Day 76: Dancing With My Heart Tied

Taylor Swift's 2017 album Reputation has made a name for itself by being avant-garde; distinguishing it's style through a wildly different style compared to it's predecessors, even after Taylor strayed from country music. There are some unusual songs on the album that are great, but of my favorite songs off the album are the ones that attract the least attention. Today we're going to look at two of those songs: King of My Heart and Dancing With Our Hands Tied.

The production style of these songs fit them in squarely in with the rest of Reputation, but a closer look reveals how these songs are flexible enough to really fit in any genre. They're a perfect example of a Taylor Swift song, they could be re-skinned and fit in with any other album Taylor has released in the past.

Dancing With Our Hands Tied is probably the most concrete example of this out there since Taylor literally did what I just said during a concert on her Reputation tour. I discussed the whole tour here and here, and these two songs were among my most discussed in those posts so if you want to read more go there for it! I'll be taking this post in a slightly different direction though.

But anyways, Taylor performed Dancing With Our Hands Tied with just an acoustic guitar and it really showed off how unexpectedly versatile these songs are. To show you what I mean, I've posted four quotes below, I want you to guess which two of them come from these songs and which two are from her 2008 album Fearless.

"So, baby, can we dance
Oh, through an avalanche?
And say, say that we got it
I'm a mess, but I'm the mess that you wanted
Oh, 'cause it's gravity
Oh, keeping you with me"

"So here's to everything
Coming down to nothing
Here's to silence
That cuts me to the core
Where is this going?
Thought I knew for a minute, but I don't anymore"

"We're drivin' down the road
I wonder if you know
I'm tryin' so hard not to get caught up now
But you're just so cool
Run your hands through your hair
Absent-mindedly makin' me want you"

"Is the end of all the endings?
My broken bones are mending
With all these nights we're spending
Up on the roof with a school girl crush"

Easy, right? Well, maybe if you're a die hard Taylor Swift fan (Taylor Swift herself). I tried to view the lyrics as impartially as possible which is difficult since I haven't listened to anything else for the last 75 days, and I think this is difficult. I'll give you another second to try and figure it out, scroll down past the picture of Patrick to see the answer.

Thanks Pat.

1. Dancing With Our Hands Tied (Reputation)

2. Forever & Always (Fearless)

3. Fearless (Fearless)

4. King Of My Heart (Fearless)

Let me know how you did in the comments, or let me know how stupid I am. I'll leave the decision up to you. I'm curious to see if this was challenging for other people. I know it's difficult to get a feel for a song with no music, and I definitely cherry picked lyrics I thought would be difficult, but that's completely the point. The core principles behind the lyrics of Taylor's songs are very similar, no matter when you look at them. The hardest part of selecting lyrics from Fearless was finding ones I though were high quality enough. If you go through and read the lyrics of her songs across her career it's pretty clear that she has continued to improve over time. Dancing With Our Hands Tied and King Of My Heart may be different from her older songs on the surface, but the biggest difference in my eyes is just that they are better written and produced songs in almost every regard. It's very difficult to come up with an argument other than "I don't like them as much", which is a fair argument on some level. It's not like I think people should like some songs more than others, I'm just pointing our my preferences and the reasons behind them. And if you still just think I'm stupid then just remember that internet comments exist for a reason.

See you tomorrow,

-C