Salon.com > Taylor Swift

“Hunger Games,” Taylor Swift reinvent soundtracks

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Clad in a modest dress and made up to look like she’s not made up, Taylor Swift wanders pensively through a bare wilderness in her new video for “Safe & Sound.” It’s the first single from the upcoming “Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond” and a rarity in today’s pop landscape: a true soundtrack hit. The clip, which was directed by Philip Andelman, strives for Post-Apocalyptic Rural; you almost expect to see zombies off in the mist, lumbering toward brains. But nothing attacks Swift on her walk through the wilderness, and the only activity she encounters are fires off in the distance — an omen of storms and doom approaching.

Nothing much happens in the video, but its muted color palette, patient pace, and most of all that looming threat make it unusually effective. With its piercing guitar theme and the subdued production courtesy of T Bone Burnett, the song reflects that mood, even as it gives so much time over to lyric-less passages. Swift may be better casting than even Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the heroine Katniss Everdeen in the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ young-adult novel. The 22-year-old singer-songwriter is arguably the most successful musician of the moment, and her two songs — “Safe and Sound” and “Eyes Open” — will ensure that the “Hunger Games” soundtrack will sell very well.

National Review contributor declares Taylor Swift winner of GOP debate

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:18:00 +0000

Let's check in with National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez, shall we? Lopez, the world's greatest political blogger, has made two very compelling points about last night's Republican debate. The first, made shortly after it ended:

In all seriousness, it cannot be easy to be governor of Texas and run for president at the same time.

That is the entirety of the post. (Commenter "motherofthetroops": "K-Lo, I say this in Christian love: what Perry is to debaters, you are to Corner commentators." People who preface things with "I say this in Christian love" are people who are about to say something awful to you, usually.)

This morning, she published a longer reaction to last night's debate, informed by a night of careful consideration. "These candidates aren’t half bad," she declares. "I do wish Santorum would have his moment," she sighs, wistfully, imagining herself chastely holding hands with the former senator on a lovely spring day as they block the entrance of a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Justin Bieber wins country music award

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 16:10:00 +0000

Justin Bieber won a CMT Music Award last night. Why not? If Gwyneth Paltrow gets to perform at the CMA awards (which is different than the CMT Music Awards, but not really), why shouldn't little Bieber get a statue? At this point, Hollywood has so infiltrated the country music scene – we can thank Nicole Kidman pairing up with Keith Urban for that one – and vice-versa (Lady Antebellum sweeping the Grammys this year, Taylor Swift, etc.), that it's difficult to claim that country music isn't already mainstream music.

Still though, is Justin Bieber country music? His award came in the form of Collaborative Video of the Year for his song 'That Should Be Me," featuring Rascal Flatts. Does it fit the specifications required of country music? Hard to say.

Taylor Swift’s “Mean” doesn’t equate to “It Gets Better”

Mon, 09 May 2011 21:10:00 +0000

Taylor Swift's "Mean" might be interpreted as the country singer's attempt at an "It Gets Better" song, especially since the video features a kid wearing purple who just wants to read a damn Vogue in peace. I'd advise against this reading, though, since the whole point of "It Gets Better" -- or any anti-bullying message, really -- is that someone from a place of authority is telling you that they've been there, they know how tough it can be.

Sorry, kids, Taylor Swift has not "been there," as is clearly evidenced in her own fantastical bully scenario, which involves a guy dressed like Snidely Whiplash tying her to the train tracks. That is some damsel in distress imagery, which really doesn't scream "It gets better," so much as "I am the definition of heterosexual norms." (Not to mention the somewhat offensive cutaway to the kid in purple when Taylor sings, "And you, picking on the weaker man." Are gay kids inherently weak?)

From what Taylor shows us in the video, she is so far from ever having been bullied that she immediately equates it with some fairy-tale vision of evil.

10 year time capsule: The (re)branding of country music

Tue, 03 May 2011 19:07:00 +0000

Country music has enjoyed a resurgence in the past decade, and while it may be a little derivative to give all the credit to the surge of patriotism that Americans felt post-9/11, consider this: In May 2001, the Country Music Association took heat from its fans when it officially changed its slogan to "Admit it. You love us."

The message was clear to anyone reading between the lines. If you liked country music back in the early part of the aughts, you hid that love, like a high-school girl who only listens to musicals. (Hey, I can relate.) The CMA even issued a statement, saying the quote was "a challenge to everyone who has ever connected with a country song or a specific artist but may not feel a current connection to the format as a whole or is reluctant to share their enjoyment of the music with others." Yikes.

Taylor Swift and Owl City singer trade love songs

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:52:00 +0000

Taylor Swift has never been one for enigmatic ballads. So far in her young 21 years, she's made a habit of penning songs with specific guys in mind, whether that's John Mayer ("Dear John"), Taylor Lautner ("Back to December") or Kanye ("Innocent"). It would be easy to make fun of her, but lets face it: At her age, I was using a public LiveJournal account to write "anonymous" notes to boys in school who were still trying to grow mustaches. Beating around the bush isn't something that new adults do well.

Still, if you asked me last week to put money on the next mysterious boy Taylor would pine for in her liner notes, I would have put my life savings ($250 plus $5k in college debt!) on Jake Gyllenhaal, the most recent of her mismatched paramours.

This week in crazy: Kanye West

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 15:01:00 +0000

This weekend, America will mark the anniversary of an event that both divided us and brought us together, a shocking moment that will forever be etched in our collective psyche. Yes, it's already been a year since Kanye West hijacked Taylor Swift's victory at the MTV Video Music Awards with the "Imma let you finish" heard round the world.

In the ensuing 12 months, Mr. West has beaten a path back into our good graces in his usual unorthodox way. For a while, he laid low -- to the extent that such a thing is possible for a man who has appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in a crown of thorns. He went to Hawaii to toil on his new album. He managed to not upstage anyone at the Grammys, Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmys or even the Kids' Choice Awards. But come on — Kanye not being a loose cannon is about as much fun as a Real Housewife not tipping over tables. It was only a matter of time before he'd return to form.

Kanye West finally apologizes to Taylor Swift, writes her a song

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:08:00 +0000

Kanye West apologized to Taylor Swift over the weekend on Twitter. The apology was, of course, for his drunken ambushing of Swift's acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, sullying the spotlight of the industry's preeminent sweetheart. And though the act of remorse is about a year too late, West offset what he lacks in timing with persistence and a heartfelt gesture -- or, as heartfelt a gesture as possible via a social media website.

"I'm sorry Taylor," West wrote early Saturday.

It was simple, to the point, and that alone probably would've sufficed … but the floodgates were open, baby, and West kept going and going. "I've hurt, I've bled, I've learned. I only want to do good. I am passionate, I am human, I am real. I wish I could meet every hater," West went on.

He didn't stop there. "If you google Asshole my face may very well pop up 2 pages into the search." At least he wasn't so hard on himself as to say he'd be the top result.

Taylor Swift’s “Mine” released two weeks early

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:06:00 +0000

Country/pop star Taylor Swift's latest single, "Mine," from her upcoming album, "Speak Now," hit iTunes and radio stations days ahead of schedule. Although originally planned for release on Aug. 16, some wily Internet pirates leaked a low-quality version of the track yesterday. Big Machine Records, Swift's record label, responded by rushing the single (swiftly, perhaps?) to market. And Swift apparently has the last laugh: The track reached No. 1 on the digital chart in a matter of hours.

Swift's official website says the label wanted fans to hear the single as she intended. All Headline News provides more info behind the decision. Meanwhile, Swift reveals to MTV News what her new single is about -- fighting her "pattern of running away" when relationships get serious.

The song Taylor Swift should write

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:14:00 +0000

Last December, I wrote that whether you see 20-year-old pop phenom Taylor Swift as an inspiring example of female achievement (she's a wildly successful artist with an unusual degree of apparent control over her career for one so young) or a regressive, slut-shaming, princess-addled influence on impressionable young girls (have you listened to her music?) "really comes down to Taylor Swift, lyricist, vs. Taylor Swift, public figure." And on that particular day, at least, I decided I'd rather celebrate the latter than dwell on the former.

But YouTube user "Madinthemoon" just couldn't get past the lyrics, so she took it upon herself to produce "The Song I Wish Taylor Swift Would Write" (below). It's a video parody of Swift's "Fifteen" -- a song whose message Tiger Beatdown's Sady Doyle translated as: "Teen Girls of America, here are your choices: have sex and wind up broken and sad and feeling as if you've lost 'everything you had,' or wait until your untouched vagina accumulates enough charge to make you rich and famous" -- in which Madinthemoon dons a curly blonde wig and sings prettily, "Listen up, all you young girls who watch and worship me, I'm here to make some major revisions to all my songs' philosophies."

“Valentine’s Day”: The pain of L.A.’s gorgeous and lovelorn

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000

You know, there's really no motion-picture genre that is less suited to a long-winded, episodic, career-wrapping, would-be epic than the romantic comedy. I mean, OK, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" has rom-com elements, and so does its most famous cinematic knockoff, Ingmar Bergman's "Smiles of a Summer Night." Unfortunately for Garry Marshall, the director-impresario of "The Princess Diaries" and "Pretty Woman" and many other film and TV comedies across a 40-odd-year career, he seems to have those one-day-in-the-life-of-love examples dimly in view in "Valentine's Day," a sprawling, listless, ensemble-cast tribute to his own comic genius.

At the risk of being both pompous and blindingly obvious, Marshall is not exactly Bergman, or Shakespeare either. Neither of those guys, as far as I know, ever tried to drag laughs out of a resolutely unfunny production with gags about cute puppies spurning a newly jilted lover or 2-year-olds kissing each other or Ashton Kutcher driving a purple, early-'60s Chevy low-rider badly through Los Angeles traffic. (That last is absolutely slanderous: I'm saying here and now that Ashton can roll low, slow and smooth when the situation demands.)

Taylor Swift: Pop princess, feminist villain?

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:04:00 +0000

Feminism is confusing sometimes! As I've lamented before, it occasionally compels me to defend the anti-feminist likes of Sarah Palin and "Twilight," and if that weren't bad enough, now I can't figure out what to make of this year's platinum success story Taylor Swift, recently nominated for eight Grammys. I haven't thought much about Swift, but I'm generally inclined to agree with ladybloggers like Amanda Hess and Sady Doyle, two smart writers in their 20s who have concluded that the 19-year-old's songs reinforce some not-so-woman-friendly stereotypes in extremely annoying ways. But today, with a typically excellent post about pop culture's promotion of patience as a girl-powerful virtue, Hess got me wondering -- not that she meant to -- about whether there might be a legitimate feminist argument in favor of Taylor Swift.