Lennon & Maisy were sharing music covers, Polinar focused on posting her original music — and her soulful vocals were a hit. In 2019, the Filipino-American songwriter actually re-recorded one of the songs that propelled her career forward, "Try," on its 10-year anniversary.

Eric Nam

Born and raised in Atlanta, Nam moved to Korea to pursue music because he felt he had a better chance of succeeding there. “Even if you look at American Idol, or X-Factor, or The Voice or anything, it was always difficult to see an Asian or an Asian-American make it to a certain point,” Nam told TIME in November 2019. Today, Nam is a highly visible and respected name in the K-pop industry. While he's very proud of his K-pop success, he considers himself a pop singer first. He hopes to grow his success stateside and told TIME, "I want people to hear my music and say, 'I don’t know who this person is,' and I could be Black, white, Latino, Asian — it doesn’t matter, but it’s just a great pop song."

Clinton Kane

Kane's got every making of a great singer-songwriter, and his lyricism will make a fan out of loyal Ed Sheeran or Sam Smith listeners. The Filipino-American singer's impressive vocal range captivates, and his emotion-driven lyrics will melt your heart. One of his more popular tracks, "Chicken Tendies," has upwards of 2 million views and is a must-add to your heartbreak playlist.

Jhené Aiko

As a mixed-race Japanese, Creole, Dominican, and European woman, Aiko has proudly championed her diverse roots throughout her accomplished career. The R&B singer is a six-time Grammy-nominated artist and is well respected within the industry for her philanthropic endeavors. She launched the WAYS foundation in 2017, an organization dedicated to helping cancer patients and their families.

Steve Aoki

Steve Aoki is hardly a newcomer to the EDM scene, but as one of the most prominent DJs in the industry, and one of the biggest Japanese DJs ever, it would be a crime to leave him off this list. Aoki even has his own record label and, in 2016, Netflix released I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, a documentary about his career.

Karen O

As the lead singer for the rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Karen O has solidified her spot as a rock music legend. Not only is the Korean-American singer's discography with the band a must-listen for any rock music fan, but her 2019 album with Danger Mouse, Lux Prima, earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance.

H.E.R.

Hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, H.E.R. (aka Gabi Wilson) has become one of the most prominent names in R&B. At just 23 years old, the singer-songwriter already has four Grammy wins and 13 nominations. Along the way, she's never shied away from praising her Filipino mother and Black father, Agnes and Kenny Wilson, for giving her the unique perspectives that propelled her musical success.

Toro Y Moi

Toro Y Moi is actually one person (Chaz Bear) and he's become the unofficial king of chillwave. Born to a Filipino mother, the South Carolina native later relocated to California to further his music career. If you need some chill vibes on your playlist, Bear's got you covered.

Ruby Ibarra

Ibarra is a Filipino-American rapper from San Lorenzo, California who also dabbles in spoken word poetry. Her music is meaningful in more ways than one. A number of her songs touch upon her experience as an Asian American woman. In April 2021, she released a powerful song and video called "Gold" with Ella Jay Basco, which exposed the harmful effects of the skin whitening industry.

Ella Jay Basco

You may recognize Basco from her appearance in Birds of Prey, but her music is not to be slept on because it's making major waves. Her song "Gold" with Ruby Ibarra highlights her Filipino heritage. As she told People, "From top to bottom, we wanted to make sure that our Asian-American community was represented with this project."

Mitski

Meet your new favorite alt-rock queen. Mitski's dreamy melodies appeal to the indie-rock crowd more than anything, and, if you're a sucker for a sad bop, this Japanese-American songstress has plenty of those stacked up.

Yaeji

Yaeji was born in Flushing, Queens in 1993 and grew up between the U.S. and Korea. Since she moved around so much as a kid, she found friendship on the internet, where she first connected with the bossa nova, jazz, and Korean indie music that drove much of the Korean DIY scene. She soon returned to the States to attend college, where she discovered a love for producing and DJing. Now, she meticulously blends hip-hop elements with her house-driven sound for a listening experience that is unlike anything else.

Hayley Kiyoko

Kiyoko has been given the nickname Lesbian Jesus since she’s so outspoken about LGBTQ+ representation in the music industry. The Japanese-American singer is a true trailblazer and her pop music genius has landed her hits with Kehlani, MAX, and AJR.

Jay Park

Park is an industry heavyweight. The Seattle native got his start in the K-pop industry as part of the band 2PM, but he went solo in 2009. Today, not only does the star have dozens of hits under his belt, but he has two record labels of his own that specialize in R&B and hip-hop music: AOMG and H1ghr. Park uses his superstar status to give others the spotlight, and he's put his support behind other artists like GOT7's JAY B and Yugyeom, and Raz Simone. Whether you're a self-proclaimed K-pop stan, or you're just recently getting acquainted with the genre, Park's discography is required listening.

Jin Au-Yeung

Born and raised in North Miami Beach, Florida, the Chinese-American rapper, aka MC Jin, has some seriously impressive accolades under his belt. After becoming popular among his musical peers for his epic freestyles, he was signed to Ruff Ryders in 2002 at just 19 years old, becoming the first Asian American solo rapper to be signed to a major record label in the U.S. He's since parted ways with the label and now travels back and forth between the U.S. and Hong Kong, seeing success in both places. In May 2021, the rapper released a single called "Stop the Hatred" with Wyclef Jean to raise awareness about hate crimes toward Asian Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Olivia Rodrigo

Rodrigo needs no introduction, but I'll do it anyway: This Filipino-American actress-turned-singer-songwriter's mega-hit debut single "drivers license" was unavoidable in January 2021. Its heartbreakingly relatable lyrics about a crush moving on with someone else struck listeners to their core and immediately soared to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also went viral on TikTok, before making its way into a Saturday Night Live sketch. Rodrigo's songwriting skills have fans likening her to industry heavyweights like Taylor Swift, so it's no surprise her debut album, Sour, is one of the most highly-anticipated albums of summer 2021.

Run River North

Run River North is not just one musician, but three. The band formerly known as Monsters Calling Home is an indie rock band from Los Angeles. The group has an eclectic sound that draws inspiration from each member: Daniel Chae, Alex Hwang, and Sally Kang.

ZHU

When ZHU first entered the electronic music scene, he used an alias and remained anonymous. By 2014, the artist also known as Steven Zhu was ready to share his identity with the world. ZHU got his start in San Francisco, California, but has made his mark on the EDM scene globally.

Darren Criss

Criss rose to fame starring on the television series Glee and he's since proven himself to be a true triple threat. His work can be seen across TV, film, and music. In September of 2018, Criss became the first Filipino-American to win an Emmy in the lead actor category for his portrayal of Andrew Cunanan in FX's The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. He’s also got several full-fledged EPs under his belt.

Amber Liu

Amber Liu (also known mononymously as Amber) is of Taiwanese descent and grew up in Los Angeles. She made a big splash when debuting as a member of the K-pop girl group f(x) in September 2009, but has since gone solo. Her 2019 solo track "Other People" racked up millions of streams, and she’s gearing up to drop her first album of 2021, called y?, very soon. In the meantime, she’s continuing to grow her superstar following on social media, where she has 5 million Instagram followers and over 2.3 million on Twitter.

Get More Dating Advice Here

0 notes

illionoisprelawland-blog · 4 years ago

Text

We Are Never Ever Getting Sued For Copyright Infringement

By Jennifer Kuo, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Class of 2020

September 8, 2020

Many college students might remember owning Taylor Swift’s Fearless album on CD when it first came out in 2008, with tracks like “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me” becoming some of the most iconic songs of the decade. Fearless propelled Taylor Swift into stardom and made her one of the youngest artists to win a Grammy Award. Now, in 2020, Taylor Swift is as popular as ever, but her music releases are coming in a slightly different format. Her new surprise album, folklore, officially broke the world record a few days after its release for most one-day streams of an album by a female artist on Spotify, coming in at 80.6 million streams [1]. Streaming services have largely replaced CDs in the past few years, with Spotify being one of the most prominent players in the market. Despite folklore’s success on Spotify, Taylor Swift has had a fraught relationship with the streaming giant.

The artist payout model of Spotify, like many streaming services, is based on the number of streams multiplied by the company’s revenue and the artist’s royalty rate. 70% of Spotify’s artist payout goes to publishing owners, which means that on average an artist makes less than a cent per play, but this amount could end up in payouts of millions of dollars for a popular artist like Taylor Swift [2]. Despite this, Spotify has often come under attack for underpaying artists, and record labels have even demanded Congress enact mandatory minimum regulations targeting streaming services. Spotify leadership maintains, however, that its freemium-style service has made significant impact in decreasing the amount of online piracy of music, ultimately increasing legal exposure and publicity of artists and their earnings[3]. Though Spotify maintains its services ultimately leads to net increases in revenue for record labels and artists, Taylor Swift decided to pull all her music off the platform in 2014. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Swift groups streaming together with piracy and file sharing as actions that have decreased album sales and have dealt a blow to “the financial value that artists…place on their music.” Calling music “important and rare,” she maintained that providing music for free as Spotify does is undervaluing art. Swift is not alone in leaving Spotify; artists such as The Black Keys have also spoken out against the platform [4].

Surprisingly, Taylor Swift suddenly returned to Spotify three years after her departure in 2014, with little comment in reference to her earlier criticism of streaming services. If Spotify was a giant in 2014, by 2017 it had become a behemoth. With 100 million-plus listeners, it also holds the important role of supplying data to Nielsen which compiles Billboard weekly charts. With the way the music industry had changed, it made little financial sense for any artist to shun Spotify in spite of any ethical misgivings regarding its model [5]. In truth, artists and record labels have had a love-hate legal relationship with digital music services for decades, and these services have toed the line between IP violations and popularizing musical content since the granddaddy of it all, Napster. Napster revolutionized the music industry by enabling peer-to-peer file sharing through its software back in 1999. Unsurprisingly, Napster was shut down through A&M Records v. Napster Inc. less than two years later, accused of copyright infringement. However, in the short 14 months Napster was in business, it had already changed the music industry in many irreversible ways, although it was only a continuation of a trend that had been happening for years. In 1998, Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in response to rising piracy online. It is this act that legally enforced payment of a sound performance royalty as well as a musical work royalty, which directly impacts streaming services that allow users to play content on demand. Furthermore, the act also expanded upon definitions of. interactive subscription services to include not only on-demand services but also specially created programs. This definition expansion more broadly included streaming services and imposed on them an additional licensing fee requirement [6].

Spotify was founded in Sweden, and for many years had difficulty entering the US market due to the challenge of securing licensing rights to comply with the DMCA. In 2011, when it finally launched in the country, it immediately faced a lawsuit, not from record labels surprisingly, but rather from low profile mobile media company PacketVideo. The charge? Patent infringement, of the cloud-based streaming system that Spotify uses. While the court eventually dismissed the suit, the broadness of the patent points to a larger problem within IP law. The ease at which companies can acquire patents and the lack of discretion the U.S. Patent office uses to approve them is a threat to creative output and technological innovation. With the rising popularity of mergers and acquisitions in the technology business space, more companies are able to grow and quickly own more patents, pushing smaller players out of the market. Beyond the licensing fee necessary to record labels per DMCA, patents slap an extra fee on streaming services like Spotify for so-called “proprietary technology [7].”

The Chief Legal Officer of Spotify, Horacio Gutierrez, has called the company an “intellectual-property based” business whose success is based on navigating the regulatory environment of IP licensing and interaction [8]. Behind the simple model of cloud-based streaming, it has to simultaneously consider the interests of artists, other technology services, record labels, and itself. And artists like Taylor Swift will continue to have a conflicted relationship with streaming, at once craving the exposure it uniquely provides while decrying its attack on traditional music sales.

________________________________________________________________

[1] Stephenson, K. (2020, July 29). Taylor Swift breaks 24 hour streaming record on Spotify for 8th album folklore. Guinness World Records. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2020/7/taylor-swift-breaks-24-hour-streaming-record-on-spotify-for-8th-album-folklore-625253

[2] [4] Linshi, J. (2020, November 3). Here’s Why Taylor Swift Pulled Her Music From Spotify. Time. https://time.com/3554468/why-taylor-swift-spotify/

[3] [8] Shokes, L. (2016, December 19). Interview with Spotify General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez. Harvard Journal on Sports and Entertainment Law. Retrieved from https://harvardjsel.com/2016/12/interview-with-spotify-general-counsel-horacio-gutierrez/

[5] McIntyre, H. (2017, June 27). Why Did Taylor Swift Really Rejoin Spotify? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/06/27/why-did-taylor-swift-really-rejoin-spotify/#4c10e3e373de

[6] Richardson, J. (2014). The Spotify Paradox: How the Creation of a Compulsory License Scheme for Streaming On-Demand Music Platforms Can Save the Music Industry. UCLA Entertainment Law Review, 22(1), 46–74. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7n4322vm

[7] anikaf. (2011, October 9). Spotify Lawsuit Demonstrates Weaknesses of Patent Law System. Michigan Technology Law Review. http://mttlr.org/2011/10/spotify-lawsuit-demonstrates-weaknesses-of-patent-law-system/#:~:text=Spotify%20Lawsuit%20Demonstrates%20Weaknesses%20of%20Patent%20Law%20System,-In%20July%202011&text=However%2C%20within%20two%20weeks%20of,company%20PacketVideo%20for%20patent%20infringement.

0 notes

west-coast-taylor · 7 years ago

Quote

We can actually hear Swift's critics rolling their eyes. But here's one of the best things about the star , Even when she's mocked for writing thinly veiled songs about her love life or criticized for going completely pop and not sticking to her country roots, Swift still follows her own path. This is a woman who will tell her record label, when instructed not to venture too far off in a new direction, sorry, "but this is how it's going to be." She knows what she wants. She knows who she is. And if you don't like it, she'll just shake off the criticism and write a song about doing so that you secretly won't be able to stop singing. That's pretty gutsy in an industry that's running scared. Here are five other reasons why you can't help but like Taylor Swift, even if you're not a fan: 1. The catch factor Have you ever caught yourself singing a catchy ditty and not even remembering how you know the lyrics? It was probably a Taylor Swift track. Her music has a way of permeating every facet of popular culture, to the point that you don't have to buy her albums to recognize the twang from "You Belong with Me" or sing the hook from "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together." 2. Ten Grammys later, still more likely to be found baking with cats Taylor Swift is one of the most recognizable pop stars on the planet, and we can only imagine the access that kind of fame can yield. We would not be at all surprised if the singer could jet from Milan to Tokyo in the blink of an eye in a private jet with seats lined in mink. But instead of the usual shenanigans you hear about from the very young, privileged and wealthy, Swift is more likely to be found baking cookies or playing with a new kitten. In other words, probably the exact same things she'd be doing if she weren't famous, which is a rare thing to witness. 3. She obsesses over the same TV shows Speaking of those cats, one of them is named Olivia Benson, as in one of the starring detectives on "Law & Order: SVU." Another one of the star's feline friends is named after Meredith Grey on Shonda Rhimes' "Grey's Anatomy." Many celebrities claim to be fans of their famous peers work, but Swift appears to be just as obsessed with your favorite TV shows as you are, almost as if she forgot that she, too, is on the A-list. 4. She's BFFs with everyone, including her fans It's not hard to rattle off Taylor Swift's famous friends, because she has a growing collection that includes everyone from Selena Gomez and Lorde to actresses Jaime King and Lena Dunham. But what makes Swift win over in the skeptics is her connection with her fans. She knows at least one of her supporters so well that she could make a surprise appearance at the fan's bachelorette party with complete ease, posing for pictures and handing over a gift that she knew her fan would like. We'll say that again: She knows her fans well enough that she can buy them personalized presents. Who does that? 5. Her parties are as dorky as yours While some stars are always sharing photos of their exclusive vacations in exotic faraway locales, Swift's get-togethers look like they could've been photographed in your neighbor's backyard. Fourth of July? She's baking a holiday-themed cake and hitting the Slip N' Slide. Christmas season? She's even constructed homemade holiday cards . And of course, as endlessly chronicled on Social media , you know Swift will always dance like no one's watching.

5 reasons you love Taylor Swift even if you don't want to - CNN article

#taylorswift

723 notes · View notes

kiddylanes · 5 years ago

Text

Just How Bad Is Kids’ Smartphone Addiction?

It's the easiest babysitting hack known to modern adults attempting to pacify a fussy baby: Take a smartphone, find a game or show, put it in the child’s hands, and—lo and behold! The kid is quiet, eyes wide, and still.

And that magic trick seems to extend to children who can crawl, tots who are just stringing together words, kids toddling into preschool, and—most obviously, at least when it comes to psychological research—tweens and teens hunched over their smartphones, oblivious to the world.

That worries a group of Apple investors, who are calling on the company to investigate what effects this screen time has on children’s brains and development. In a letter co-signed by New York investment firm JANA Partners and Anne Sheehan, the director of corporate governance at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (the largest public teacher’s pension fund in the country), the investors implore the tech giant to fund research into what their ubiquitous products might do to a child’s brain:

The average American teenager who uses a smartphone receives her first phone at age 10 and spends over 4.5 hours a day on it (excluding texting and talking). 78% of teens check their phones at least hourly and 50% report feeling ‘addicted’ to their phones. It would defy common sense to argue that this level of usage, by children whose brains are still developing, is not having at least some impact, or that the maker of such a powerful product has no role to play in helping parents to ensure it is being used optimally. It is also no secret that social media sites and applications for which the iPhone and iPad are a primary gateway are usually designed to be as addictive and time-consuming as possible, as many of their original creators have publicly acknowledged.

The letter is signed on behalf of investors whose shares amount to nearly $2 billion of Apple stock. Apple’s total valuation is about $900 billion.

It’s a small proportion, but the letter is sparking conversation about what it means to be addicted to technology—particularly among the youngest users of smart technology. It cites research and science published within childhood psychology, including that of Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University whose most recent book, iGen: Why Today’s Superconnected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood, tackles the effects of smartphones on teens.

Twenge said she first spotted some odd trends in teenage mental health in 2011 and 2012 when smartphones were becoming more common among teens. “There was a doubling in the suicide rate and tripling in emergency room admissions of self-harm among young girls,” Twenge said. “And there was a 50 percent increase in the clinical depression rate.”

To Twenge, the link between screen time and mental health seemed apparent. And while she said her research doesn’t touch on addiction so much as the mental health of teens based on smartphone use, she said there’s undeniable proof that screen time has a negative effect on developing minds, based on research that was published in November in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.

“I found that teens who spend five or more hours a day of screen time are 71 percent more likely to have risk factors” for mental health issues, such as depression, or thinking about suicide. That screen time is measured as that devoted to gaming, social media, or any other use of a device outside homework. And while Twenge’s research doesn’t indicate causation, other research does show that screen time leads to unhappiness rather than the other way around.

That’s because there are some very significant neurological events happening when we interact with our screen. Anna Lembke is an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University Medical Center, and she’s studied addiction extensively, both substance abuse and technology. She said the way we absorb the cool blue glow of a screen is akin to the electricity a drug user may feel.

Smartphone screens light up the same area of the brain as opioids and cannabis. The rewards pathways mediated by dopamine respond to screens in a very similar way to opioids: Anna Lembke

“Smartphone screens light up the same area of the brain as opioids and cannabis,” she told The Daily Beast. “The rewards pathways mediated by dopamine respond to screens in a very similar way to opioids.”

What makes adolescents especially vulnerable to the addictive nature of smartphones is that they are in a crucially pliable point of their mental and physical growth. “They’re incredibly socially sensitive,” Lembke said of adolescents, classed as those first experiencing puberty through those at the end of the teenage years.

The need to fit in and the desire to be popular and gain social points mean that kids this age are especially vulnerable to falling for the “social media contagion effect,” the term Lembke uses to describe a child doing something just because a peer is doing it. And Lembke said that reasoning is simply logical in an adolescent’s brain.

“Adolescent brains are more vulnerable to risk-taking, so the emotion centers of the brain drive behavior more than the future planning centers of the brain,” she said—which is why teens are impulsive enough to take risks without recognizing future consequences. Their brains are pliable because adolescence is a time when neurons undergo pruning, fundamentally altering the shape and structure of the brain from one of a child’s into that of an adult’s.

Online, that can be dangerous: It can lead to slut-shaming when kids send and receive nude photos without thinking about ramifications, for example, or bullying on anonymous messaging apps like last summer’s sleeper hit Sarahah. Being turned on by peers can be devastating for a teen and in some extreme, tragic cases lead to suicide. Neuronal pruning can mean screens are used as a coping strategy, and tearing kids away from their screen can be difficult not only because it offers a sense of safety and information, but also because a kid may be addicted.

But what about little kids? After all, infants and toddlers aren’t using the internet to stalk their exes or dissect the latest cryptic Taylor Swift tweet. They’re primarily using it as an entertainment device replacing, at the most high-tech end, a television show with squealy puppets, and at the low-tech end, a parent regaling a child with tales.

That’s part of the reason why judging the effects of touch screens—smartphones, tablets, and their ilk—is so difficult: the fact that they’re new. The iPhone just celebrated its 10th birthday, so there’s not much history for figuring out how the smartphone may have changed how we think. And what makes all this even more difficult is trying to figure out when exactly tech addiction could kick in.

“Nearly all the research that is relevant is mostly with much older kids,” Heather Kirkorian, an associate professor at the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin who studies how toddlers under 5 learn with media, told The Daily Beast. “But there’s not much scientific consensus.”

Kirkorian has found (using data from Common Sense Media) that kids’ time with technology goes up as they age, with preschool kiddos clocking in an hour-and-a-half per day. Kirkorian said her research focuses on learning with technology—not problematic use—and said that while she sees some expected demographic trends of boys playing video games more than girls, who tend to favor social media, and white children eking out more screen time than their black and Hispanic counterparts, tech is not necessarily all bad.

“Tech can play a positive role in the lives of kids,” Kirkorian said, citing the ability to video chat with family who live far away and playing interactive games under the supervision of older family members as valuable for bonding and learning.

What Kirkorian wishes the Apple investors’ letter addressed was the fact that while we’ve started to collect a fair amount of data on how kids interact with technology, we still don’t quite understand how to interpret those findings.

Kirkorian points to the example of teens who might be suffering from depression and anxiety. “The causal direction is not clear,” she pointed out. “It could be that this is actually a tool for teens who are disconnected and lack social interaction. They can be tools to help kids who are socially isolated.”

But are these kids reaching for tech to ease feelings of isolation, or are they isolated because they’re entering their digital worlds? “That’s really unclear, and it’s the chicken and egg problem here,” Kirkorian said.

Lembke said the screen, however, is inherently addictive, regardless of intent. “Even if I turn to a screen because I’m anxious, to cope with my anxiety, that screen can become inherently addictive,” she said. “You can become addicted," Lembke said she’s had patients come in with substance problems who didn’t initially mean to become reliant on a substance.

“For those who are vulnerable to addiction, the risks are extraordinarily high,” she said. “Add to that early onset of use, and the risk of addiction is there.”

Adam Alter, an associate professor of marketing at New York University and author of last year’s Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, told The Daily Beast via email that the question isn’t about whether too much screen time leads to a tech addiction among kids.

“I’ve used the word ‘addiction’ myself, but whether or not you use the word to describe how children interact with screens is beside the point,” he said. “When you ask how young a person can be to be addicted, I think the real question is how young can a person be to be adversely affected by a smartphone.”

And for that, Alter doesn’t think there’s an age when screen time is safe. “There’s no lower limit in my opinion,” he said. “As soon as a child can sit in front of a screen—and as soon as that screen eats into the time he or she might spend in face-to-face interactions with other people or engaging with the wider world—it’s possible for the phone to compromise that child’s well-being.” To Alter, it’s up to the caretaker to figure out “when kids are distracted, unhappy, disengaged, and generally adversely affected by screens.”

But that’s what makes declaring technology as a villain difficult and problematic: It can serve an important role as a teacher and motivator. Every expert The Daily Beast interviewed had a different thought about what the best solution should be about youth tech addiction. What was universally agreed upon, however, was that the Apple letter shone an important light on tech addiction among kids. Thus far, screen time has been “regulated,” with a 2015 report breaking the concept of limiting time for kids, going so far as to suggest that the phrase “screen time” was antiquated.

Exposure to the internet isn’t actually the problem. Being online can be good for kids of all ages. What’s problematic, as psychologists point out, is relying on the screen to come to terms with the roller coaster emotional experience of being a teen and not being able to turn to another peer or activity without feeling the pain of being torn away from a device. As the letter stated: “To be clear, we are not advocating an all or nothing approach. While expert opinions vary on this issue, there appears to be a developing consensus that the goal for parents should be ensuring the developmentally optimal amount and type of access, particularly given the educational benefits mobile devices can offer.”

In other words: iPhones, iPads, and any other digital device kids might veer toward for entertainment aren’t bad. They’re amazing tools for learning and growth. They simply aren’t the only tools a kid should have to explore the world.

Couresy: Tanya Basu, thedailybeast.com

#kiddylanes #kiddy #kid #kids #moblie #mobilephone #online store for kids #online store #kid online store

0 notes

shirlleycoyle · 5 years ago

Text

This Meme Explains Why TikTok Isn’t Like Any Other Social Media

People think that TikTok is a black hole where teens jump in and memes pop out. To be sure, TikTok has both teens and memes. But the reality is much more structured than it seems.

TikTok is dominated by videos with a very rigid, formulaic structure: a song, a dance. “You Need to Calm Down” by Taylor Swift plays, and the person sets up a social scenario that ends with them lip-synching “You need to calm down, you’re being too loud.”

Most of TikTok is like Mad Libs: the specifics of the joke differ, but the punchline is always the same. At any given moment, there’s maybe five to ten sound bites—which could be songs, or original audio recorded by users—that are accumulating the majority of the views, sometimes hundreds of thousands in just hours.

Enter TikTok’s latest genre: point-of-view videos, or POVs. They create scenarios that range from horror, to historical fiction, to teenage fantasies, to the completely absurd. These videos often have little in common aside from the significant role that they assign to the viewer.

The traditional TikTok POV is shot from a first-person perspective, making the viewers the main character of the video. TikToker @porrinate, who identified himself as Adam, told Motherboard, “I think it makes it very personal to the viewer, because the video is through their eyes.”

Adam made a POV captioned “#pov you dont have a lunch at school and i offer you my entire lunch because i want you to be okay.” In this video, the viewer is a student that doesn’t have lunch. Adam speaks directly to them.

“I took it from my own experience, which was like, I didn’t get to eat that much in high school—and if I did, it was from somebody else,” Adam said. “So I would always feel like, people need to be more generous, especially towards those who are really struggling.”

The structure of an app helps decide what kind of posts are more likely to succeed. On Twitter, a blank slate of 280 characters, it’s attention-grabbing, ratio-inviting shit posts. On YouTube, where ad revenue can be low or unreliable, it’s lengthy, vlogger-style videos that are cheap to produce.

Meanwhile, TikTok encourages recycling sound bites which are used by sometimes thousands of videos. This has spawned a culture where people use familiar joke formats, and gently add a little bit of themselves.

By making viewers a part of the video, POVs uniquely allow creators to engage with viewers, and by extension, connect with their peers. POVs leverage TikTok to appeal to shared human experiences of joy, despair, embarrassment, and laughter. For now, at least, it’s something that sets TikTok apart from other social media apps.

Why POVs Could Only Happen on TikTok

People can post videos on Twitter or Facebook, but since users only see content from users they follow, those videos have a limited ability to spread. People who aren’t following you, most often, will simply miss the video you share. TikTok is different because of the app’s For You page, which pushes users to view videos from wide-reaching pool of users (even ones that you don’t follow).

The For You page surfaces posts from across the platform. It’s an algorithmically-generated recommendation feed, catered to each user. Unlike Twitter’s Moments tab or Instagram’s Discover page, which also surface posts from users you don’t follow, the For You opens automatically when a user launches the app. But we don’t know the specifics of how the For You page works. According to TikTok’s listing in the iOS App Store, some opaque mix of app engagementlikes, shares, and comments—dictates what users see.

Most TikToks only have 15 seconds to engage a viewer and maximize their reach on people’s For You pages. That’s a large part of why POVs are successful: they grab the viewer’s attention by pulling them into the plot of the video. The impact is immediate.

“Across different platforms, you think of the different types of cultures that have emerged,” Becca Lewis, an internet culture researcher with Data and Society, said in a phone call. “A lot of that is due to these artificial constraints platforms place on the type of content that gets created.”

The opacity of the For You algorithm has a huge impact on TikTok. If you’re trying to make a popular video, it makes sense to stick to one of the Mad Libs formulas that dominate the For You page on a given day. It’s the act of reaching for the biggest-common-content-denominator in a vast pool of videos whose logic you can’t see.

Here are some memes that are popular at the time of writing:

“Wasabi” by Little Mix plays and people lip sync the lyrics while using TikTok’s “face-tracking” filter, which identifies and zooms in on your face.

“One Jump Ahead” from Aladdin plays and people lip sync the line “Let’s not be too hasty,” and the reply “Still I think he’s rather tasty,” usually while the user pretends to be two different characters.

“No Reason” by YunggTez plays and people act out a situation in which they convey confidence, attitude, and a lack of regard for others.

Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, said in a phone call that users won’t make a habit out of an app unless there’s a “variable reward”—or, a variety of entertaining content. Without that variety, users get bored.

“The problem I think that TikTok is struggling with is that they depend on the meme model,” Eyal said. “Because if everybody does the meme the same way, what happens to the variability? It becomes predictable. The predictability makes it boring. Nobody wants to see the meme because they already saw it.”

But POVs are anything but predictable. Instead of appealing to a common meme formula, POVs appeal to a common humanity. They put the viewer into the messy center of an emotional situation.

Take this TikTok by Olivia Giordano, for example. The caption is, “there’s not enough seats at the lunch table today, so you have nowhere to sit.” In this video, the viewer is the person who can’t get a seat at the lunch table. It’s like exposure therapy, violently bringing viewers face-to-face with the shame, humiliation, and sadness of living through this particular situation. But the viewer experiences these feelings in a safe setting: TikTok.

A similar video is captioned, “ur teacher lets u pick partners but u have 2 friends in ur class who partnered up.” In this video, you’re watching yourself try to team up with a friend for a group project, but quickly realize that your friends both chose one another before you.

By acknowledging that these uncomfortable experiences exist, these POV videos lend significance to experiences that young people often have to dismiss in order to get by.

A lot of POVs focus on acting out a true-to-reality situation. For instance, TikTok user @yazdemand made a POV captioned, “#pov your my mirror after My family say that ‘you will always be a boy.’” Viewers watch the private, vulnerable moments of this teenager getting ready. There’s a tension, and you can feel her confidence and apprehension playing out simultaneously. People going through a similar situation can find community.

A Yeet into the Spectrum of POVs

Not all POVs are exposure therapy for the cruelty of being a teenager, or heartfelt experience confessionals. A pillar of the POV genre is the massive selection of videos that rely on humor and sometimes absurdity.

A great example of this is a TikTok captioned, “i’m ur dumb jock crush. you tell me you’re feeling depressed. i try to make it better.” In it, user @idrinkvapejuice acts out the crush’s reply to her admission of depression.

Other videos, like “POV: what my birth control sees when i remember i have to take it” and “POV: im checking ur head for lice (and u have it)” are pretty self explanatory. There’s also videos like “Pov. our eyes meet at the Area 51 raid” (which is a poking fun at a POV formula that starts with “our eyes meet”).

But the POV genre, and TikTok in general, isn’t immune to harassment and hate speech problems that plague social media. Jess Fisher, TikTok user @jess.fisher5 has a recurring TikTok series where she pretends to be the personification of each astrological sign. In her POV video, captioned “#wholesome TAURUS POV,” Fisher acts like the personification of Tauruses, who are generally defined as compassionate, loyal, and sometimes parental.

Fisher said that this POV got an unexpected response: a flood of duets—or new videos that are displayed directly alongside an original video—and comments from old men.

“Not all of them, but a lot of [the comments] were like, ‘I’m gonna rip that shirt off of you,’ and things like that,” Fisher said.

The duets for Fisher’s video exist in a grey area: most of them don’t violate TikTok’s terms of use. It’s not against the rules to duet a video with a suggestive smile and comment. But the response was somewhat violating, she said. (A TikTok spokesperson encouraged users to visit its Safety Center for information about responding to misuse.)

“[The video] did make me think that maybe POV just strikes a chord in people,” Fisher said. “It hits them in a different way than normal videos do.”

POVs Make TikTok Feel Human

Fisher said that POVs make sense in the larger history of TikTok. TikTok, in its original form, was called musical.ly, and musical.ly was dedicated almost entirely to lip-sync videos. Fisher said that the foundation of these lip-sync videos probably lent itself to the creation of the POV genre.

“They could just be lip synching a song with intention, but it’s also like making the viewer feel like they’re being looked at, or being seen,” Fisher said. “The only difference between that type of thing and the POV genre is putting their own dialogue to it and writing it themselves. Like content creation rather than just lip synch.”

Platforms like Facebook often talk about how they want to “bring the world closer together.” But this isn’t easy for any social media platform to accomplish. Often, it seems, meaningful online experiences are built on finding communities with shared experiences.

This is what’s happened with POVs on TikTok. There’s countless different iterations of POVs: there’s humor, fiction, cosplay, fantasy, historical skits, and realistic ones, and there’s innumerable niches that have grown out of these subgroups.

This phenomenon seems to defy the odds: the TikTok For You page, in its seeming randomness, connects people with obscure mutual experiences. The result is something that feels fundamentally human.

This Meme Explains Why TikTok Isn’t Like Any Other Social Media syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

0 notes

michaeljtraylor · 6 years ago

Text

My life philosophy: 50 lessons from 50 years

Happy birthday to me! Today, I turn fifty. Holy cats, that’s old! To celebrate, over the weekend I replaced the tape deck in my 1993 Toyota pickup so that I can listen to my Taylor Swift cassette. (You think I’m joking but I’m not.)

The funny thing is, I don’t feel like I’m fifty. Okay, my body feels like its fifty, but my mind doesn’t. I suppose that’s something that everybody says as they get older: “I feel younger than my age.” But it’s true!

To celebrate my 50th birthday, I’m going to indulge in my annual tradition. I’m going to share fifty nuggets of wisdom I’ve picked up during my life on this Earth.

I’m no wiser or smarter than anybody else. And I’m certainly no better. But I am an individual. I’m my own person with my own personal preferences and personal experiences. These have all jumbled together over the past fifty years to give me a unique perspective on life (just as you have a unique perspective on life). To quote my favorite poem:

Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour’d of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met…

So, these fifty nuggets of wisdom are things I’ve found to be true for me — and, I believe, for most other people. (But each of us is different. What works for me may not work for you.) These beliefs make up the core of my personal philosophy of life.

For obvious reasons, some of these notions overlap with the core tenets of the Get Rich Slowly philosophy. Plus, long-time readers will recognize this as an article I update every year on my birthday.

Some of these ideas are original to me. Some aren’t. When I’ve borrowed something, I’ve done my best to cite my source. (And I’ve tried to cite the oldest source I can find. Lots of folks borrow ideas from each other. There’s nothing new under the sun and all that.)

Here are fifty principles I’ve found to be true during my fifty years on this planet:

Self-care comes first. If you’re not healthy, it’s tough to be happy. Before you can take care of your friends and your family, you need to take care of yourself. Eat well. Exercise. Nurture your mind, body, and spirit. Your body is a temple; treat it like one. If you don’t have your health, you’ve got nothing.

You get what you give. Your outer life is a reflection of your inner life. If you think the world is a shitty place, the world is going to be a shitty place. If you think people are out to get you, people will be out to get you. But if you believe people are basically good, you’ll find that this is true wherever you go.

Life is like a lottery. You receive tickets every time you try new things and meet new people. Most of these lottery tickets won’t have a pay-out, and that’s okay. But every now and then, you’ll hit the jackpot. The more you play — the more you say “yes” to new friends and new experiences — the more often you’ll win. You can’t win if you don’t play. That said, however…

Luck is no accident. What we think of as luck has almost nothing to do with randomness and almost everything to do with attitude. Lucky people watch for — and take advantage of — opportunities. They listen to their hunches. They know how to “fail forward”, making good out of bad. [Via the book Luck is No Accident.]

Don’t try to change others. “Attempts to change others are rarely successful, and even then are probably not completely satisfying,” Harry Browne wrote in How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. “To accept others as they are doesn’t mean you have to give into them or put up with them. You are sovereign. You own your own world. You can choose…There are millions of people out there in the world; you have a lot more to choose from than just what you see in front of you now.”

Don’t allow others to try to change you. Again from How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: “You are free to live your life as you want…The demands and wishes of others don’t control your life. You do. You make the decisions…There are thousands of people who wouldn’t demand that you bend yourself out of shape to please them. There are people who will want you to be yourself, people who see things as you do, people who want the same things you want. Why should you have to waste your life in a futile effort to please those with whom you aren’t compatible?”

Be impeccable with your word. Be honest — with yourself and others. If you promise to do something, do it. When somebody asks you a question, tell the truth. Practice what you preach. Avoid gossip. [This is directly from Don Miguel’s The Four Agreements.]

Don’t take things personally. When people criticize you and your actions, it’s not about you — it’s about them. They can’t know what it’s like to be you and live your life. When you take things personally, you’re allowing others to control your life and your happiness. Heed the Arab proverb: “The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.” [Also one of The Four Agreements.]

Don’t make assumptions. The flip side of not taking things personally is to not assume you know what’s going on in other people’s heads. Don’t assume you know the motivations for their actions. Just as their reality doesn’t reflect your reality, your life is not theirs. Give people the benefit of the doubt. [Another of The Four Agreements.]

True story: Before Kim and I moved to our current country cottage, the dog park near our home had a homeless problem. (And still does.) We early-morning walkers did our best to clean up camps when they were vacated, but it was a never-ending task. Once, I joined a new woman for a stroll down the trail. “Look at that couple,” she said, pointing to a man and a woman who were dragging a tarp down the hillside. “They just woke up and are packing up their camp.” I tried to tell her that no, they were regular dog-walkers who were pitching in to clean things up. She didn’t believe me. “I’m going to report them,” she said. Classic example of a faulty assumption.

Always do your best. Your best varies from moment to moment. Some days in the gym, for instance, I’m able to lift heavier weights than on other days. Some days I can run faster than usual; some days, I’m slower. That’s okay. What matters most is that I give my best effort every time. No matter what you do, do it as well as you can. This is one of the keys to success and happiness. [This is the last of The Four Agreements.]

Effort matters more than skill or talent. “Effort counts twice,” argues Angela Duckworth in Grit: The Power of Passon and Perseverance. Skill, she says, is talent multiplied by effort. The more you do what you’re good at, the better you get. But achievement is the product of skill multiplied by effort. Effort counts twice. (This may be why psychologists say it’s better to praise your child’s efforts instead of her results. Praise her for spending time on her homework, not because she got an A.)

Embrace the imperfections. If you do what is right, and you do your best, then there’s no reason to feel bad about the outcome. Nobody’s perfect. Don’t beat yourself up if you make mistakes. And don’t sweat it if other people get upset with you too. If you’re doing the best you can, that’s good enough.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Too many people never get started because they don’t know that the “best” first step is. You don’t know the best guitar, so you never learn to play. You don’t know which Spanish book is best, so you never learn to speak. You don’t know how to bench press, so you never go to the gym. Don’t worry about getting things exactly right — just choose a good option and do something to get started.

There’s no single “right” way to achieve success. Each of us is different. We have different goals, personalities, and experiences. We each need to find the tools and techniques that are effective for our own situations. There’s no one right way to eat, love, pray, or pay off debt. Don’t believe anyone who tells you there is. Experiment until you find methods that are effective for you. (Note, however, that there are wrong ways to do these things — steer clear of obvious bad choices.)

Be present in the moment. Accept life for what it is, without labels or judgment. Yield to events; don’t block them. Go with the flow. Nothing exists outside the present moment: Don’t dwell on the past or worry about the future. Improve the quality of the here and now. When you do something, do that thing. When you’re with somebody, be with them. Don’t multitask. Put away the smartphone or the computer or the book. Be all there. [This is an ancient concept made popular by The Power of Now.]

Spirituality is personal. The desire for one person (or group) to impose her (or their) beliefs on others is the source of much of this world’s strife. Believe what you want, and let others do the same. “There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.” — the Dalai Lama

Be skeptical — but keep an open mind. Don’t believe everything you hear — from others and from your own internal self-talk. Practice healthy skepticism. But keep an open mind. Don’t automatically assume that everything is fake or false. Do your best to analyze the things you see and hear to determine whether they actually make sense.

Don’t yuck someone else’s yum. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s bad. Pursue your passions, and let others pursue theirs. If you don’t like something, fine. Don’t make a big deal about it.

You can’t prevent every possible thing from going wrong. Don’t even try. Instead, learn to deal effectively with minor problems. You’ll build self-confidence, which will lead to an increased willingness to take calculated risks. (Similarly, you can’t make everyone like you. It’s foolish to try.)

Be flexible. Goals are good, but single-minded devotion to a goal can often blind a person to other opportunities. And it’s a mistake to cling to one path out of sense of obligation. If you enter law school and discover you hate it, then quit. Don’t endure years of misery because you feel like it’s expected of you. That’s dumb. You have more options than you think, but you may need to slow down and open your eyes in order to see them.

Be encouraging. Support the creative, positive actions of others. There are a lot of people out there who want to tell others what’s wrong with their actions, why the things they want to do can’t be done. They’re quick to criticize small mistakes instead of praising the greater effort. Don’t be this way. Do what you can — in ways both big and small — to help others achieve their goals. [Taken from Action Girl’s Guide to Living.]

You are the author of your own life. Everyone has a story they want to tell you about yourself. Society tries to push a “standard narrative” on us about how life should go. Ignore these stories. If you don’t like the story you’re living, it’s up to you to change the plot. You didn’t write the beginning of your story, but you have the power to choose the ending. Choose and adventure you love instead of one that makes you unhappy.

You don’t need permission. When we’re young, we wait for our parents and teachers to say it’s okay to do the things we want to do. As an adult, you don’t need permission from anybody else. Do you want to quit your job and travel the world? Do it. Do you want to learn how to ride a motorcycle? Do it. Don’t wait for somebody else to give you the go-ahead. You are the only one who needs to give yourself permission to do these things.

Don’t let fear guide your decision-making process. My girlfriend Kim told me this on one of our first dates, and it echoes something my accountant once told me. He says that too many people make money moves based solely on the tax repercussions. “That’s dumb,” he told me. “You should do what you want because you want to, not because of the tax hit.” This applies in all aspects of life. Make decisions based on what you want to do. Move toward something, not away from something.

Action cures fear. Thought creates fear; action cures it. What we’re actually afraid of is the unknown. We like certainty, and choosing to do something with an uncertain outcome makes us nervous. Taking the first step can be scary, but each additional step becomes easier and easier. When you act, you remove the mystery. Action creates confidence. It creates motivation. (Most people think motivation comes before action. They’re wrong. Action leads to motivation.) [This is an old idea but this phrasing is from The Magic of Thinking Big.]

Action is character. If you never did anything, you wouldn’t be anybody. Superman is a superhero because he does heroic things, not because he talks about doing them. And a writer is a writer because she writes, not because she talks about writing. What we say doesn’t matter; it’s what we do that counts. We are what we repeatedly do. [From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s notes on The Last Tycoon.]

You’re more likely to regret the things you don’t do than the things you do. That’s not to say you should be an asshole, or that you won’t regret making big mistakes. But generally speaking, you’re more likely to be sorry that you didn’t introduce yourself to the barista at the coffeehouse, didn’t go bungee-jumping with your friends, didn’t stay in touch with your friends. [This is the central idea in The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.]

Give without the expectation of return. Help other people — even if it costs a bit of money or time. Don’t always expect a financial payoff. Don’t get offended if your effort isn’t acknowledged or appreciated. Help because it’s the right thing to do, not because you want to be noticed.

When good things happen to people you know, help them celebrate. Their success does not diminish you. Be happy when your friends and family achieve something cool. If a co-worker gets a raise, be supportive and not jealous. Approach life as if it were a win-win game. Because it is.

Happy people almost never criticize, says Steven Pressfield in The War of Art. “If they speak at all,” he writes, “it’s to offer encouragement.” This is true in my experience, as well. Being sarcastic and cutting doesn’t mean that you’re smarter than the people around you. Most of the time, it simply means you’re an asshole. And that leads me to the next lesson…

Staying in a relationship out of a sense of obligation or pity is not a good reason. Sometimes you really do have to walk away — from a friendship, from a family member, even from a romantic partner. Yours isn’t the only story in this world; sometimes it’s better to be somebody else’s villain than to make yourself miserable.

You have the freedom to choose how you respond to any event. In the classic Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Fankl writes, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” He based this philosophy on his personal experience in a Nazi concentration camp. When that jerk cuts you off on the freeway, you get to choose if you’ll get angry or give him the benefit of the doubt. When you get stuck behind the old lady in line at the grocery store, it’s up to you how to respond. When those stupid kids next door vandalize your lawn, you get to choose how you feel about it.

You’ll be happier if you focus on efforts and attention only on the things you can control. Each of us has a large number of things about which we’re concerned: our health, our family, our friends, our jobs; world affairs, the plight of the poor, the threat of terrorism, the current political climate. Within that Circle of Concern, there’s a smaller subset of things over which we have actual, direct control: how much we exercise, what time we go to bed, whether we leave for work on time; what we eat, where we live, with whom we socialize. You’ll be happier and more productive if you dedicate yourself to your Circle of Control and ignore your Circle of Concern. [This notion is part of Julian Rotter’s social-learning theory of personality, but was popularized by Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.]

You can have anything you want — but you can’t have everything you want. Everything is a trade-off. You have limited resources. When you choose to spend — time, money, brainwidth — on one thing, you’re also choosing not to spend on others. Do your best to spend only on the things that matter most to you. Don’t really give a rat’s ass about Big Bang Theory? Then why are you watching it? Spend your time and energy on something you do care about.

Make room for the big rocks first. It’s easy to let your time and energy be sucked up by trivial errands and tasks. You find you no longer have space for the things you thought were most important. Don’t do that. Always carve out time and attention for those people and activities you value most. If the house doesn’t get clean because you were hanging out with a friend, so what? If you didn’t mow the lawn because you went to the gym instead, that’s a good thing. Tackle the important, then the trivial.

If you want to avoid feeling overwhelmed, create margin in your life. Simplicity brings peace. Many people have tried to beat this into my head over the years, but it wasn’t until I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up that I really understood. Every item you own, every meeting you schedule, every email you receive — every obligation in your life carries both psychic and physical weight. Traveling in an RV for fifteen months, I learned to love owning very little. It was freeing! And it was freeing too to not be a slave to a schedule. As much as you can, build margin into your life so that you can feel peaceful and free.

Be your own advocate. Don’t be afraid to ask what you want and what you need — especially if it’s help. Too often, we struggle in silence when we could make our lives better simply by asking a question or two. Better to look ignorant for a moment than to remain ignorant for a lifetime. Don’t wait for others to solve your problems. Be proactive. Find answers. Take action. Learn to help yourself.

It’s always best to be proactive. In life, there are often default options. If you don’t consciously and deliberately choose something different, you get the default. When this happens, your life shapes you instead of you shaping your life. Most people go through their entire lives in default mode. They accept what life hands them without question. They’re reactive. Choose to be proactive instead. If you don’t set your own goals, somebody else will set them for you.

Quality tools can make life better. For years, I equated low cost with smart spending. Now I know that’s not always the case. Now, I’m willing to spend to buy high-quality things when I know I’ll use them all the time. I have high-quality boots, for instance, and an expensive computer. I’m okay with that. I walk everywhere I go, so the boots are worth it. And my computer is my livelihood. The expense is worth it because it makes working a joy. For items used daily, buy the best. If you don’t use it often, of if it’s not important to you, buy the cheapest possible.

The meaning of life is the meaning you decide to give it. Some people are searchers. They wander through life looking for answers…but rarely find them. Others accept without question what an outside authority tells them is true. I believe that the meaning of life comes from within, from the things that you lean to prioritize and value. Nobody is going to tell you what life should mean to you; you have to decide that for yourself.

You are the boss of you. Your circumstances might not be your fault, but they’re your responsibility. Don’t blame anyone or anything else for your situation, and don’t expect somebody else to rescue you. If you don’t like where you are, resolve to do what it takes to make a change.

Don’t compare yourself to others. I preach this often at Money Boss. Comparing yourself to others is counter-productive. Generally one of two things happens: You either feel shitty because you’re not as good as the other person, or you feel superior because they’re not as good as you. In reality, nobody is better than anybody else. We’re just different. If you want to compare yourself, compare Present You to Past You — and do what you can to make Future You a better version of why you are today.

You can’t get rid of a bad habit; you can only change it. “You can never truly extinguish bad habits,” writes Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit. “Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.” He calls this the Golden Rule of Habit Change. To change your habit loop, you have to do something different when the habit is triggered. Let me give you an example: I used to be a stress-eater. I’d eat junk food — and lots of it — any time I had a deadline or a conflict with a friend. The act of eating soothed my mind. The stress was the cue (the trigger), and the rush was the reward. No surprise, this habit made me fat. I’ve managed to (mostly) change the habit loop by walking instead of eating. Now if I get stressed, I go for a walk. I get a similar rush for a reward, but my actions are healthier.

Positive reinforcement is powerful. When Tahlequah performs a desired behavior — sitting, coming when called, being nice to the cats — we reward her. She learns to connect the treat with the actions we wants, and becomes more likely to offer them…even when we don’t reward her. What’s true for dogs is true for people too. Does nagging your spouse actually work? Probably not. (In fact, it probably has the opposite effect you intend!) But if you reward the behavior your want, you’ll eventually see it offered without prompting. The same thing is true with children, co-workers, family members, and so on. [This is a fundamental principle of psychology. An excellent source for more info is Don’t Shoot the Dog.]

youtube

Create your own certainty. Don’t allow yourself to be dependent on the choices and actions of others. I call this “Michelle’s Law” after my friend who taught it to me. But I have another friend — Jenn — who talks about “ensuring success”. When she’s working on something important, whether it’s a relationship or a vacation, she always follows up to make sure that what she expects to happen will happen. This philosophy is akin to the idea that you should trust, but verify.

Choose happiness. Do work and play that brings fulfillment. Spend time with people who build you up, not those who bring you (and others) down. Strip from your life the things that take time, money, and energy, but which do not bring you joy. Focus on the essentials.

Time is more valuable than money. You can always make more money…but you can’t make more time. This isn’t permission to spend lavishly on anything and everything just because you might get hit by a truck tomorrow. It is, however, an invitation to consider what’s important to you and to focus on that. It’s encouragement to get clear on your personal mission statement and to build your life around it.

It’s never too late to be great. It takes time to achieve anything worthwhile. But just because you haven’t started yet — or haven’t reached the level your aiming for — doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t make it happen. Don’t be daunted by audacious goals. Are you fifty and want to run a marathon? Start training. Are you sixty and only now thinking of retirement? That’s okay. Better late than never. Are you seventy and want to write a novel? Do it. History is filled with examples of folks who achieve great things later in life. [This argument is made persuasively by Tom Butler-Bowdon in his book, Never Too Late to Be Great.]

Be yourself. This is the most important thing I’ve learned during my 49 years of life. For too long, I tried to please others. I tried to be and do the things I thought they wanted me to be and do. As a result, I was unhappy. And most of the time, my actions didn’t have the results I thought they would. They didn’t make others like me any better. Instead of trying to please others, now I’m just me. I’m honest about who I am and what I want. Maybe some of my old friends don’t like who I’ve become. That’s okay. I’ve made plenty of people who do like who I am.

“Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.” — Barbara Ueland, If You Want to Write.

This isn’t a comprehensive list of my beliefs, but it’s a fair survey of my life philosophy. It has evolved from my philosophy when I was forty or thirty. And I’m sure that my philosophy at sixty will have changed in ways that I cannot foresee right now.

Also note that although I really do believe these things to be true, I also struggle with them. I’m human, just like you. I don’t always live up to my ideal self.

How many of these ideas do you agree with? Which do you disagree with? More to the point: What are the core ideas that make up your personal philosophy?

The post My life philosophy: 50 lessons from 50 years appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

* This article was originally published here

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://proshoppingservice.com/my-life-philosophy-50-lessons-from-50-years/ from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.tumblr.com/post/183922015519

0 notes

garkodigitalmedia · 6 years ago

Text

My life philosophy: 50 lessons from 50 years

To celebrate my 50th birthday, I’m going to indulge in my annual tradition. I’m going to share fifty nuggets of wisdom I’ve picked up during my life on this Earth.

Here are fifty principles I’ve found to be true during my fifty years on this planet:

You’ll be happier if you focus on efforts and attention only on the things you can control. Each of us has a large number of things about which we��re concerned: our health, our family, our friends, our jobs; world affairs, the plight of the poor, the threat of terrorism, the current political climate. Within that Circle of Concern, there’s a smaller subset of things over which we have actual, direct control: how much we exercise, what time we go to bed, whether we leave for work on time; what we eat, where we live, with whom we socialize. You’ll be happier and more productive if you dedicate yourself to your Circle of Control and ignore your Circle of Concern. [This notion is part of Julian Rotter’s social-learning theory of personality, but was popularized by Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.]

youtube

“Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.” — Barbara Ueland, If You Want to Write.

Also note that although I really do believe these things to be true, I also struggle with them. I’m human, just like you. I don’t always live up to my ideal self.

How many of these ideas do you agree with? Which do you disagree with? More to the point: What are the core ideas that make up your personal philosophy?

The post My life philosophy: 50 lessons from 50 years appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

* This article was originally published here

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://proshoppingservice.com/my-life-philosophy-50-lessons-from-50-years/

0 notes

garkomedia1 · 6 years ago

Text

My life philosophy: 50 lessons from 50 years

To celebrate my 50th birthday, I’m going to indulge in my annual tradition. I’m going to share fifty nuggets of wisdom I’ve picked up during my life on this Earth.

Here are fifty principles I’ve found to be true during my fifty years on this planet:

Quality tools can make life better. For years, I equated low cost with smart spending. Now I know that��s not always the case. Now, I’m willing to spend to buy high-quality things when I know I’ll use them all the time. I have high-quality boots, for instance, and an expensive computer. I’m okay with that. I walk everywhere I go, so the boots are worth it. And my computer is my livelihood. The expense is worth it because it makes working a joy. For items used daily, buy the best. If you don’t use it often, of if it’s not important to you, buy the cheapest possible.

youtube

“Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.” — Barbara Ueland, If You Want to Write.

Also note that although I really do believe these things to be true, I also struggle with them. I’m human, just like you. I don’t always live up to my ideal self.

How many of these ideas do you agree with? Which do you disagree with? More to the point: What are the core ideas that make up your personal philosophy?

The post My life philosophy: 50 lessons from 50 years appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

* This article was originally published here

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://proshoppingservice.com/my-life-philosophy-50-lessons-from-50-years/

0 notes

nicholerestrada · 6 years ago

Text

My life philosophy: 50 lessons from 50 years

To celebrate my 50th birthday, I’m going to indulge in my annual tradition. I’m going to share fifty nuggets of wisdom I’ve picked up during my life on this Earth.

Here are fifty principles I’ve found to be true during my fifty years on this planet:

youtube

“Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.” — Barbara Ueland, If You Want to Write.

Also note that although I really do believe these things to be true, I also struggle with them. I’m human, just like you. I don’t always live up to my ideal self.

How many of these ideas do you agree with? Which do you disagree with? More to the point: What are the core ideas that make up your personal philosophy?

The post My life philosophy: 50 lessons from 50 years appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

* This article was originally published here

Source: https://proshoppingservice.com/my-life-philosophy-50-lessons-from-50-years/

from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/my-life-philosophy-50-lessons-from-50-years/

0 notes

andrewdburton · 6 years ago

Text

My life philosophy: 50 lessons from 50 years

Happy birthday to me! Today, I turn fifty. Holy cats, that's old! To celebrate, over the weekend I replaced the tape deck in my 1993 Toyota pickup so that I can listen to my Taylor Swift cassette. (You think I'm joking but I'm not.)

The funny thing is, I don't feel like I'm fifty. Okay, my body feels like its fifty, but my mind doesn't. I suppose that's something that everybody says as they get older: “I feel younger than my age.” But it's true!

To celebrate my 50th birthday, I'm going to indulge in my annual tradition. I'm going to share fifty nuggets of wisdom I've picked up during my life on this Earth.

I'm no wiser or smarter than anybody else. And I'm certainly no better. But I am an individual. I'm my own person with my own personal preferences and personal experiences. These have all jumbled together over the past fifty years to give me a unique perspective on life (just as you have a unique perspective on life). To quote my favorite poem:

Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met…

So, these fifty nuggets of wisdom are things I've found to be true for me — and, I believe, for most other people. (But each of us is different. What works for me may not work for you.) These beliefs make up the core of my personal philosophy of life.

Some of these ideas are original to me. Some aren't. When I've borrowed something, I've done my best to cite my source. (And I've tried to cite the oldest source I can find. Lots of folks borrow ideas from each other. There's nothing new under the sun and all that.)

Here are fifty principles I've found to be true during my fifty years on this planet:

Self-care comes first. If you're not healthy, it's tough to be happy. Before you can take care of your friends and your family, you need to take care of yourself. Eat well. Exercise. Nurture your mind, body, and spirit. Your body is a temple; treat it like one. If you don't have your health, you've got nothing.

Life is like a lottery. You receive tickets every time you try new things and meet new people. Most of these lottery tickets won't have a pay-out, and that's okay. But every now and then, you'll hit the jackpot. The more you play — the more you say “yes” to new friends and new experiences — the more often you'll win. You can't win if you don't play. That said, however…

Don't try to change others. “Attempts to change others are rarely successful, and even then are probably not completely satisfying,” Harry Browne wrote in How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. “To accept others as they are doesn't mean you have to give into them or put up with them. You are sovereign. You own your own world. You can choose…There are millions of people out there in the world; you have a lot more to choose from than just what you see in front of you now.”

Don't allow others to try to change you. Again from How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: “You are free to live your life as you want…The demands and wishes of others don't control your life. You do. You make the decisions…There are thousands of people who wouldn't demand that you bend yourself out of shape to please them. There are people who will want you to be yourself, people who see things as you do, people who want the same things you want. Why should you have to waste your life in a futile effort to please those with whom you aren't compatible?”

Don't take things personally. When people criticize you and your actions, it's not about you — it's about them. They can't know what it's like to be you and live your life. When you take things personally, you're allowing others to control your life and your happiness. Heed the Arab proverb: “The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.” [Also one of The Four Agreements.]

Don't make assumptions. The flip side of not taking things personally is to not assume you know what's going on in other people's heads. Don't assume you know the motivations for their actions. Just as their reality doesn't reflect your reality, your life is not theirs. Give people the benefit of the doubt. [Another of The Four Agreements.]

True story: Before Kim and I moved to our current country cottage, the dog park near our home had a homeless problem. (And still does.) We early-morning walkers did our best to clean up camps when they were vacated, but it was a never-ending task. Once, I joined a new woman for a stroll down the trail. “Look at that couple,” she said, pointing to a man and a woman who were dragging a tarp down the hillside. “They just woke up and are packing up their camp.” I tried to tell her that no, they were regular dog-walkers who were pitching in to clean things up. She didn't believe me. “I'm going to report them,” she said. Classic example of a faulty assumption.

Always do your best. Your best varies from moment to moment. Some days in the gym, for instance, I'm able to lift heavier weights than on other days. Some days I can run faster than usual; some days, I'm slower. That's okay. What matters most is that I give my best effort every time. No matter what you do, do it as well as you can. This is one of the keys to success and happiness. [This is the last of The Four Agreements.]

Effort matters more than skill or talent. “Effort counts twice,” argues Angela Duckworth in Grit: The Power of Passon and Perseverance. Skill, she says, is talent multiplied by effort. The more you do what you're good at, the better you get. But achievement is the product of skill multiplied by effort. Effort counts twice. (This may be why psychologists say it's better to praise your child's efforts instead of her results. Praise her for spending time on her homework, not because she got an A.)

Embrace the imperfections. If you do what is right, and you do your best, then there's no reason to feel bad about the outcome. Nobody's perfect. Don't beat yourself up if you make mistakes. And don't sweat it if other people get upset with you too. If you're doing the best you can, that's good enough.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Too many people never get started because they don’t know that the “best” first step is. You don't know the best guitar, so you never learn to play. You don't know which Spanish book is best, so you never learn to speak. You don't know how to bench press, so you never go to the gym. Don’t worry about getting things exactly right — just choose a good option and do something to get started.

Be present in the moment. Accept life for what it is, without labels or judgment. Yield to events; don't block them. Go with the flow. Nothing exists outside the present moment: Don't dwell on the past or worry about the future. Improve the quality of the here and now. When you do something, do that thing. When you're with somebody, be with them. Don't multitask. Put away the smartphone or the computer or the book. Be all there. [This is an ancient concept made popular by The Power of Now.]

Spirituality is personal. The desire for one person (or group) to impose her (or their) beliefs on others is the source of much of this world's strife. Believe what you want, and let others do the same. “There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.” — the Dalai Lama

Be skeptical — but keep an open mind. Don't believe everything you hear — from others and from your own internal self-talk. Practice healthy skepticism. But keep an open mind. Don't automatically assume that everything is fake or false. Do your best to analyze the things you see and hear to determine whether they actually make sense.

Don't yuck someone else's yum. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's bad. Pursue your passions, and let others pursue theirs. If you don't like something, fine. Don't make a big deal about it.

You can't prevent every possible thing from going wrong. Don't even try. Instead, learn to deal effectively with minor problems. You'll build self-confidence, which will lead to an increased willingness to take calculated risks. (Similarly, you can't make everyone like you. It's foolish to try.)

Be flexible. Goals are good, but single-minded devotion to a goal can often blind a person to other opportunities. And it's a mistake to cling to one path out of sense of obligation. If you enter law school and discover you hate it, then quit. Don't endure years of misery because you feel like it's expected of you. That's dumb. You have more options than you think, but you may need to slow down and open your eyes in order to see them.

Be encouraging. Support the creative, positive actions of others. There are a lot of people out there who want to tell others what's wrong with their actions, why the things they want to do can't be done. They're quick to criticize small mistakes instead of praising the greater effort. Don't be this way. Do what you can — in ways both big and small — to help others achieve their goals. [Taken from Action Girl's Guide to Living.]

You are the author of your own life. Everyone has a story they want to tell you about yourself. Society tries to push a “standard narrative” on us about how life should go. Ignore these stories. If you don't like the story you're living, it's up to you to change the plot. You didn't write the beginning of your story, but you have the power to choose the ending. Choose and adventure you love instead of one that makes you unhappy.

You don't need permission. When we're young, we wait for our parents and teachers to say it's okay to do the things we want to do. As an adult, you don't need permission from anybody else. Do you want to quit your job and travel the world? Do it. Do you want to learn how to ride a motorcycle? Do it. Don't wait for somebody else to give you the go-ahead. You are the only one who needs to give yourself permission to do these things.

Don't let fear guide your decision-making process. My girlfriend Kim told me this on one of our first dates, and it echoes something my accountant once told me. He says that too many people make money moves based solely on the tax repercussions. “That's dumb,” he told me. “You should do what you want because you want to, not because of the tax hit.” This applies in all aspects of life. Make decisions based on what you want to do. Move toward something, not away from something.

Action cures fear. Thought creates fear; action cures it. What we're actually afraid of is the unknown. We like certainty, and choosing to do something with an uncertain outcome makes us nervous. Taking the first step can be scary, but each additional step becomes easier and easier. When you act, you remove the mystery. Action creates confidence. It creates motivation. (Most people think motivation comes before action. They're wrong. Action leads to motivation.) [This is an old idea but this phrasing is from The Magic of Thinking Big.]

Action is character. If you never did anything, you wouldn't be anybody. Superman is a superhero because he does heroic things, not because he talks about doing them. And a writer is a writer because she writes, not because she talks about writing. What we say doesn't matter; it's what we do that counts. We are what we repeatedly do. [From F. Scott Fitzgerald's notes on The Last Tycoon.]

You're more likely to regret the things you don't do than the things you do. That's not to say you should be an asshole, or that you won't regret making big mistakes. But generally speaking, you're more likely to be sorry that you didn't introduce yourself to the barista at the coffeehouse, didn't go bungee-jumping with your friends, didn't stay in touch with your friends. [This is the central idea in The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.]

Give without the expectation of return. Help other people — even if it costs a bit of money or time. Don't always expect a financial payoff. Don't get offended if your effort isn't acknowledged or appreciated. Help because it's the right thing to do, not because you want to be noticed.

Happy people almost never criticize, says Steven Pressfield in The War of Art. “If they speak at all,” he writes, “it's to offer encouragement.” This is true in my experience, as well. Being sarcastic and cutting doesn't mean that you're smarter than the people around you. Most of the time, it simply means you're an asshole. And that leads me to the next lesson…

Staying in a relationship out of a sense of obligation or pity is not a good reason. Sometimes you really do have to walk away — from a friendship, from a family member, even from a romantic partner. Yours isn't the only story in this world; sometimes it's better to be somebody else's villain than to make yourself miserable.

You have the freedom to choose how you respond to any event. In the classic Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Fankl writes, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” He based this philosophy on his personal experience in a Nazi concentration camp. When that jerk cuts you off on the freeway, you get to choose if you'll get angry or give him the benefit of the doubt. When you get stuck behind the old lady in line at the grocery store, it's up to you how to respond. When those stupid kids next door vandalize your lawn, you get to choose how you feel about it.

You'll be happier if you focus on efforts and attention only on the things you can control. Each of us has a large number of things about which we're concerned: our health, our family, our friends, our jobs; world affairs, the plight of the poor, the threat of terrorism, the current political climate. Within that Circle of Concern, there's a smaller subset of things over which we have actual, direct control: how much we exercise, what time we go to bed, whether we leave for work on time; what we eat, where we live, with whom we socialize. You'll be happier and more productive if you dedicate yourself to your Circle of Control and ignore your Circle of Concern. [This notion is part of Julian Rotter's social-learning theory of personality, but was popularized by Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.]

You can have anything you want — but you can't have everything you want. Everything is a trade-off. You have limited resources. When you choose to spend — time, money, brainwidth — on one thing, you're also choosing not to spend on others. Do your best to spend only on the things that matter most to you. Don't really give a rat's ass about Big Bang Theory? Then why are you watching it? Spend your time and energy on something you do care about.

Make room for the big rocks first. It's easy to let your time and energy be sucked up by trivial errands and tasks. You find you no longer have space for the things you thought were most important. Don't do that. Always carve out time and attention for those people and activities you value most. If the house doesn't get clean because you were hanging out with a friend, so what? If you didn't mow the lawn because you went to the gym instead, that's a good thing. Tackle the important, then the trivial.

If you want to avoid feeling overwhelmed, create margin in your life. Simplicity brings peace. Many people have tried to beat this into my head over the years, but it wasn't until I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up that I really understood. Every item you own, every meeting you schedule, every email you receive — every obligation in your life carries both psychic and physical weight. Traveling in an RV for fifteen months, I learned to love owning very little. It was freeing! And it was freeing too to not be a slave to a schedule. As much as you can, build margin into your life so that you can feel peaceful and free.

Be your own advocate. Don't be afraid to ask what you want and what you need — especially if it's help. Too often, we struggle in silence when we could make our lives better simply by asking a question or two. Better to look ignorant for a moment than to remain ignorant for a lifetime. Don't wait for others to solve your problems. Be proactive. Find answers. Take action. Learn to help yourself.

It’s always best to be proactive. In life, there are often default options. If you don’t consciously and deliberately choose something different, you get the default. When this happens, your life shapes you instead of you shaping your life. Most people go through their entire lives in default mode. They accept what life hands them without question. They're reactive. Choose to be proactive instead. If you don't set your own goals, somebody else will set them for you.

Quality tools can make life better. For years, I equated low cost with smart spending. Now I know that's not always the case. Now, I'm willing to spend to buy high-quality things when I know I'll use them all the time. I have high-quality boots, for instance, and an expensive computer. I'm okay with that. I walk everywhere I go, so the boots are worth it. And my computer is my livelihood. The expense is worth it because it makes working a joy. For items used daily, buy the best. If you don't use it often, of if it's not important to you, buy the cheapest possible.

You are the boss of you. Your circumstances might not be your fault, but they’re your responsibility. Don’t blame anyone or anything else for your situation, and don’t expect somebody else to rescue you. If you don't like where you are, resolve to do what it takes to make a change.

Don't compare yourself to others. I preach this often at Money Boss. Comparing yourself to others is counter-productive. Generally one of two things happens: You either feel shitty because you're not as good as the other person, or you feel superior because they're not as good as you. In reality, nobody is better than anybody else. We're just different. If you want to compare yourself, compare Present You to Past You — and do what you can to make Future You a better version of why you are today.

You can't get rid of a bad habit; you can only change it. “You can never truly extinguish bad habits,” writes Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit. “Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.” He calls this the Golden Rule of Habit Change. To change your habit loop, you have to do something different when the habit is triggered. Let me give you an example: I used to be a stress-eater. I'd eat junk food — and lots of it — any time I had a deadline or a conflict with a friend. The act of eating soothed my mind. The stress was the cue (the trigger), and the rush was the reward. No surprise, this habit made me fat. I've managed to (mostly) change the habit loop by walking instead of eating. Now if I get stressed, I go for a walk. I get a similar rush for a reward, but my actions are healthier.

Positive reinforcement is powerful. When Tahlequah performs a desired behavior — sitting, coming when called, being nice to the cats — we reward her. She learns to connect the treat with the actions we wants, and becomes more likely to offer them…even when we don't reward her. What's true for dogs is true for people too. Does nagging your spouse actually work? Probably not. (In fact, it probably has the opposite effect you intend!) But if you reward the behavior your want, you'll eventually see it offered without prompting. The same thing is true with children, co-workers, family members, and so on. [This is a fundamental principle of psychology. An excellent source for more info is Don't Shoot the Dog.]

youtube

Create your own certainty. Don't allow yourself to be dependent on the choices and actions of others. I call this “Michelle's Law” after my friend who taught it to me. But I have another friend — Jenn — who talks about “ensuring success”. When she's working on something important, whether it's a relationship or a vacation, she always follows up to make sure that what she expects to happen will happen. This philosophy is akin to the idea that you should trust, but verify.

Time is more valuable than money. You can always make more money…but you can't make more time. This isn't permission to spend lavishly on anything and everything just because you might get hit by a truck tomorrow. It is, however, an invitation to consider what's important to you and to focus on that. It's encouragement to get clear on your personal mission statement and to build your life around it.

It's never too late to be great. It takes time to achieve anything worthwhile. But just because you haven't started yet — or haven't reached the level your aiming for — doesn't mean you can't or won't make it happen. Don't be daunted by audacious goals. Are you fifty and want to run a marathon? Start training. Are you sixty and only now thinking of retirement? That's okay. Better late than never. Are you seventy and want to write a novel? Do it. History is filled with examples of folks who achieve great things later in life. [This argument is made persuasively by Tom Butler-Bowdon in his book, Never Too Late to Be Great.]

Be yourself. This is the most important thing I've learned during my 49 years of life. For too long, I tried to please others. I tried to be and do the things I thought they wanted me to be and do. As a result, I was unhappy. And most of the time, my actions didn't have the results I thought they would. They didn't make others like me any better. Instead of trying to please others, now I'm just me. I'm honest about who I am and what I want. Maybe some of my old friends don't like who I've become. That's okay. I've made plenty of people who do like who I am.

“Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.” — Barbara Ueland, If You Want to Write.

This isn't a comprehensive list of my beliefs, but it's a fair survey of my life philosophy. It has evolved from my philosophy when I was forty or thirty. And I'm sure that my philosophy at sixty will have changed in ways that I cannot foresee right now.

Also note that although I really do believe these things to be true, I also struggle with them. I'm human, just like you. I don't always live up to my ideal self.

How many of these ideas do you agree with? Which do you disagree with? More to the point: What are the core ideas that make up your personal philosophy?

The post My life philosophy: 50 lessons from 50 years appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/my-life-philosophy/ via http://www.rssmix.com/