In this new series, 10 Listens will publish two writers’ takes on a given record, artist, or concept. The exchange will be given as a series of brief essays, with each subsequent one a response to the previous. The inaugural series ends today with final words by Brad Nelson. Read part one, part two, and part three as well.
Maybe the problem is in the approach: As you would have it, B., Swift fails in her approach. She is one-dimensional (I need a shortlist of singer-songwriters that fly in more than one dimension; that peculiar and intense focus I have always called “craft”). She speaks with unearned authority about things beyond her amassed experience (the album is called Speak Now and its whole conceit is stupid, raw, untempered shit better left unsaid). She is relentlessly smug and self-serving. If you draw back to realize the map of Taylor Swift, what you glimpse is some ugly overgrown center of self-involvement, rich webs that spiral upon themselves unto complete dissolution. It is emblematic of a generation with Facebooks. Blogs. Empathy in inadequate sums. No music can sustain this weight.
But I can’t think of Swift as a singer-songwriter. She would have me think that, what with her acoustic guitar and how on this record she drags her mouth around exclusively confessional syllables. But she writes pop music; moreover she initially emerged as a writer of Nashville pop. In this realm, artist and audience take a perverse joy out of limited dimensional migration. I do too; I don’t expect anything beyond this because genre doesn’t cater to outsized expectations. Continue reading ‘Disagree to Agree: Taylor Swift’s Speak Now, Pt. 4′
