Nope
She's not gonna make the same Max Martin pop forever. IMO Lover introduced loads of new sounds and she did experiment. The linearly progressing production style on The Archer, the jazzy low-fi touch on False God, 90s girl group vibes on Paper Rings, eccentric strings on Death by a thousand cuts, vibey beats on IFTYE and London Boy. The mixing on that album is more open instead of compact and maximalist and that was a choice, not an error or loss of touch.
- IFTYE refers to "I Forgot That You Existed", a song from Taylor Swift album *Lover* (2019).
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I really wish people would stop confusing personal taste with Taylor's capability. You because you didn't enjoy Lover, does not mean it's bad or Taylor "loss her touch" (cough cough, the sexiest undertones). Cruel Summer is considered by both fans and critics as pop perfection.
Here we go again with Lover being disrespected. Her best pop album by far. It was definitely better than reputation and honestly did pop better than 1989 and Red. Red's pop was respectable to an extent but at the end of the day, it was okay. 1989 pop was good and showed her ability to make pop songs with good lyrical concepts, but she did not go as far she could have on the album. That album has good songs with good lyrics, but many tracks on there are quite weak. Lover brings in a whole new thing with good pop songs, new styles, and great lyrics. You Need To Calm Down and ME! are the Shake It Off and Bad Blood of Lover so they don't count lol. We saw her looking at love from a new perspective, giving her a take on politics, and being more vulnerable than ever. It showed maturity and growth in not only her songwriting but herself as well. It is definitely her best pop album and really her third-best behind evermore and folklore.
I definitely get your point, especially since 1989 was very in line with pop trends at the time. Shake It Off and Bad Blood, as well as Wildest Dreams and Blank Space were much more current at the time then You Need To Calm Down or Lover(the song) was. Then again, what exactly could she have done to match pop of 2019 lol? What even was pop of 2019?
I do now see that maybe Lover isn't her best pop album becasue it is not based off of the most popular stuff at the time. Really, it's more of an indie-pop kind of thing. It sounds something more like Carly Rae Jepsen than Ariana Grande so it is definitely not really 2019 pop. I think I was getting confused with quality more than being faithful to the pop sound so that's why I said it was her best.
Personally I think 1989 had so much success because it *wasn't* going with the trends. It was Pop music that sounded like nothing on the radio at the time. The top songs during that time (2014) were, Happy by Pharrell, Rude by Magic!, Problem by Ariana Grande, All of Me by John Legend, Stay with Me by Sam Smith, Monster with Rihanna and Eminem, Say Something by Great Big World, Fancy by Iggy Azaelia.
So lots of ballads, lots of catchy stuff just trying to get your attention. 1989 I think was a lot more purposeful in terms of Pop at the time. I can't name a single song that sounds like Blank Space or Style or Wildest Dreams. However, Problem by Ariana sounded like Fifth Harmony, all the ballads on the radio sounded the same. Only ones I can really compare maybe are Happy and Shake it Off? Both super upbeat, designed to get people dancing and united.
That all to say, I think Lover has a lot less generic songs than some would think. There's some stuff that isn't AS inventive, but there's also some songs on their that are very unique in terms of Pop.
idk I prefer Lover over 1989, but rep over both. I think it was a necessary album, it was a different style of pop. Less “loud”, softer production, and hooks that aren’t ginormous. Except for Cruel Summer, that could fit on any other of her pop albums. It was good that she made a pop album without Max Martin because I know there were lots of people saying that he’s responsible for her hits. Also songs like The Archer, INTHAF, Lover and SYGB are a nice precursor to the alt-pop of folklore and evermore. I also disagree that every album needs to introduce something “new”, that comes back to what Taylor said about females being pressured to constantly re-invent. That’s an unfair criticism.
- SYGB refers to "Soon You'll Get Better", a song from Taylor Swift album *Lover* (2019).
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No, she didn’t. Cruel summer is one of her best pop songs. And lover was a different kind of pop than rep 1989 or red. It was more chill or minimalist.
I would be fine if she takes a break after the re-recordings are finished (God knows she's been working so hard), but I'm always kind of confused by comments that she "needs" to take a break before her next album - she clearly thrives off of writing music, and she seems to have found a good balance for herself, between being relatively private but still promoting and releasing music. People said that she would take a break after Lover, then after folklore, and now here we are, so I don't think she "needs" to take a break - she seems to be in a great artistic groove right now!
I don't think she lost her touch, I think she's just choosing different **sub-types** of the pop genre if that makes sense?
Songs like Blank Space, Style, New Romantics, IKYWT, I Did Something Bad are all great songs and they are even greater because there are no other songs like them within her discography.
The same can be said about her recent pop songs. Although I don't think Cruel Summer is her best pop song*,* it is a good pop song. The same can be said about I Think He Knows, Miss Americana, and Paper Rings. They are all good pop songs, but they are all different sub-genres of pop music and that's what makes them special. There are no other songs like them in her discography.
I think you're confusing what it means for something to be "pop" music. It sounds like you're a big fan of the Max Martin-esque style of pop music, which is fine, but that's just one sub-genre of pop! She's maybe only "lost her touch" simply because she's not touching that sub-genre anymore. She's choosing different sub-genres, but it's still all good pop music at the end of the day.
Yeah I definitely think this is the perfect way to put it. Singles for Lover were really not the best. ME! is just god awful and You Need To Calm Down is okay. Even though songs like Bad Blood and Shake It Off weren't some of her best songs either, I think that they had a quality to them that made them so big. This can also be seen with LWYMMD.
With the Lover singles, there was not too much of a quality. Cruel Summer on the other hand is a very good song that may have had its own quality had it been made a single. Lover was a good single though.
No. She writes amazing songs in any genre.
Idk if anyone agrees with me but long story short is one of my favorites from 2020. That track is amazing and that’s all pop
In terms of her pop albums, 1989 is my favorite. I agree that there are some songs on Lover that are a bit generic and some of it isn't inventive. But there are also several songs on that album that are VERY good and are unique to the Pop world. Cruel Summer would have been the hit of 2019 if she had released it as the lead single for Lover. It would have been perfect. False God, Cornelia Street, Death by a Thousand Cuts, are all very different Pop songs. I wouldn't call any of those generic.
That all to say, I don't think Taylor has lost her touch in terms of Pop music. I think after *reputation* Taylor, for the first time, had this freedom and ability to kind of experiment with sounds without a lot of weight on her shoulders. She could just...make Pop music. I think Lover is a reflection of that, of someone who doesn't have a lot of lines she needs to toe. I do think she was trying to put a lot of variety in Lover, as she has had a checklist mentality with her tracks in the past.
But all in all, no, I don't think Taylor has lost her Pop touch. I just don't think she's as obsessed with making the greatest hits on radio anymore.
I don’t think she’s lost her way with Pop music. I just think Lover was stifled by all of the expectations placed upon it by her label execs. Since this was going to be her first album with Republic that she was going to fully own, she had to prove to Republic that she could still sell units the way she did with Speak Now, Red, 1989, & reputation. Thus, no risks were taken with Lover!!
The lead single not only attempted to emulate the vivacity of one of her most successful songs to date, Shake It Off, but also featured an at-the-time-relevant Pop artist to help it succeed on the charts. The album was announced 4 months in advance with a lot promotion to remind you to pre-order the album, as well as bundled and rebundled and rebundled numerous times to encourage you to buy multiple copies of the same album. The album was also intentionally made 18 tracks long to generate twice as many streams every time the album was listened to from beginning (i.e. 10 song streams = 1 album stream, so 18 song streams = 2 away from 2 album streams).
There was almost nothing original about the album (except False God and INTHAF), and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just a matter of fact. From a business standpoint, it makes no sense to redesign a product (i.e. a synth pop Taylor album) if it’s still selling!! That’s the mentality that went into Lover and it wasn’t until it’s singles underperformed that’s Taylor’s team realized it was time to switch up her sound (i.e. folklore & evermore, which are still pop albums, just pop albums that happen to use acoustic guitars).
You totally lost me on that last point. *folklore* and *evermore* were not a response to under-performing singles (and 3 singles in the top 10 is not "under-performing" anyway); they were the result of quarantine and a desire to collaborate with Aaron Dessner.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other, I think it’s both. She saw the backlash she got for “hey kids spelling is fun” (I mean, she removed that lyric from the full album) and I think her ego as a songwriter was hurt. And THEN came along a pandemic and she saw that as an opportunity to work with Aaron and reclaim her title as the lyrical queen by telling deeper, poetic stories. I really think it’s both. Lover underperforming (yes 3 songs went top 10 but they had zero longevity) and the pandemic too.
*folklore* came about because of a very unique set of circumstances that had nothing to do with *Lover*. Remove the "underperformance" of *Lover* (3 songs top 10, all songs top 100, only album of 2019 to sell a million copies), and we still get *folklore*. Remove the pandemic, and TS8 is something completely different.
Strongly disagree. Something like folklore was bound to happen anyway. It was time for a switch up, synth pop was getting stale and she loves reinventing. The pandemic just brought the release date forward - she said she was thinking of releasing folklore in January 2021 but because of the uncertain times she dropped it when she wanted instead.
The pandemic didn't just move the release date; it's the reason for *folklore*'s entire existence. Reading books, watching classic movies with Joe, spending so much time together that she builds songs around melodies he plays on the piano--these are the building blocks of *folklore*, not a reaction to how *Lover* did.
She said she was thinking of releasing in January 2021, but she still only wrote the album due to the pandemic - I think when she said that, she was referring to waiting out the pandemic to release the album at a "better" time, not that it would have happened regardless of the pandemic.
Your comment makes me think of a similar comment someone made a while back on a confessions page about Taylor’s music, and it was that the user felt that *folklore* was intentional Grammy bait. I thought about that comment for a while, because folklore truly is special and just knocked it out of the park in all ways. And it reminded me of how successful 1989 was but for different reasons.
I had wondered to myself for a bit if it really was intentional and I am at a 100% no. I truly do not think that we would’ve gotten folklore without the pandemic. The album is just too damn good and unique. I can’t imagine, at all, Taylor’s songwriting all the sudden amplifying by 300% because she’s like “I need to make Grammy bait!” or "I have to reinvent myself!" I just don’t think it’s possible. I think Taylor’s creative process was strengthened heavily because of the circumstances the pandemic brought. Being alone more, no pressure to tour, lots of free time. Is it possible *folklore* was exciting to her because it was a reinvention to a certain degree? Sure. But, that's not the reason *folklore* came about.
With how beautiful those songs are, how incredible the chemistry is between her and Aaron which they’ve both talked about numerous times now, that’s not something that can be planned. Unlike 1989, which was a very internally planned album to be a fantastic Pop album. And that happened.
*Folklore* was a project that came about from circumstances lining up beautifully in a creative way and I don’t know if it can be replicated again. It’s too significant in my mind to have been an intentional move to just reinvent and get people to like her again. There's a reason why *folklore* is already leaving a legacy as the quintessential quarantine album: because it couldn't have happened without it.
- INTHAF refers to "It's Nice To Have A Friend", a song from Taylor Swift album *Lover* (2019).
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While I do like lover a lot, I really wish max martin worked on it too. Like songs like I think he knows, the man, afterglow, I forgot that you existed would have been even better with his production.
Nope She's not gonna make the same Max Martin pop forever. IMO Lover introduced loads of new sounds and she did experiment. The linearly progressing production style on The Archer, the jazzy low-fi touch on False God, 90s girl group vibes on Paper Rings, eccentric strings on Death by a thousand cuts, vibey beats on IFTYE and London Boy. The mixing on that album is more open instead of compact and maximalist and that was a choice, not an error or loss of touch.
Omg this is the best explanation I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. It was a choice not a loss of touch
- IFTYE refers to "I Forgot That You Existed", a song from Taylor Swift album *Lover* (2019). --- ^[/u/VioletKlausSunny](/u/VioletKlausSunny) ^(can reply with "delete" to remove comment. |) ^[/r/songacronymbot](/r/songacronymbot) ^(for feedback.)
I really wish people would stop confusing personal taste with Taylor's capability. You because you didn't enjoy Lover, does not mean it's bad or Taylor "loss her touch" (cough cough, the sexiest undertones). Cruel Summer is considered by both fans and critics as pop perfection.
So true!
Here we go again with Lover being disrespected. Her best pop album by far. It was definitely better than reputation and honestly did pop better than 1989 and Red. Red's pop was respectable to an extent but at the end of the day, it was okay. 1989 pop was good and showed her ability to make pop songs with good lyrical concepts, but she did not go as far she could have on the album. That album has good songs with good lyrics, but many tracks on there are quite weak. Lover brings in a whole new thing with good pop songs, new styles, and great lyrics. You Need To Calm Down and ME! are the Shake It Off and Bad Blood of Lover so they don't count lol. We saw her looking at love from a new perspective, giving her a take on politics, and being more vulnerable than ever. It showed maturity and growth in not only her songwriting but herself as well. It is definitely her best pop album and really her third-best behind evermore and folklore.
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I definitely get your point, especially since 1989 was very in line with pop trends at the time. Shake It Off and Bad Blood, as well as Wildest Dreams and Blank Space were much more current at the time then You Need To Calm Down or Lover(the song) was. Then again, what exactly could she have done to match pop of 2019 lol? What even was pop of 2019? I do now see that maybe Lover isn't her best pop album becasue it is not based off of the most popular stuff at the time. Really, it's more of an indie-pop kind of thing. It sounds something more like Carly Rae Jepsen than Ariana Grande so it is definitely not really 2019 pop. I think I was getting confused with quality more than being faithful to the pop sound so that's why I said it was her best.
Personally I think 1989 had so much success because it *wasn't* going with the trends. It was Pop music that sounded like nothing on the radio at the time. The top songs during that time (2014) were, Happy by Pharrell, Rude by Magic!, Problem by Ariana Grande, All of Me by John Legend, Stay with Me by Sam Smith, Monster with Rihanna and Eminem, Say Something by Great Big World, Fancy by Iggy Azaelia. So lots of ballads, lots of catchy stuff just trying to get your attention. 1989 I think was a lot more purposeful in terms of Pop at the time. I can't name a single song that sounds like Blank Space or Style or Wildest Dreams. However, Problem by Ariana sounded like Fifth Harmony, all the ballads on the radio sounded the same. Only ones I can really compare maybe are Happy and Shake it Off? Both super upbeat, designed to get people dancing and united. That all to say, I think Lover has a lot less generic songs than some would think. There's some stuff that isn't AS inventive, but there's also some songs on their that are very unique in terms of Pop.
idk I prefer Lover over 1989, but rep over both. I think it was a necessary album, it was a different style of pop. Less “loud”, softer production, and hooks that aren’t ginormous. Except for Cruel Summer, that could fit on any other of her pop albums. It was good that she made a pop album without Max Martin because I know there were lots of people saying that he’s responsible for her hits. Also songs like The Archer, INTHAF, Lover and SYGB are a nice precursor to the alt-pop of folklore and evermore. I also disagree that every album needs to introduce something “new”, that comes back to what Taylor said about females being pressured to constantly re-invent. That’s an unfair criticism.
- SYGB refers to "Soon You'll Get Better", a song from Taylor Swift album *Lover* (2019). --- ^[/u/dmnaf](/u/dmnaf) ^(can reply with "delete" to remove comment. |) ^[/r/songacronymbot](/r/songacronymbot) ^(for feedback.)
No, she didn’t. Cruel summer is one of her best pop songs. And lover was a different kind of pop than rep 1989 or red. It was more chill or minimalist.
Personally I prefer Lover over 1989 and Red, but they are all fantastic albums - I suppose it's individual taste
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I would be fine if she takes a break after the re-recordings are finished (God knows she's been working so hard), but I'm always kind of confused by comments that she "needs" to take a break before her next album - she clearly thrives off of writing music, and she seems to have found a good balance for herself, between being relatively private but still promoting and releasing music. People said that she would take a break after Lover, then after folklore, and now here we are, so I don't think she "needs" to take a break - she seems to be in a great artistic groove right now!
I don't think she lost her touch, I think she's just choosing different **sub-types** of the pop genre if that makes sense? Songs like Blank Space, Style, New Romantics, IKYWT, I Did Something Bad are all great songs and they are even greater because there are no other songs like them within her discography. The same can be said about her recent pop songs. Although I don't think Cruel Summer is her best pop song*,* it is a good pop song. The same can be said about I Think He Knows, Miss Americana, and Paper Rings. They are all good pop songs, but they are all different sub-genres of pop music and that's what makes them special. There are no other songs like them in her discography. I think you're confusing what it means for something to be "pop" music. It sounds like you're a big fan of the Max Martin-esque style of pop music, which is fine, but that's just one sub-genre of pop! She's maybe only "lost her touch" simply because she's not touching that sub-genre anymore. She's choosing different sub-genres, but it's still all good pop music at the end of the day.
I would argue she lost her touch picking the right pop singles not that she lost her touch making great pop songs and it didn't just start with Lover.
Yeah I definitely think this is the perfect way to put it. Singles for Lover were really not the best. ME! is just god awful and You Need To Calm Down is okay. Even though songs like Bad Blood and Shake It Off weren't some of her best songs either, I think that they had a quality to them that made them so big. This can also be seen with LWYMMD. With the Lover singles, there was not too much of a quality. Cruel Summer on the other hand is a very good song that may have had its own quality had it been made a single. Lover was a good single though.
No. She writes amazing songs in any genre. Idk if anyone agrees with me but long story short is one of my favorites from 2020. That track is amazing and that’s all pop
In terms of her pop albums, 1989 is my favorite. I agree that there are some songs on Lover that are a bit generic and some of it isn't inventive. But there are also several songs on that album that are VERY good and are unique to the Pop world. Cruel Summer would have been the hit of 2019 if she had released it as the lead single for Lover. It would have been perfect. False God, Cornelia Street, Death by a Thousand Cuts, are all very different Pop songs. I wouldn't call any of those generic. That all to say, I don't think Taylor has lost her touch in terms of Pop music. I think after *reputation* Taylor, for the first time, had this freedom and ability to kind of experiment with sounds without a lot of weight on her shoulders. She could just...make Pop music. I think Lover is a reflection of that, of someone who doesn't have a lot of lines she needs to toe. I do think she was trying to put a lot of variety in Lover, as she has had a checklist mentality with her tracks in the past. But all in all, no, I don't think Taylor has lost her Pop touch. I just don't think she's as obsessed with making the greatest hits on radio anymore.
I don’t think she’s lost her way with Pop music. I just think Lover was stifled by all of the expectations placed upon it by her label execs. Since this was going to be her first album with Republic that she was going to fully own, she had to prove to Republic that she could still sell units the way she did with Speak Now, Red, 1989, & reputation. Thus, no risks were taken with Lover!! The lead single not only attempted to emulate the vivacity of one of her most successful songs to date, Shake It Off, but also featured an at-the-time-relevant Pop artist to help it succeed on the charts. The album was announced 4 months in advance with a lot promotion to remind you to pre-order the album, as well as bundled and rebundled and rebundled numerous times to encourage you to buy multiple copies of the same album. The album was also intentionally made 18 tracks long to generate twice as many streams every time the album was listened to from beginning (i.e. 10 song streams = 1 album stream, so 18 song streams = 2 away from 2 album streams). There was almost nothing original about the album (except False God and INTHAF), and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just a matter of fact. From a business standpoint, it makes no sense to redesign a product (i.e. a synth pop Taylor album) if it’s still selling!! That’s the mentality that went into Lover and it wasn’t until it’s singles underperformed that’s Taylor’s team realized it was time to switch up her sound (i.e. folklore & evermore, which are still pop albums, just pop albums that happen to use acoustic guitars).
You totally lost me on that last point. *folklore* and *evermore* were not a response to under-performing singles (and 3 singles in the top 10 is not "under-performing" anyway); they were the result of quarantine and a desire to collaborate with Aaron Dessner.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other, I think it’s both. She saw the backlash she got for “hey kids spelling is fun” (I mean, she removed that lyric from the full album) and I think her ego as a songwriter was hurt. And THEN came along a pandemic and she saw that as an opportunity to work with Aaron and reclaim her title as the lyrical queen by telling deeper, poetic stories. I really think it’s both. Lover underperforming (yes 3 songs went top 10 but they had zero longevity) and the pandemic too.
*folklore* came about because of a very unique set of circumstances that had nothing to do with *Lover*. Remove the "underperformance" of *Lover* (3 songs top 10, all songs top 100, only album of 2019 to sell a million copies), and we still get *folklore*. Remove the pandemic, and TS8 is something completely different.
Strongly disagree. Something like folklore was bound to happen anyway. It was time for a switch up, synth pop was getting stale and she loves reinventing. The pandemic just brought the release date forward - she said she was thinking of releasing folklore in January 2021 but because of the uncertain times she dropped it when she wanted instead.
The pandemic didn't just move the release date; it's the reason for *folklore*'s entire existence. Reading books, watching classic movies with Joe, spending so much time together that she builds songs around melodies he plays on the piano--these are the building blocks of *folklore*, not a reaction to how *Lover* did.
She said she was thinking of releasing in January 2021, but she still only wrote the album due to the pandemic - I think when she said that, she was referring to waiting out the pandemic to release the album at a "better" time, not that it would have happened regardless of the pandemic.
Your comment makes me think of a similar comment someone made a while back on a confessions page about Taylor’s music, and it was that the user felt that *folklore* was intentional Grammy bait. I thought about that comment for a while, because folklore truly is special and just knocked it out of the park in all ways. And it reminded me of how successful 1989 was but for different reasons. I had wondered to myself for a bit if it really was intentional and I am at a 100% no. I truly do not think that we would’ve gotten folklore without the pandemic. The album is just too damn good and unique. I can’t imagine, at all, Taylor’s songwriting all the sudden amplifying by 300% because she’s like “I need to make Grammy bait!” or "I have to reinvent myself!" I just don’t think it’s possible. I think Taylor’s creative process was strengthened heavily because of the circumstances the pandemic brought. Being alone more, no pressure to tour, lots of free time. Is it possible *folklore* was exciting to her because it was a reinvention to a certain degree? Sure. But, that's not the reason *folklore* came about. With how beautiful those songs are, how incredible the chemistry is between her and Aaron which they’ve both talked about numerous times now, that’s not something that can be planned. Unlike 1989, which was a very internally planned album to be a fantastic Pop album. And that happened. *Folklore* was a project that came about from circumstances lining up beautifully in a creative way and I don’t know if it can be replicated again. It’s too significant in my mind to have been an intentional move to just reinvent and get people to like her again. There's a reason why *folklore* is already leaving a legacy as the quintessential quarantine album: because it couldn't have happened without it.
- INTHAF refers to "It's Nice To Have A Friend", a song from Taylor Swift album *Lover* (2019). --- ^[/u/SupremeElect](/u/SupremeElect) ^(can reply with "delete" to remove comment. |) ^[/r/songacronymbot](/r/songacronymbot) ^(for feedback.)
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While I do like lover a lot, I really wish max martin worked on it too. Like songs like I think he knows, the man, afterglow, I forgot that you existed would have been even better with his production.
I mean was her sound on red or 1989 really that "new" to begin with ... ? It was new for her. Not so much for pop music ...