Day 4: Forever Hold Your Peace

Love songs are like cats. The best ones are fantastic, but usually they're just pretentious, annoying, and bite me even though all I want to do is pet their fuzzy heads. For the most part it seems like Taylor Swift has great taste in both (her cats are fucking adorable), but her taste in love songs is a little more fallible. Today I'm going to talk about a Taylor Swift song that, for me at least, really misses the mark. It fits into the category I'm starting to see that I'll be referring to as "The Hot Mess". Hot Mess songs usually have all the ingredients of a good song , but just don't put it together, which makes listening to them a lot like eating all the ingredients of a cupcake separately.

Look at those little paws

Taylor Swift's 2010 album, Speak Now, has some excellent tracks like Mine and Mean. Most of the other tracks don't measure up to these songs, which is by no means a sin. What irks me is album's namesake, the song Speak Now, today's subject.

Before I tear in, I'm going to say what I like about this song. First is Taylor's voice which, as always, sounds like an angel. No surprise there. It also has an incredibly catchy chorus, something it shares in common with most of the songs on this album. Beautiful singing and catchy hooks are what Taylor's career is built on, especially her earlier works. Despite what the rest of this post is going to say, I listened to this song about ten times in a row without getting bored. The worst crime a song can commit is being boring and unremarkable, and at the very least this song manages to avoid that.

Taylor, let me address you directly for a moment. I know you're a regular reader of the blog, and I want to say right away that all my criticism comes from a place of respect for your work and what you've been able to accomplish. I'm not going to say it again so try to remember it!

COMMENCE THE EVISCERATION

There are so many parts of this song that frustrate me it's hard to know where to start. The first thing that struck me is it's unending wordiness. The wisdom in most media is "Show don't tell" which is admittedly difficult in a completely auditory media, but there are more ways to communicate ideas than the words on the page.

"I sneak in and see your friends

And her snotty little family, all dressed in pastel
And she is yelling at a bridesmaid
Somewhere back inside a room
Wearing a gown shaped like a pastry"


These lines are some of the worst offenders in my opinion. If I didn't know better I would say that these lyrics were written with no music in mind, and they just had to come up with something that kinda fit. Wait a second, I don't know better than that! It would be completely unsurprising to me if the lyrics and the music for this song were synthesized apart from one another. I'm sure that in reality there was consideration between the two, but if this isn't clear to the audience then the intent doesn't really matter. It's more than just the instruments, Taylor's vocal performance certainly leaves something to be desired. I know, I know, I just finished praising her beautiful voice, and I take none of that back! My issue here isn't with the quality, it's with the matching of her voice to the topic at hand. The intonation of her voice lets me know nothing about the tone of the song, which would make it feel very tired if her voice wasn't smoother than butter.

It's easy to make fun of this song for it's cliched premise, but to me the premise of a song is much less important than if all the elements of a song work together in a cohesive way to build something greater than the sum of it's parts. Take another song on this album, Better Than Revenge. This song has an equally overdone premise, but the lyrics, vocals, and the music really work together to give the song a clearly defined tone, and for the life of me I can't stop listening to this damn song. I don't know if I would say it's "good" per se, but it's fast, fun, and I enjoy listening to it so I don't really care.

"She's not a saint and she's not what you think, she's a mattress"

When it comes down to it, I think the best way to summarize these problems is as a lack of direction. I get that Speak Now is just supposed to be a cute love song, but Taylor knows how to write a better love song than this. Both Love Story and You Belong With Me have similar topics but work way better as a whole. The point of Better Than Revenge may be a little contrived, but at least I can see what it's trying to say. Speak Now effectively tells a story, but I have no clue what the real message is and why I should care. It has about as much personality as Qui Gonn Jinn.

Zing

And with that topical reference, I'm going to end this post. Despite how I sounded today, I am really enjoying this so far so I'll try to have something more positive to say tomorrow.

See you then,

-C