Taylor Swift IS the new Arya Stark!

[lazarus]

Another great line from The 1 is:

We never painted by the numbers babe
But we were making it count



Also, I have to say that as dubious as her winning her third Album of the Year Grammy by the age of 32 would be, I think she'd really deserve it this year? Considering that it was recorded and released quickly during quarantine, it's a great representative for 2020.

Certainly better than Haim, Post Malone, or Cockplay winning, that's for sure.

Looking back at TS's previous wins, it seems like the popular consensus is that 1989 should not have won over To Pimp a Butterfly. So it would be less contentious if she were up for her second now and not her third.

When Fearless won, the competition wasn't that great, to be honest. Beyonce's Sasha Fierce album was not her finest hour, and I guess Gaga's The Fame was a big deal that year but honestly I think The Fame Monster is superior. Her other competition for AOTY was Dave Matthews Band and Black Eyed Peas, so while I haven't heard Fearless yet I'm going to assume she was the best of that lineup.

Anyway, I'll be rooting for her, since Fetch The Bolt Cutters is shamefully missing from the nominees.

[LemonMelon]

Dua Lipa's album is my favorite of the batch that I have heard, but Folklore would be a reasonable enough choice and the one I expect will be made.

[lazarus]

So I downloaded about 6 podcast episodes from various shows discussing Folklore/Evermore (when I go in, I’m all in), and there’s a great one from Rolling Stone where Rob Sheffield is geeking out he’s such a huge fan. Anyway they were discussing how it must have been liberating for TS to be able to make music in the way she wanted without worrying about how it might go over on what would have been her next arena/stadium tour (since cancelled like everything else).

Then host Brian Hiatt mentioned the time he was in the studio with U2 writing a story, and that they got into a argument with Brian Eno about a certain direction he was steering them in, and that the band were concerned with this very problem—how the songs would go over in a stadium.

It was clear this was from the No Line recording sessions, and my god it was just depressing to hear. We’re lucky we even got tracks like Fez, Cedars, even MOS. But the compromise was clearly driven by something that didn’t have anything to do with the music, and more with the promotion of that music.

[gump]

These guys would have nixed Bad because it was too long for a live show.

"Let's record these terrible songs, because then we can play them live" is definitely a winning strategy. So much so that they abandoned even the better songs from that album in the final legs of that tour.

For a favorite band, I really, really hate U2 sometimes.

[cobl04]

It’s that sort of shit that makes me want to denounce my fandom. Fucking cunts.

[namkcuR]

It shouldn't be surprising though. It probably gets to the crux of the difference between pre-ATYCLB U2 and 21st century U2.

Look at ZooTV. It was an astonishing success, probably the most important, beloved, critically acclaimed tour of their career, representing their absolute peak for many. The band only broke even on that tour, because they were paying for it out of their own pockets. Afterward, they simply decided that they did not want to ever again put in the time, energy, and effort into mounting a tour of that size, scale, and length, and not see some profit from it. As such, Popmart was the first tour where they really accepted outside funding in a big way. A google search says it was a Canadian promotor by the name of Michel Cohl.

It is a given that if somebody invests a shit ton of money in your business, they want to see a return on that investment. Long story short, it seems that this guy expected Popmart to make something like $80M more than it did. This might explain why those shows in the half-empty stadiums were so upsetting to the band. Because they were losing someone else's money.

If you want to put on tours of the size and scale that U2 do, and you want to make money, you need to get outside money to pay for the thing. But if you take outside money, a large part of the endeavor becomes about making the investor(s) happy. And I think this probably drives a significant amount of the band's decision-making for the last two decades. In order for things to really change, I think they'd need to either dramatically downscale their touring, or eschew the outside money and accept breaking-even on the mega-tours.

Re: Eno and the band clashing on NLOTH, I think that's already been known. Eno was upset enough that he vocally complained, via Rolling Stone, about the band leaving Winter off the album. Perhaps it's not surprising that they haven't worked together since.

Sorry for de-railing the Swift thread.

[cobl04]

That's a good insight I hadn't thought of (though how do we know they were funding ZooTV? Bill Flanagan's book?) and explains quite a bit.

And this will be no surprise, but I'm siding with Eno. The Streets anomaly aside, he's been right every step of the way, and the very next album after NLOTH is comfortably the shittest of their career, AND they decided to make the insanely stupid decision to force it onto everyone's phones, a decision that still has implications today.

[bono_212]

I honestly still think Eno was RIGHT about Streets in a theoretical sense. They were spending too much time on it. Who knows, maybe it could've been BETTER.

[lazarus]

I don't think the dispute was only about Winter, but until we hear the earlier versions of the rest of the No Net songs we're never know how much they beefed them up.

Anyway, to balance out the praise I've doled out for some choice Taylor lines (another great one, naturally, is from The 1: "In my defense I have none"), the worst line of the year has to be "I come back stronger than a 90s trend", from Willow on Evermore. Of course, it's what she has quoted on her Instagram page.

[gump]

To bring this back to Taylor, I thought Fantano had a good point (basically Zola Jesus had that point - I can't find the tweet but it's in the video, she criticized Swift for "cosplaying as indie artist" when actual indie artists are really struggling" - and he echoed it to some extent):

https://www.youtube.com/embed/SbuDMoPwOSs

[scottyT]

Wow, I forgot about Winter, and just listened to both versions again. What an awesome song.

Taylor..... well...... my wife is happy about the new music. so that's good.

[lazarus]

Was listening to the New York Times “Popcast” panel on Evermore, and Jon Pareles dubbed Taylor’s 2020 quarantine albums “Use Your Seclusion I and II”.

Brilliant.

[lazarus]

Has anyone else thought the vocal melody on the chorus of Champagne Problems sounds a little familiar?

It finally hit me that I was thinking of Shuttlecock's Ahimsa, the "this is an invitation to a high location" pre-chorus.

You're welcome/I'm sorry.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

If you sing Bon Iver's part at the end of Exile in a Yogi Bear voice, it works.

This is my contribution.

[lazarus]

He definitely seems smarter than your average collaborator.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

For reals... Try it next time.

Doooo step right out!
There is book amount
Of pic-i-nic baskets I can eat