On October 26th, 2018 I decided to embark on a journey. For the next 100 days, I would listen to nothing but Taylor Swift. As of today, I can happily say that this project has successfully concluded. And let me tell you, it was not an easy journey.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy the music. Taylor's sweet jams were my only solace on this harrowing ocean of a task, and they guided me well. As you'll read, I really developed an appreciation for her music!
It's true, I didn't start out as a fan. So why would I do this to myself? Yeah, that's a good question, and to this day I can't really say. Maybe I wanted to try and get a better appreciation for music in general? Maybe I wanted to know why so many people are such big fans of Taylor Swift! Or maybe, I was just bored. But regardless, it doesn't matter much now because the 100 days are over.
But don't worry, that doesn't mean you've missed out! Ever since the very first day, I decided to document the progress with a post every single day! This means that you, dear reader, have the privilege of being able to witness the entire thing, start to finish! If you really want to get a good sense for how my feelings on Taylor's music changed over the months you can read from day one, otherwise there's really no wrong order to take it in!
So what did I write about? Well, there are 86 Taylor Swift songs from her albums, so you might think that I'd have a hard time coming up with something to say every day. But after all my posts, I only ended up talking about 50 of these songs. So what did I discuss on the remaining days? Well, there's only one way to find out! From music videos to albums covers to movie appearances, there's a lot to talk about! If it weren't for my degrading sanity, I could continue this blog for another year!
But, alas, the project is over and that means that this is the last post! If you want to jump right to the good stuff, the final week of this blog was full of huge summaries where I briefly reviewed then ranked every song Taylor ever released on an album, so if you're already familiar with her content just jump straight there!
Now, that's going to be all from me! To those of you who have been here from the start, thanks for all your support! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go catch up on all the podcasts I've been missing!
I won't see you tomorrow, but you might just see me!
-C
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Friday, February 1, 2019
Day 99: Who Holds The Record?
Yesterday I discussed each of Taylor Swift's albums, summarizing the unique tone, theme, and musical styles of each one. I would recommend reading that post before this one, as it gives lots of important context for the claims I will make in this post. As a quick recap, I presented this graph towards the end of yesterday's post.
While I do think that this graph is accurate, it is very important to realize that the term "overall quality" is nowhere to be seen on the axes. Nuance and strength of theme are both important elements of quality, but just because Speak Now doesn't shine in either of those ways that doesn't make it a bad album. In fact, as I will elaborate on more today, I think Speak Now is one of Taylor Swift's strongest albums.
So if your goal is to rank Taylor Swift's albums, what methods could you use? A great place to start would be to rank each of Taylor Swift's song, and see how they compare on average. And as it just so happens, I spent most of last week ranking all of the songs on Taylor Swift's albums! (here are days 1, 2, 3, and 4 is you missed it!) How convenient! From that list, I was able to get an average placing of each album, which I've shown below.
So are we done? Reputation is the best album and Taylor Swift is the worst? Well not quite, it's a lot more complicated than that. First, to accept these result you would have to agree with my whole list, which no one would fully. But even if you're literally me, these numbers aren't necessarily the best indication of quality. Taylor Swift has a pretty decent amount of good songs, but it has so many songs that drag it down, making it's average low. To get a better idea of each album's spread, I made this chart showing how they fit into the six categories I made.
A couple things may stick out to you at this point. Taylor Swift and Fearless had pretty similar averages, but their distributions couldn't be more different. Fearless had no songs in the worst and best categories, making it a very average album. Taylor Swift, on the other hand, hardly had any songs in the middle two slots, with most of it's songs being either in the top of bottom third. So judging by this chart, which album is the best? Well, Reputation has nearly no bad songs, and Speak Now has the most excellent songs. So is it one of these? Maybe, but we still haven't even seen the first picture.
Judging by this chart, 1989 and Red are pretty similar albums. In some ways they are, but we cannot ignore the difference in theme. I mentioned this yesterday, but Red has a much more cohesive theme, but 1989 makes up for it by having a wide variation in musical styles. Importantly, 1989's strength in variation applies to individual songs so that is already compensated for in the data I presented. On the other hand, Red's strong theme appears nowhere on the charts, since it applies to the album as a whole. So how on earth am I supposed to account for a strength as nebulous as a theme.
I've been pondering this question for the last month and I still have no clue. My best answer is that the only accurate way to rank each song is to sort by strength. Here are a few examples of what I mean.
Albums By Strength of Theme:
1. Reputation
2. Red
3. Fearless
4. 1989
5. Taylor Swift
6. Speak Now
Albums By Best Songs:
1. Speak Now
2. 1989
3. Reputation
4. Red
5. Taylor Swift
6. Fearless
Albums By Not Worst:
1. Reputation
2. Fearless
3. 1989
4. Red
5. Speak Now
6. Taylor Swift
Albums By Average Placing:
1. Reputation
2. Speak Now
3. 1989
4. Red
5. Fearless
6. Taylor Swift
Albums By Cover Art:
1. Red
2. 1989
3. Speak Now
4. Reputation
5. Fearless
6. Taylor Swift
I could literally do this all day, but I think you get the point. There are a million ways to order these albums, each with strengths and weaknesses. You could choose to include content from deluxe albums, or separately released songs from similar time periods. You might care about genre a lot more than me, or even less. However, instead of doing all that I'm going to point your attention to something very notable about the lists I wrote above. Taylor's first two albums are almost always near the bottom, her two most recent albums are usually near the top, and the intermediate albums are typically somewhere in the middle. This leads me to the following conclusion. Some may see it as controversial, but on average I think it is incredibly true.
Taylor Swift's music has gotten better over time
I know, I'm incredibly brave for making such a bold claim. Many, many people will disagree and that's fine, but I think I've presented valid evidence to back it up. Sure, certain aspects of Taylor's songwriting will fluctuate over time, but when summed together I think the trend is pretty clear. However, I'm sure that you all want to know my personal opinions as well. Sure, there's plenty of my bias in the data I presented but bias and opinion are synonyms. So, here is my personal list of my favorite Taylor Swift albums.
My Favorites:
1. Speak Now
2. Reputation
3. Red
4. 1989
5. Fearless
6. Taylor Swift
Alright, well I guess that's that! Tomorrow is the last day of this blog! The structure of that post will be a little unusual, so make sure to come back so you can catch the grand finale!
See you tomorrow,
-C
While I do think that this graph is accurate, it is very important to realize that the term "overall quality" is nowhere to be seen on the axes. Nuance and strength of theme are both important elements of quality, but just because Speak Now doesn't shine in either of those ways that doesn't make it a bad album. In fact, as I will elaborate on more today, I think Speak Now is one of Taylor Swift's strongest albums.
So if your goal is to rank Taylor Swift's albums, what methods could you use? A great place to start would be to rank each of Taylor Swift's song, and see how they compare on average. And as it just so happens, I spent most of last week ranking all of the songs on Taylor Swift's albums! (here are days 1, 2, 3, and 4 is you missed it!) How convenient! From that list, I was able to get an average placing of each album, which I've shown below.
So are we done? Reputation is the best album and Taylor Swift is the worst? Well not quite, it's a lot more complicated than that. First, to accept these result you would have to agree with my whole list, which no one would fully. But even if you're literally me, these numbers aren't necessarily the best indication of quality. Taylor Swift has a pretty decent amount of good songs, but it has so many songs that drag it down, making it's average low. To get a better idea of each album's spread, I made this chart showing how they fit into the six categories I made.
A couple things may stick out to you at this point. Taylor Swift and Fearless had pretty similar averages, but their distributions couldn't be more different. Fearless had no songs in the worst and best categories, making it a very average album. Taylor Swift, on the other hand, hardly had any songs in the middle two slots, with most of it's songs being either in the top of bottom third. So judging by this chart, which album is the best? Well, Reputation has nearly no bad songs, and Speak Now has the most excellent songs. So is it one of these? Maybe, but we still haven't even seen the first picture.
Judging by this chart, 1989 and Red are pretty similar albums. In some ways they are, but we cannot ignore the difference in theme. I mentioned this yesterday, but Red has a much more cohesive theme, but 1989 makes up for it by having a wide variation in musical styles. Importantly, 1989's strength in variation applies to individual songs so that is already compensated for in the data I presented. On the other hand, Red's strong theme appears nowhere on the charts, since it applies to the album as a whole. So how on earth am I supposed to account for a strength as nebulous as a theme.
I've been pondering this question for the last month and I still have no clue. My best answer is that the only accurate way to rank each song is to sort by strength. Here are a few examples of what I mean.
Albums By Strength of Theme:
1. Reputation
2. Red
3. Fearless
4. 1989
5. Taylor Swift
6. Speak Now
Albums By Best Songs:
1. Speak Now
2. 1989
3. Reputation
4. Red
5. Taylor Swift
6. Fearless
Albums By Not Worst:
1. Reputation
2. Fearless
3. 1989
4. Red
5. Speak Now
6. Taylor Swift
Albums By Average Placing:
1. Reputation
2. Speak Now
3. 1989
4. Red
5. Fearless
6. Taylor Swift
Albums By Cover Art:
1. Red
2. 1989
3. Speak Now
4. Reputation
5. Fearless
6. Taylor Swift
I could literally do this all day, but I think you get the point. There are a million ways to order these albums, each with strengths and weaknesses. You could choose to include content from deluxe albums, or separately released songs from similar time periods. You might care about genre a lot more than me, or even less. However, instead of doing all that I'm going to point your attention to something very notable about the lists I wrote above. Taylor's first two albums are almost always near the bottom, her two most recent albums are usually near the top, and the intermediate albums are typically somewhere in the middle. This leads me to the following conclusion. Some may see it as controversial, but on average I think it is incredibly true.
Taylor Swift's music has gotten better over time
I know, I'm incredibly brave for making such a bold claim. Many, many people will disagree and that's fine, but I think I've presented valid evidence to back it up. Sure, certain aspects of Taylor's songwriting will fluctuate over time, but when summed together I think the trend is pretty clear. However, I'm sure that you all want to know my personal opinions as well. Sure, there's plenty of my bias in the data I presented but bias and opinion are synonyms. So, here is my personal list of my favorite Taylor Swift albums.
My Favorites:
1. Speak Now
2. Reputation
3. Red
4. 1989
5. Fearless
6. Taylor Swift
Alright, well I guess that's that! Tomorrow is the last day of this blog! The structure of that post will be a little unusual, so make sure to come back so you can catch the grand finale!
See you tomorrow,
-C
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)