Latest Posts

Ryan Adams – 1989

When Taylor Swift finally dropped 1989 last year, it’s success was hardly a surprise. The singer’s new album had felt like the final chapter in her carefully cultivated image as pop’s biggest underdog. Going back to her debut as a teenage country star who’s lyrics read with the vulnerability of a livejournal entry, she was pop music’s ultimate good-girl. But the moment Kanye stepped up on that stage, both were cast in roles in the public eye that would define them for years: Kanye the asshole and Taylor the victim. With every successive album since then, using her every girl persona her private life as the base of her lyrics, Swift increasingly drew a portrait of her life as someone constantly downtrodden, defiantly picking themselves up. In the process, her music became increasingly poppy and her songwriting grew sharper. This finally culminated in 1989, the triumphant pop album that with the[...]

Taylor Swift’s 1989 and Your Taste in Music

Taylor Swift’s album 1989 dropped this week, marking a full departure from her cosmopolitan country-pop sound. Vocally, she is breathy, jaded, lower than before. Musically, there is less guitar and more echoing drums. Everyone is freaking out about it—in its opening week, it’s probably going to break a million sales. Smart Girls on Stupid Music go off again on their favorite Taylor tracks and what they think about your taste in music. Sarah: I am excited for 1989, though after an initial listen-through, I wonder if the lyrical handling of heart-heavy subjects is not as skillful as Taylor Swift’s material has been in the past (i.e. “Haters gonna hate, hate, hate”). What I’m most interested in is the wildly positive reception the album has received so far. Is it because it’s full on pop, and doesn’t have the country (ok, faux-country) label tagged to it? After all, we did grow[...]

Taylor Swift – “Out of the Woods”

Sarah and Moira are the queens of over thinking and the proud embarrassments of your Spotify feed. They chat about life, love, Buffalo, pop culture, social justice for sensitive girls, and pop music. They feel feminist guilt. They wax poetic. Today’s topic? Taylor Swift released a new song at midnight: “Out of the Woods.” Listen to “Out of the Woods” here (at least until we can get an embedded code).

Taylor Swift – “Shake It Off”

The popular image of pathetic-failure-chic is tired as hell. See: He’s Just Not That Into You, Girl Most Likely, and other movies in which potentially capable women get sucked into very cute, very milquetoast humiliations and histrionics. Taylor Swift can often be the aural embodiment of perpetuating those stereotypes. Girls! It’s Victimhood lite! Now in adorable and sassy flavors. The Bechdel Test is just based on a little conversation between two characters in a 1985 comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For by Allison Bechdel. It is usually applied to film, but it works for other media. All the film/album/novel/what-have-you needs is a) at least two women who b) have conversations c) about something other than a man. The heteronormativity and the perfect image of a relationship, the super sublime womanhood and manhood we’re supposed to aspire to, really does run so deep that the art which rewards this complex[...]