Day 93: Third Base

Is everyone here? Okay good, we can begin. So today is the third and final installment of "songs that didn't get their own post". The previous two days were devoted to two of Taylor Swift's albums each, and today's will cover the final two: 2010's Speak Now and 2012's Red. These albums were the peak of Taylor Swift's popularity; at this point her ubiquity was the main criticism against her. Let's jump in!

Speak Now
Back To December:
Taylor Swift doesn't apologize much, so this song is no small deal. I can't decide if I like the vocals in this song; sometimes they flow really well and occasionally not so much. It's like how bumpy and wavy mean basically the same thing but have very different connotations. When it comes to pacing and general writing I think this song is definitely a success, it gives us enough to empathize with Taylor's feelings. I would have given it a post for itself but it happened to be on an album with pretty fierce competition.

Innocent:
I thought this song was about how to navigate a mid life crisis as a woman, but it turns out it's about Kanye West. If you are familiar with this song and didn't know that, it may seem very strange to you, I know it certainly was that way for me.

I almost made it the whole 100 days without bringing this up

Haunted:

This song is just three spooky five me. I can't really wrap my head around it, mostly because of how confusing the tone ends up being. I know that electric guitars are this album's thing, but I think they went a little overboard here. It sounds angry when really it's pleading, which makes trying to relate to it a little more difficult than it should be since the lyrics are decently strong. The deluxe album includes an acoustic version of this song which I like a lot more, probably because piano serves the tone better than the guitars.

Last Kiss:

I'm so glad that Long Live ended up being the final song of the album instead of this song. This song is fine in every single way, but is outshined in each of those ways by at least one song on the album. I appreciate the way it talks about the past relationship; it actually manages to make us feel like we're there on the ground crying with Taylor.

Red

Treacherous:

A classic overrated Red song. The idea is good but the lyrics are too direct most of the time, although I will say that a lot of the lines are very good. What I don't like about this song is how it sounds like every other song on the album. It does absolutely nothing to distinguish it from it's peers. I will admit it's performed well, I just think it's poorly constructed.

I Knew You Were Trouble:

"How did this song not get it's own post" part one of two. Yeah, I don't really know. Red had a lot of music to talk about, and I did mention it in posts where I talked more about the album as a whole. I think it's good though! It is a fantastic thesis for the album, has interesting vocals, and stays very exciting the whole time. I had a hard time writing a post about this I Knew You Were Trouble without mentioning goat memes, so I eventually had had to give up.

22:

About a week ago I made a post about Gorgeous, a popular song from Taylor's newest album. That post was originally about both 22 and Gorgeous, but I ended up having a lot more to say about Gorgeous so I eventually cut out 22 completely. I think that they are constructed very similarly, so if you want to hear more about how that works then go read that post! Overall, I really like this song.

The Last Time:

Taylor's vocals are both different and good in this song, other than that the featured artist is it's only notable characteristic. It's more boring than anything else, but not offensively so. Even though Taylor's sound is unique, she doesn't do many of the things that make her stand out as an artist, which is probably the cause of the uneventful sound.

Holy Ground:

Another song where the tone doesn't do much to advance the song. It's upbeat, but still sounds faded compared to the singles on the album. I'm also not sure what the message is here. You know, just more classic Red problems.

Sad Beautiful Tragic:

It's like The Last Time, but even more boring! What else even is there to say? Answer: nothing.

The Lucky One:

Now this song I can stand! It tells an interesting story in an interesting way and has a clear message, all backed by lyrics that flow perfectly with the music. See, that's how you write a decent song! If the whole album was as good as this song then maybe it would live up to the hype.

Bonus Content:

The Speak Now deluxe album has a few original songs: most notably Ours, one of two bonus tracks to ever be released as a single, the other being New Romantics. Ours is a good song, much better than the other two bonus songs. There are also some acoustic versions of other songs on the album, they're all pretty solid.

Red's bonus songs are in the same state: Come Back...Be Here is decent despite it's weird title, and the other two songs are both pretty bad in comparison. These albums are nice because they have a lot of bonus content, I wish we got a more from Reputation. I think I'll live though, after all we got fifteen songs on the album. Anyways, the song ranking starts tomorrow so I hope you're ready!

See you tomorrow,

-C