Every Single Album - 'Fearless' | Every Single Album: Taylor Swift

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

It's time to talk about 'Fearless,' which means it's time to talk about the infamous 2009 VMA moment when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift on stage. Nathan and Nora talk about how that moment impacted her career and music, how 'Fearless' represents Taylor's first step away from country and into pop, and the significance of her choosing to re-record this album. Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Watch is the latest and the greatest in pop culture from best friends Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald. Join them as they discuss TV, movies, music, and much more. Check out The Watch on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to every single album, Taylor Swift. I'm Nora Prenziotti, staff writer at The Ringer. I am joined by my partner in all things Taylor, Nathan Hubbard. Last episode, we talked about Taylor's debut album, Taylor Swift. This episode, we're going to be talking about fearless.

And the moon man for best female video goes to Taylor Swift. I thought what it would be like to maybe win one of these someday, but I never actually thought that would happen. I've seen country music, so thank you so much for giving me a chance to win a VMA award. You, Taylor, I'm really happy for you. I'm let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos are all time.

All right, Nathan, I'm going to let you finish. But it's time to talk about Fearless, which means it's time to talk about the 2009 VMAs. The night when Kanye runs up on stage while Taylor is accepting the best female music video award for her You Belong With Me video, proclaims that Beyonce should have won for single ladies. A lot happened after that moment. But what I want to know is how we got there nearly a year after the release of the album Fearless in the first place. What a jackass. We got here.

This album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. It had the longest reign on the Billboard 200 of the 2000s decade. It is the best-selling album of 2009. She's the youngest artist ever to do that. She's the only female country artist to do that. And we're not sure that she's just a country artist anymore, are we? And we got here because coming out of the debut album, she worked harder than anybody else in the industry.

She went town to town, door to door, DJ to DJ, amphitheater to amphitheater, playing her music for people. And slowly but surely, she got not just her music out, but she got herself out. She got herself into 17 Magazine. She got herself on the Ellen show.

And the brand that was Taylor began to build and build and build. But as you look at the critical reception of this album, you see a whole host of middle-aged dudes giving it reasonable reviews, but having these weird arguments over, is it country, is it pop, criticizing the melodic construction of some of the songs, calling them boring, taking issue with her voice,

talking about how some of the songs maybe sound the same. But Nora, they're completely missing the point, aren't they? Nathan, are you sitting down? I know you are because I can see you. Here I am. I'm about to blow your mind. Let's go. People didn't know what to make of it because Taylor had captured in a bottle

one of the most powerful yet most misunderstood forces that exist in this universe, which is teenage girl energy. Yes. Fearless is an album about being a teenage girl. And it made it simultaneously a rocket ship for her and impossible to understand. Because it is an imperfect album. There are songs that are not her strongest work. It's a little bit too sonically consistent in some places.

It's not shooting for the moon in terms of complexity. But it is perfect in one way and in one incredibly important way, which is that that album captures the experience of being a teenage girl to a T. and it made it something that, sure, if you are some of those music critics, maybe you don't know how to talk about it. And maybe you don't quite understand why this person has gotten to that place so quickly. And part of it is because of her own hard work. But another part of it is because teenage girls have always been one of the drivers of what's huge in pop culture. But that's also always been a group of people. And I count myself in this. You have the experience. You have the experience.

of knowing what you love and loving it so fervently, but also feeling like people don't take it seriously enough, or they don't think that it's valid, or they don't think that it's complex or sophisticated, and somehow it's lesser than whatever else anybody else is doing. And you can kind of make a valid argument about that. If you look at the other albums that got nominated at the Grammys for album of the year, she was up against some huge heavy hitters.

Dave Matthews Band? Yes, the Dave Matthews. man. Big whiskey and the Grugux King. That one goes down as the Academy makes a few mistakes every now and then. But I am Sasha Fierce by Beyonce. The Fame by Gaga. Those were not mistakes.

Those were big-time albums. Absolutely not. And Taylor wins. And for a lot of people, it's hard to process. And the VMAs are before this point. But I think it's important because it all kind of gets captured in this stew of reaction to fearless, where to a lot of people, that didn't make sense because those albums were something that fearless is not. But we know what

Fearless is. And it's important to understand, and I'm hoping that you're going to explain this, that's not just because she's talking about cheerleaders and the bleachers and boys and fairy tales. It's also because sonically, while still being a country album, Fearless is a really perfect album to appeal to those pop fans, largely young women. Yeah, that's exactly right. There's a professor of musicology named Travis Steinling who actually wrote a paper on this. That you emailed to me in the middle of the night once,

and I barely understood it, but was just so happy to receive it. Right, that there's academia focusing on the inner workings of Taylor Swift songs. But his basic argument is that if you look at the melodic characteristics of her songs, the majority of them are marked by vocal ranges that they really rarely span more than like a perfect fifth and they're melodies that are near the top of her chest voice which is like the normal thing that you can belt out before you go like do falsetto like ah in your head that's your head voice

but her melodies are all sort of at the high range of what you can belt out and she uses a lot of repeated short melodic motifs the hooks in love story and you belong with me are pretty similar. Some of these critics would get into it and say, oh, these songs sound the same. Well, they don't, but they're right in one regard. Both of them have these repeated three notes that are each a full musical step apart, and they're sung rhythmically with the lyrics. Love story, it's a D to an E to an F sharp and back. And you belong with me. It's G flat, A flat, B flat before it sort of sweeps up to the you belong with me. You're talking about like da da da da da da da da da da da da da. Right. Like, right. And the essence there is that's the characteristic of a catchy pop song because they're easy to remember and because they can be sung in groups. It's just easy.

You can be the worst singer. You can be basically non-musical. But those melodies are really easy for large groups of people to grasp. And we know that group performance is essential to the social experience of what group of people, Nora? Teenage. girls. Right. And so the argument, at least in these academic papers, is that it makes it possible for teenage girls to see themselves in these songs because they can actually adopt the voice of her characters, of Taylor Swift's characters, with their own voice very easily. Norah, you were a teenage girl when

this album was released. What's your memory of hearing it and your experience of hearing fearless for the first time? So I was 14 when this album came out. And my experience with it was something that helped me imagine and understand experiences that I was so desperate to have and understand, but just was not having. Like, I did not. I was not ready to be dating and having boyfriends and having that kind of drama. And listening to this album was like my primer, kind of. I started understanding some of the nuances and some of the like, okay, this is how this is how this goes down, right? And that was through listening to Fearless. And that I think is the interesting part that wraps back around to the VMAs

and also to how that moment was received. I mean, it was the night that spawned a thousand think pieces and blog posts and probably way more than a thousand actually. Because Taylor was in an interesting moment for her. because those songs were still reflective of the experience that I was having, right? Like, I remember sitting on the school bus and just listening to some slightly older girls talk about like first experiences with boys and just having headphones in, like one headphone in so I could kind of hear the conversation, but also was listening to music.

And I was like, do they just understand these songs better than I do? That's so unfair. I can't wait until I can get. to that point. Now, was Taylor really living a similar experience to that in 2008? No, she wasn't. I mean, it was the VMAs were 2009. She rolled up to that event in a horse-drawn princess carriage. Some people didn't quite understand how she'd gotten there, but she was living a very public fairy tale. And it was fair to question whether or not she was so. still authentically the nerd and not the cheerleader.

And what seals it for me is that the songs carry it. You believe it because the songs are good and you hear the songs. But that, I think, is what made that moment such a rich text. And it's not about Kanye, right? Because it's even fair to ask if Kanye had a point, don't you think? For sure it is. I think that's an ongoing debate. Maybe not within the video.

But certainly at the Grammys, we can look back and have a conversation about whether the Beyonce record was a better album. But in the moment, it was fearless that was capturing a movement and a voice of a generation that really hadn't had a voice in certainly early 2000s music, period. And I think that that Kanye moment actually bought her some time because it was an international incident. The president of the United States had to comment on it. And so many people circled the wagons around her. The president of the United States called Kanye a jackass, by the way, is what that comment was. The young lady seems like perfectly a nice person.

She's getting her award. Why would he do that? He's a jackass. Yes, and he certainly acted the jackass, and Beyonce, in her eminent Queen Grace, brought Taylor back out, understanding what a big moment it had been that had been ruined. But the entirety of America sort of circled the wagons around Taylor Swift and lifted her up, and it played into the young, still maturing, still figuring it out, outcast persona that had that not happened, we might have gotten to a point where, you know,

are you really under the bleachers? Or is it that everybody now wants to be with you? Can we really, can you authentically sing these songs? It almost bought her time to get through the content of this album. I don't know. How do you feel? I think you're right that that influenced how people processed her going forward after that moment and maybe helped her hang on to that outsider underdog persona. but we have to remember that the actual person standing on that stage is different from the person people saw when they were looking at her on TV, right? We know now this was a deeply wounding experience for Taylor, one that she has carried really up into the present. Yes. We don't know if that wound is closed.

So I don't want to undersell how important and how genuinely scarring it seems like this was for her. I was standing on stage and I was really excited because I had just won the award and then I was really excited because Kanye West was on the stage. And then I, then I wasn't so excited anymore after that. So we should start with how we got here because coming out of Taylor Swift, the debut album, she still is a country artist in quotes. But what changed all that and really started this snow. no-balling acceleration to that VMA moment was the lead single from Feelers, and that was Love Story,

which instantly becomes one of the best-selling singles of all time. And it's so important to note, she took over as a co-producer on this album, and you can see her fingerprints on the way the music sounds. It's less of the wash that Nathan Chapman had used on the first record. Some of the instruments are isolated in the mix. A lot of the banjos and mandolins and dobroes and slide guitars are lowered and up comes the snare and the drums and the electric guitars and the acoustic guitar. This is less of a country record than what we heard before.

And that certainly seems to have resonated because it's the highest peaking country song on the mainstream top 40 list since Shania Twain's, you're still the one. So she is starting to cross over and it's love story. started that process. The second single is Whitehorse, and the third is You Belong With Me. We're clearly itching to get to some of these categories. We have 12 of them. They're going to help us break down this and every album. So let's start with the biggest song off Fearless, which in my book is You Belong With Me. Why? Because that's what led to all of this, right? So it was, it got to number two on the Hot 100, which was her highest charting song to date at that point. but we wouldn't have just had this conversation

that we hadn't had without that song. So you can quantify how big it gets by chart position, a million other ways, but I think it just created one of the most well-known moments in Taylor Swift history. So I think it's got to be the choice. Let's say you. I think you're right,

but I used a different reason or a different set of facts to support it. And that is that at your book, beloved Foxborough Stadium. She held her very first... It hasn't been called Foxborough Stadium in like a million years. Well, whatever. She played her first stadium show at Foxborough.

And she did it on June 5th, 2010. So this album has been out for a while, but it was still part of the Fearless Tour. And the first song that she played that night is You Belong With Me. And when you go and look at the entirety of the tour, She played that song 111 times the most of any song, and it was almost always the first one. And that coupled with that MTV moment is why I think it was the biggest song. But man, it's hard right now to make that case above love story, given that love story is the first song that she has re-recorded and released.

Does that play into how we think about what's bigger? I think it inevitably does, but I also think that Love Story is an easier re-record because it's less personal. And that's not to say that she's not up to some pretty extreme challenges in some of these.

But you belong with me is one of the songs when in the re-recording, she is going to have to navigate how much she's changed. and how much people have a different understanding of her. And there will have to be some, I imagine, remove from that dichotomy between the nerd and the cheerleader and which one is she? Because I don't think that at this point she really even has to choose.

I mean, obviously the point of the view of the song is what it is. But I think she'll be able to kind of embody characters in that. but love story is, I think, a really smart choice to tackle first because we already know who the characters are and they're not her. So it doesn't have some of those trip wires. But it's a really good point. But I don't think that I don't think that doing Love Story First invalidates you belong with me being the biggest song from this album.

Yeah. I mean, it's her best. best charting to date. And the key there is that it's driven mostly by non-country radio. So it gets this huge, you belong with me, it gets this huge, huge crossover audience. It's really the one that breaks over. So Love Story did too, but it wasn't as big of a song as you belong with me became. So very quickly, why do we not talk about 15 as one of those potential songs? Is it just not in the discussion for you? It's not. There are moments on 15 that are so perfect, and yet I don't listen to the whole song very much.

Is it because you're not 15 anymore? It's actually not because the parts where you get it, you just get it. Yeah. But I don't think that, I think it's a melodically weaker song, frankly. Yeah. Yeah, I meant that not jokingly either. I just, I think they're parts of, of, of, 15 that can't resonate with the full audience that can just sink their teeth completely into Love Story and You Belong With Me. Now, we should note the second single that was released was also the track five. And I need you in particular to carry the water here because I have listened to

White Horse as we have prepared for this journey together over and over and over again. And it just doesn't land with me in the way that I keep wanting it to hit me. And so what I need to know from you is what is it about Whitehorse? Why was this the second single? Why was this the fifth song on the album? What resonates? The storytelling and the songwriting are what resonates here.

And I think White Horse, maybe in a same or in a similar vein to what we were just talking about with 15, it's not a melody that sinks its teeth into you, at least not for me, but here are the two things that make it essential. One is that she needed a song, at least one, on this album, to shatter the fairy tale. And she uses the same language, but she breaks it. says it's not true. That's not actually how life works. And her ability to go back and forth between

imagination and love and Prince Charming and then say, no, that's fake and I know it is really important. The other part is that she flex is one of her absolute best muscles here, which is the shifting of tens. And it's a precursor to songs like Dear John. which also fall into this category, but she goes from this is a small town to that was a small town. And that is yummy.

Can I just interject real quick? Do you know that five of the first six songs on this album reference town? She's all about town on this album. I don't understand it. I really, I just, because I spent so much time sort of obsessing over the ways in which

she inserted words to sort of pass the country music scan. But seriously, the five of the first six songs talk about town. Anyway, please continue. This album overall is a really good text for just Taylor going all in on certain specific themes. We'll get to some of those later. I won't spoil it.

But those are the two important things about White Horse to me. And it's not really about how it sounds. It's a pretty simple sounding song. But what she does with narrative, shattering the fairy tale, and then using some of the... Storytelling tricks make it really impressive. There's a part of the lyrical component of this song that is saying, I don't need you.

Yeah. And so many of the other songs, she always maintains a sense of self, but there is a longing. And on this one, she just very confidently, as you said, at the end with the tent shift, says, I don't need you. and that's why it's such a killer that she brought John Mayer up on stage at the Staples Center

on May 22nd, 2009, and played Whitehorse with him. Which, if you actually watch the video, I get the song a little bit more because it didn't feel like the sort of thing, you know, we're going to talk about all too well when we get to Red, and that's a stadium singing sort of track. This one I didn't totally get as a stadium arena song, but it's her with her acoustic guitar in front of the crowd,

and it really becomes sort of a sing-along, a quiet, you know, bandless sing-along with John Mayer on the side. And I don't know exactly what the status of the relationship was in that moment, but there's a piece of me that just loves to believe that she brought him up to basically sing White Horse with her because she wanted to send him a message. That is the supercharged version of doing should have said no with the Jonas brothers. That multiplied by 6,000 million megawatt tons is when you get Whitehorse with John Mayer, which eventually uses, I mean, I think we can talk about it right here.

Like the same trick in Dear John, which as I love Whitehorse, but it does not equal in the the combination of just like hurt, anger, all of those things. And yet she still, by the end of the song, has the remove and is moving on shining like fireworks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this is the precursor to that. So just unbelievable that those two had that moment. Well, they also played Bodies of Wonderland. It's not my favorite version of that.

It's a little weird. It is. But it is my favorite version of White Horse. And this conversation points to what you spoke about at the top, which is that her celebrity, the wave of her celebrity, is starting to crest almost as high as the emotional connection that people are having with these songs. You just talked about Joe Jonas,

who inspired a song from this record as we found out later on. But now, not only are the emotions in these songs connecting with people, but the celebrity of some of the people who created them are starting to take these songs and elevate them into the next sort of level of social consciousness and culture. Now, we haven't exactly done that quite yet because it's all just starting, but what we should ask ourselves is,

is she doing this alone, or do we think that she's got a collaborator on this album Fearless, who we would say is her best supporting actor? And for the debut, we talked a little bit about, Liz Rose. My answer on this album was Liz Rose. She was there on You Belong With Me. She

is a songwriter and O'Rite. She wrote Girl Crush for Little Big Town which, by the way, if you haven't heard the Harry Styles version of that song, you haven't lived. But... I agree. This is the last time that Taylor's going to do a lot of collaborative

country writing on an album. Because the next album, she's going to write exclusively herself. But more than that, it's clear that there's something about this relationship with Liz Rose that has paved the way for a bunch of future collaborations that are critical to her evolution as an artist and the sound that we get through the, you know, Taylor Pop era and into Evermore folklore. So Liz Rose really seems to have taught Taylor Swift how to co-write, which is an unbelievably difficult thing for artists to do to be that open and vulnerable with another person when you're creating something that is so often autobiographical. and more often than that rooted in emotions that are really real. When you think about fearless, who was her most important collaborator on this thing? I'm glad we're standing Liz Rose because I love Liz Rose and just the idea of, you know, having a great female mentor at that point for Taylor must have been really, really awesome.

So I'm kind of annoyed that I don't don't have her either here or when we talked about the debut album. But I do have a different one. William Shakespeare! Oh, gosh. How could I forget? How could you forget? Taylor read Romeo and Juliet. Yeah.

And she went, hey, this is pretty good. Yeah. But I want to tweak the ending. And then she wrote love story. It's kind of a common theme, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, my first crappy album, we wrote a song called Jack and Jill, which was the same thing. Like, you're just sort of grabbing, but done in a much shittier and less enduring iconic way.

But I think there's something about Taylor herself that injecting her own being into this thing took it to another level. You're right. William Shakespeare created that song. It's important because this was when the idea of, oh boy, careful, you go out with Taylor Swift, just going to write a song about you,

was just starting to get in the mix, at least after this album, because that's when you, you know, forever and always is the Joe Bro's track and whatever. We should be very clear about this. Taylor Swift does not have a source material problem. No. And Exhibit A, and there's Exhibit through Z 60 bazillion times, but Exhibit A is deciding that you can change the ending to Romeo and Juliet

and just turning it into a song. So that is my most important collaborator. What do you think the most purposeful Easter egg is on this album? You know, for me, it's introducing us to Abigail on 15. I know that she was in a music video on the debut, picture to burn, right? Yeah. But here she's bringing in a friend

and the sort of ways in which she weaves real parts of her life and imagine parts of her life into these songs. that then, you know, become part of the Taylorverse. This really established Abigail as one of those central players. And I thought it really, Abigail's going to come up in all kinds of ways going forward. But it still allows, even as she's a big star, it brings some authenticity to a song that, you know, by the time she's actually singing this out live, it's three, four years old, this sentiment, right? but it allowed that song to endure.

We've talked and we'll continue to talk so much about authenticity and all that. One of the reasons that she can be really smart about what she wants to do in her career and still be believable even when some of the themes, like by the time that she's performing, you belong with me, don't hold water in the same way is because the songs are believable. Right. Like when you hear the song, you know it's true. Maybe it's not true to her in the exact same way anymore now that she's famous. But you can hear it and you know it's real.

And when you hear Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind and we both cried, you believe that they cried together about it. And it works. And it's really important. And she wasn't 15 anymore. But when she sings it, she is. And that's a testament to the songwriting and the first. performance of it and just sort of her ability to convey emotion in her voice.

But it is an essential anchor to me in the believability debate. Which is a big one. And we're having this conversation on a day in which Taylor has tweeted out in frustration and anger about a Netflix show that referenced her personal life and wrote about it in a derogatory way. What do you care? You go through men faster than Taylor Swift. Earlier in this pod, you talked about how there was this rising sentiment of,

oh, you better not date Taylor Swift or else you get a song written about you. In conjunction with, you know, you said these emotions are believable, and I'm with you on that. But there was a rising sentiment at the time that was like, hey, how could she have had so many of these relationships? Like, are these really real relationships that she's having? Is she just using them to get her? a song, is she just starting a fire

so she can feel something as she talked about in cold as you. And the way that we navigate this conversation about her personal life and the way that she mines it for emotive stuff that makes its way into the songs

is it's a hairy road to walk because in one way she absolutely was treated so unfairly for publishing her person, basically everybody publishing her personal life and challenging the authenticity of a set of feelings. Why can't you fall in love with somebody for a month and have, you know,

an amazing relationship that, by the way, may or may not even be physically intimate? She said when this album launched that she hadn't kissed a boy in two years. So why can't we believe that she, you know, emotionally would fall in love with people, have a set of experiences that then could fuel a song? You know, she was treated so unfairly in that way. And, you know, she was treated so unfairly in that way, and at the same time, by the end of Fearless, I do think as a fan, you're left wanting her to begin to explore something new, because she's used a lot of these themes through the course of two, not just two albums, but two extended bonus track full albums of material related to a set of relationships that, you know, her fans,

certainly all got behind, but the rising chorus of critics who are throwing stones at the sun start to say, hey, is this really real? How did you feel about that tension at the time and how do we navigate it going forward? You're making me in some ways rethink my Easter egg from this one, because it's Hey Stephen. And just the naming of the name and the song title yet again. And this song is about Stephen Barker Liles from the band Love and Theft they toured together. It's like one of the most random. Haven't heard from them lately. No, probably ties enchanted being about the Owl City guy as like Taylor's most random crush.

And what we know from this, she doesn't need a lot. This goes back to the source material question, right? She does not need a lot. And I'm going to dunk on myself here. When you're a teenage girl, you don't. Like you just don't. I'm painting with a broad brush. But falling in love in 10 seconds or thinking you have is not that hard.

Listen, I can tell you it's not as a teenage boy either. Like that it happens. You go crazy for somebody, whether it becomes, you know, real or it just stays imagined. And you have an outpouring of emotion around that. What's so bad about that? And hey, Stephen, which I love, I think that's a totally underrated song. It's not big, but it's just really sweet. And I love listening to it.

They didn't know each other super well. They apparently talked on the phone a decent amount, but they never dated. Yeah. I think there's a bunch of guys out there who are like, how the hell did she get a song out of our relationship? While the rest of the world goes, oh, she dated so many guys, which is unbelievably unfair because it doesn't really get at the core of what she was mining, right? So much of it she was mining her imagination. She's mining a feeling. And she's mining the ability to project and even.

maybe be shattered by, not in this case, not with this song, but you can be shattered by losing the possibility of a projection of a relationship that doesn't even exist. That's totally part of growing up. So again, it's that source material thing where the assumption that to write one of these songs, she needed to have a big, serious, dramatic, romantic, physically intimate relationship just seems ridiculous to me. And it seems like anybody who's ever been a teenager or grown up or learned how to date people. Like, how do you think that? I just, I don't get it. It's like one of these Taylor conversations where I'm like, what world do people live in? But guess what? Guess what? To speak to the tweet that she sent today in early March,

she can date whoever the hell she wants. She can be intimate with whoever the hell she wants. The fact that she's a celebrity, and it was published in the, you know, pages of magazines to sell in supermarkets, you know, plenty of people, if they had their Tinder and Bumble activity published, would have a pretty similar lineup in terms of frequency of dates and so on. and so forth. Like that's the part that was unfair about this. And we need to talk about it because, you know, increasingly here as the internet becomes the primary medium for delivering information,

here we are in 2008 as this album comes out, she's paying attention. And the external chatter that goes on about her personal life, speculative some, accurate some, unfair a lot, starts to have an impact on the way she thinks about herself, the way she writes, the way she presents herself in the world. So that's where I think it's important to acknowledge that there were two things happening. She was certainly mining personal relationships for material, but not in a serial killer, you know, Machiavellian type way.

She was being a young woman, which the media and press were not doing a very good job, of allowing her to do. And therefore, down the road, we're going to see how that impacts a whole lot of her source material. That was not at its apex yet, though. Because, again, a lot of these were imagined relationships either,

on her part, for coming up with stuff, basically just going like, oh, he seems interesting. What might that be like? And then that translating to speculation about whether she, like, actually dated these guys. Later on, she actually was dating them. Yes. And there was a greater frequency of, okay, they're a little bit older. These are more real relationships. And we know. And the internet was an even bigger phenomenon. And photo evidence was more accessible and all of that. But I think

in some ways in hindsight, it's easier to go, oh, this song's about that guy. This song's about that guy. fuels this idea of she dated all these people. That's right. She did, like, in this case, she didn't. When we get to the next couple of albums, a lot of those were, those were real boyfriends. Yeah. And whether that matters or not is a completely different thing, but. Yeah.

My point is, so what if she did. So what if she did date them all? Like, so what? At the time, she was not given permission to do that. And that seems inherently unfair. What also would be unfair is taking an album that won the Grammy for album of the year and forcing somebody to cut a song from it. But that's what we're doing, Nora. So tell me, from Fearless, what songs are you going to cut?

So I only have one cut from the actual album, which is you're not sorry. What? What? Wow. What a rise? Why? How? dare you. There are, so here's what it is. There are three songs on this album that are

thematically similar. And it's forever and always. Was I out of line? Did I see something way too honest made you run and hide like a scared little boy. It's tell me why. And it's you're not sorry. And tell me why and forever and always are two of my absolute favorite songs on this album. So I think by the time you get to, you're not sorry. I just, I, it's, it's extra to me. But let's get into it. Forever and Always you like because it's about Joe Jonas. No, forever and always I like because she is spitting.

So there's an alternate, there's a piano version forever and always. Yes, which is great. It's great. beautiful. But it doesn't sit there. It sounds really nice, but it's not how that song is supposed to be to me. Okay. When I think I've said this to you before, I have this distinct memory of like watching

rom-coms when I was a teenager and kind of internalizing that, yeah, you kind of wanted to end up with the right guy in the end, but what was really more important was like nailing the telloff line. And she does that so well on forever and always. and she writes on that song in a way that is how people speak, that were you just kidding, is exactly how you talk in a fight sometimes. And just the way that that becomes part of that song to me

is so fantastic and satisfying. There's a little bit of that on Tell Me Why, too. And that's why those songs are that effective to me in a way that you're not sorry, just isn't. I don't think it's a bad song. I just don't. It doesn't accomplish anything that other songs don't for me.

Okay. You're not sorry. I enjoy because it feels like the first piano ballad we've heard from her that is really the one where she can straddle the piano bench and like do her head back,

head bang piano, like heavy arena ballad thing that I don't get from some of the other track five songs. I have to say, I had tell me why on the cut list potentially. I wanted to hear from you why it was a keeper. I just, it feels a little bit after, like, its placement on the album for me, I think is what bothers me, because it feels

a bit like a forced country song following a couple of pop-ish crossover songs. It's like, they were like, hey, let's bring back some banjo and fiddle, you know, in ways that I mean like You Belong With Me has banjo but there's just like throughout a lot of the early songs on the record

there's guitar and banjos that are being put through flange effects or distortion and they're sort of like chunk chunk chunk chunk chunk like there's build up energy in those instruments

that are not country they feel super pop and this felt like hey it's a country song and then the outro with the banjo licks just sound like Matchbox 20's unwell

It just lifted right from there And it just bothers the hell out of me I can't let it go I'm sick and tie your attitude I feel like I don't know you You tell me that you should want So that was on list But really the song

You can talk me into keeping that You've already done it by the way that you've talked about The song, why are we keeping change? The Olympics, the Olympics used this song for some reason This is unbelievable to me. I thought you would love that song. I love that song. I listen to that song all the time.

Really? Yeah. Does the Hallelujah stuff at the end come off as like a subtle Christian rock country hat tip thing? I don't know. Like she closed with it before the encore on the tour. So it clearly resonated with people. But like explain it to me. It just sounds really good.

It's the same feeling of some of that big arena filling stuff that you get later on. red. And I ignore the hallelujahs. Like, they just don't... How do you ignore them? They wash over me in terms of the actual word, I guess. But it doesn't bother me. I love that song. Okay.

Well, to each their own, I feel like change for me is the one where I just kind of went, me. Like, I feel like this song is a little bit like a place in this world from the debut, which is that it's well-intentioned and it covers some sort of generic set of feelings, but I just don't buy that they're

really deeply resonating with her. On the other hand, we know that, like, she was, she had changed lying around for a while. She hadn't finished it. She wrote it after she saw Scott Borchetta, who's the head of Big Machine, uh, the record label that she signed to. She was Big Machine. He's crying when she won the Horizon Award at the CMAs. The Horizon Award was the big, is the big sort of best new artist. This is the next big thing award at the CMAs. It's, it's better than the Grammy's best new artist, because best new artists of the Grammys is sometimes a curse. It's like making the cover of Madden. Like, you're never going to be seen again. You're going to get, you're going to blow out a knee and never come back. But this is like, the Horizon

award is, not to mention that it never goes to a new artist. There you go. So like the Horizon Award was going to, that really was what propelled her into the next, oh my gosh, okay, she clearly is not just a one album wonder. And he was moved by it because he really had bet his career on that. So I keep looking for that energy and emotion in the song. And then, I just keep getting the like walls and hallelujah. And it feels like, you know, the song the Olympics adopted because it was just bland enough not to piss off the, you know, Yugoslavian judge. Well, there are a few songs in her discography that I feel like fit that description because I don't disagree with you in that the origin story of it. I don't hear in the song itself. I just think

it sounds really good. I think it sounds big in a way that some of the other songs on. fearless ones that I like immensely for different reasons don't. So I like the change of pace. I like how it sounds. The song that I always think of when I'm like, I like this song if you divorce it from what it's supposed to be about is innocent, which comes later and feeds into the whole Kanye thing where I'm like, if this is about completely different subject matter,

I absolutely love this song. Yeah. I really have a hard time merging the story behind it with what it sounds like. And maybe changes a little bit like that. as well. I do want to just, I have a couple cuts from the platinum version of the album. Okay, yeah, this is what I was going to ask you, because first of all, the platinum versions of these albums are important because from a business perspective, they really show just how intelligent she is, and she certainly worked with her team on this, but the amount of material that she created

afforded the opportunity to put out an album and then put out a bunch of re-releases with additional bonus tracks. And in the course of doing that, they would do some direct deals with a Target or a Walmart, bundle it with merchandise. As e-commerce started to grow, she could sell some of those things through her website and start to build direct commerce relationships with her fans. So this is part of her business genius wrapped up in a, hey, I'm such a prolific and once-in-a-generation songwriter in a lot of ways that I have the flexibility to do this kind of thing. So talk to us about the fearless platinum version and some of the songs that are on it. So the ones that I would nix are come in with the rain and the other side of the door.

I will say... Interesting. There is a... Taylor Swift is an incredible sire. Is, I think, one of her underappreciated talents. And there is an O on coming with the rain. Not S-I-R-E. like she's not

I was like I thought you meant like she was she was helping others create new songs or something not actually like giving birth to race horses Yeah no so she So a sigh like like Not like that

But yes the core concept of expelling air From your mouth I suppose is what we're discussing here She's really really really good at it The best recorded Taylor Swift sigh is on new romantics. We'll get to that at a different time. We're not going to spoil that this is contentious for us.

And we actually don't really know why. But there isn't just a place where she goes, oh, on Come In With the Rain where it's candy to me. I absolutely love it. I don't think that it's a particularly interesting Taylor Swift song, but that is one moment where you can see that she's gotten, her voice isn't everything that it's going to become at this.

but she is better at using it. Right. By this point. And there's a couple little tricks like that that I think are really wonderful. So it would be hard for me to part with just that moment. And she talks about rain. Yes. But the other side of the door you'd cut?

Yeah. Do you like that song? Well, I just think we have to acknowledge that she talks about that little black dress in the lyrics. Which is a nice reference back to the Tim McGraw song. Yep. That's clever. There's a little clever continental. there, but I don't need it to stay on the record. Okay, so what is it about Superstar or Untouchable or

it's Jump Then Fall, isn't it? You love Jump Then Fall. I like Jump and Fall. It's not, so this is probably going to really piss you up. I really like Untouchable, and I also really like Superstar. And I sort of know, like, there's just something, Superstar makes no sense. I don't understand who she has this relationship with. Like, there's a bunch of it where I'm just like, what? is this song. But I really like it. I like how it sounds. The idea of pining after like a touring rock star as Taylor Swift is also sort of funny to me. And it's cute. So Untouchable, why? What is it that resonates with you? It's a five-minute, 11-second song. She wrote with writers, by the way, that she didn't usually work with. Carrie Barlow, Nathan Barlow, Tommy Lee James. What is it about Untouchable?

So the come-on come-ons I love, but mainly it's that it sounds a little bit different than what's on the rest of this, right? Fearless is a supernova that captures teen girl energy. If it has a weakness to me, it's that a lot of it sounds the same. And this is a nice change of pace. I like the melody. I like how she delivers the lines. I think it's a little bit of a head fake in the sense that it just sounds different. from a lot of what's on the album, but somehow it works. I totally buy the sentiment from her, even though it doesn't fit in with a lot of the rest of it. So I'm a fan. I like all five minutes and 11 seconds. All right. Well, if you're a fan of those things, I'm going to assume that you don't actually have a critique of what she titled this album because of how much time she spent in the liner notes explaining what Fearless actually means to her. Or would you have called it something else? I like Fearless as the title. My only question is how does this album change? if it's called love story instead.

Yeah. Would that have been a bit too saccharin? And would that have put the spotlight too brightly on, gee, she just writes these love songs. That's all she does. Like, it's the same thing over and over and over again. I think the answer to that is yes. Yeah.

But it's possible it does something a little bit extra for that song. And that's the only thing that I can think of where you can make the argument. But fearless makes sense to me. I think there's, it's, it's actually. in a way that I think is nice. So what did you find about Taylor from the depths of the internet?

The best ones from this are about touring. The first is that Justin Bieber joined her for two dates in the UK on the Fearless Tour. And he broke his foot during the first show

and he's still performed during the next one, which... Is what you do when you have a chance to open for Taylor Swift. Can we be clear about something, though?

I think it is important to note that Justin Bieber's first album did not come out until 2010. And yes, you know, he had some singles in an EP that was out. But like Taylor Swift paved the way for Justin Bieber. Sure. Like, undeniably as a, you know, prodigy child singer who could also sing about young things and didn't have to be like pretending to be an adult. And that goes, like, the sequence of those things are important because Taylor Swift was already a star when Justin Bieber was discovered. And I don't think he happens in the same way without Taylor because he really is the next big young internet music star after Taylor.

It goes back to what we were talking about in the first episode with high school musical and that kind of youth moment where things like that were popular and there was an opening. Maybe his career doesn't go the same way without her. or maybe if he hadn't sucked it up and hobbled on one foot for their second date at Wembley or wherever. You know what she brought up. You know what she brought up. Katie Perry. They did hot and cold in L.A. So they were still good then.

That was before the schism. And that actually fits perfectly with another little Taylor tidbit here, which is that she sold out the Staples Center in two minutes for this, which is just crazy. Yeah. As a former CEO of Ticketmaster, I can tell you that that's not the easiest thing in the world to do, but she will go on to actually get a banner from Kobe at some point for the most number of sellouts ever at Staples Center. So she and that arena in Los Angeles have a very long and storied relationship. It's where she's brought up her coolest guest stars and where she's had arguably the most success.

Do you think that's, and I'm showing a little bit of bias here, but you probably could make an argument for her most important venue being either Staples Center. She's had some really big Gillette Stadium moments. Yeah. You kind of want to give New York something, but it's a little, I don't know what it would be, because there's what's happened at the Garden, what's happened at MetLife. Yeah. I think it's either, it's one of those.

Yeah. I think it's, as I said earlier, the Foxborough Stadium, because I don't know for, free advertising on this pod. It is. I think it's Foxborough. I mean, Staples, there's a lot of history there, but the rain show happens a year after she plays her first date there, and the rain show just goes down in lore, and it's the first place where she did two stadiums. There's just something about New England and the Northeast and their connection to her, and as we'll talk about down the road, her connection to New England, that makes that the place to see Taylor Swift. The last thing that I had was what we already talked about with change being written about being part of an indie label

and trying to compete. And then it ended up as the theme for the 2008 Olympics, which is a little strange. But let's move on. Let's give out the Tom Hiddleston Award. Where do you see the work coming through on this one? For me, it's the number of references to town. There's five of six, the first six, six overall, you know, multiple references to 2 a.m. and the rain. And this one just feels like that's the part where I feel like she got some notes that were like, hey, whoa, just right from the first opening snare drum of Fearless, which is the first track of the album, you can hear that this album is mixed differently. It is more poppy. It's still a country album, but the mandolin is lower. There's not as much of it. Nathan Chapman's voice is not underneath her vocal throughout.

You can hear the difference in her vocal. If you just listen to folklore evermore and then go back and listen to Fearless or even the re-release of love story and listen to her vocal and then go back and listen to the original version you're going to hear massive difference but there is as much of a gap between her vocal and the way that it evolved and progressed from the debut to Fearless and so it feels like they were very conscious when they finished this album that all of the hard work that they had done and that she in particular herself had done, going door to door,

meeting those country DJs, doing the hard work of building up that credibility within the country community and keeping them close to her heart, even as maybe she looked down the road thinking, hey, Shania, hey, Faith Hill, hey, Dixie Chicks, all were able to cross over. That's a space that I will ultimately go to.

It feels like there are moments on this album where they are trying to make sure that they throw the country, audience, the hardcore country audience, which at this moment in time, before she brought in a whole new audience, was older women, that she's trying to throw them a bone with some of the language. What do you think? That makes sense. I've got just the number of re-releases, international editions, digital bonus tracks, platinum album, Walmart Target, DVD, yada, yada, yada. very smart.

Over commercialized for you? Just commercialized. I don't know about over, but you can tell what the point is. Yeah. And you can tell that there's a willingness and a comfort to operate in that sphere, which is sometimes tricky territory for an artist

to just be willing to go and do that because it's going to help you in a lot of ways. And I give her all the credit for doing that and being smart about it. But when you go through, you can see it. You can see the work. And when you look at the number of different versions of that album that exist now, you can definitely tell.

And even we go back to Fearless being the first album that she's going to re-release. And she says, okay, there's going to be 26 songs on this Taylor's version of this album. Well, you're starting from 19, right? because you make the platinum edition chock full of all those extra songs. And part of that's because she had those in the tank, right? But it's a version of the same thing because now she wants it to be her own and she wants to have this opportunity to not only give people a different version of that album, but one that they're going to hopefully choose over the original.

That's the point. And she'd already done, she actually kind of made it more difficult for herself because she'd already put a lot of those extra songs into, we're going to get even more people in the moment of it by doing the platinum album. So now she doesn't have, like, Taylor Swift is plenty prolific. I don't think she has an issue in this area, but it's actually a version of the thing that she already did when she went through this whole process. Well, it's important to remember the moment in time, which is, you know, 2008, we are worried that all recorded music is imploding from a revenue perspective.

iTunes is here, but it's moving people towards singles, and she's going to actually try to do something about that over the course of the next couple of albums in service of selling physical product. So she's thinking a lot about making sure that she has control over her distribution, the way in which her art is distributed, and frankly, the way in which she's going to make the most money possible while still, you know, creating a good experience for her fans. She does go on to grow $76 million on the fearless tour. And this is really the start in 2008 of the pie chart of an artist's income streams going from 80-20. I make money, 80% from music, 20% from the road. It to being 80% from the road, 20% from music, but it's just starting to happen right now. So I don't fault her necessarily for trying to throw some things against the wall to figure out in this massive disruption around what digital music is actually going to do

to artists' income streams and before artists start to figure out that they can make a lot more money on the road than they used to be able to. I don't fault them for trying some things out. I do hear you that in some moments it feels a little bit, it feels like they're showing the work.

That's for sure. So as we come out of that, then, what is Peek Taylor in this entire episode? It's the waterworks. Yeah. It's the waterworks. It's all the rain. There are, if you count, if you use the platinum edition and you count both forever and alwayses, there are seven references to rain.

There are back-to-back songs with pouring rain on them. I mean, it is just, she is controlling the weather. It rains in your bedroom. Everything is wrong. Is one of the... Taylor Swift is really underratedly funny to me. And the level of drama that that line achieves is so good. It is so impressive and so ridiculous.

And I certainly choose to believe that she is both feeling it and in on the joke in that moment. But Peek Taylor is all of the rain on Fearless. What do you think? Well, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to actually put you on the spot. And I'm going to ask you, we know that this album is going to be re-recorded. It's been re-recorded and it's going to be re-released. What do you think is going to be the hardest thing for her to pull off authentically in the re-record? Is there a moment?

Is there a phrase? Is there a laugh? Is it any of those sighs that you talked about? I think it's either 15. Yep. Because she's a little too removed from it, although I don't know, there's an everlastingness to that song. It could actually come out on Forever and Always in that the quality. In that the quality of that song.

that I love so much about how biting it is, you have to believe that she cares that much. Yeah. And when you're that young, of course you care that much. Yeah.

20-21, Taylor Swift, I don't think cares that much about that story. Yeah. And it's possible we could end up hearing that on the record. I don't know if we will,

though. She might be able to just put the hat on and pull it off, but that's an unanswered question for me at the very least. I mean, she plays it live, I will be very interested to see how on your one of your favorite songs, Hey Stephen, or underrated songs, Hey, Stephen, how she's going to re-record or reenact that laugh that she does on Hey, Stephen. I just, it's a really good one.

All those other girls, well, they're beautiful, but we're out of song for you. Yeah, I just don't know how she's going to be able to replicate that, given what an instrument her voice has become. By the way, you're not as high on untouchable as I am, but that could be a really good re-record. Fair enough. We're going to find out in just a couple of months. So look, we've gone through our list of things. We've talked about Peek Taylor. I want to hear your thoughts on next album appetizer. For me, what's leading us forward is actually forever and always because she consciously chose this poppy rock version over. the slower piano ballad. And to me, that foreshadows a bit what's coming. But what about you? Mine is change for the reasons that we talked about

where you could actually easily fit it in on red. Yeah. But I think it could also fall into the subtle genre bending that she starts to do a little bit more of on Speak Now. Forever and Always, though, is my belatedly best song. And it is the regular version, not the piano version. I really have a big place in my heart for that song. I guess.

We learn that on this pod. I have no response to that. And I'm not going to fight you. I want you to love the song that you love. I mean, I think for me, the belated, belated best song for me is love story. Because the re, and I have recency bias on this one just because spending so much time comparing the re-record with the,

with the original for me. There's just an energy in that song that just soars and melodically, and you can just see that she is graduating to the arena in the stadium with that song and bringing in, yes, she's stealing from Romeo and Juliet, but she's doing so in a way that sort of brings all audiences in. It just feels to me like she's moving into the second phase of the booster rockets and on her way into space. But that said, it doesn't hold the best lyric for me on the album.

And for me, my favorite lyric on the album is I didn't know who I was supposed to be at 15 because that encapsulates the journey of Taylor Swift. I don't think she knows who she's supposed to be on a number of the albums that are to come. It really is the through line for Taylor Swift across a bunch of these albums is she's learning who she's supposed to be and exploring that in real. time in front of us. What's your favorite lyric? You didn't give it to you're out clubbing. I just made Caramel Delights from Thug Story. That's not your best lyric? Oh, listen, I knew you'd come through something like, sorry. No, mine is also from 15, but it's when you're 15 and somebody tells you

they love you, you're going to believe them. Yes, yes, yes, yes. With an honorable mention to this love is difficult, but it's real, which is the line that she started love story with, which I think is also good. But I choose 15. Final album grade, what do we give it? I give it an A minus. Tell me why. I was sure you were going to give it an A. I'm trying to not. You didn't vote with the academy. Is that like a vote for Beyonce? Would you have voted for Beyonce? Tell the truth. I'm being that professor who's like, in my 35 years of tenure, I've never given out an A. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. That's fine. You're grading on a curve.

If I can give it, if I'm allowed to give it an A, give them all an A. No, that's not sure. I wouldn't give every single album an A. Why the minus? What did this need? More variety, I guess. And that's where I grab, I think that's where I gravitate a little bit to change and to untouching. because look, I spend spent and spend a lot of time with this album.

Yeah. So while I love story and you belong with me are different songs, I don't fall into that category where it's like this is all too thematically similar, sounds the same, or whatever.

I think that's ridiculous. I do like the changeups. Yeah. And maybe I could have had a few more of them. I think this is an unfair thing to ask us to do so many years after because in hindsight you look at it actually more critically

because it isn't capturing your feelings as a young woman which is really what this album was about which was just capturing the spirit and duck's feet underneath the surface range of emotions of what it meant to be a teenage girl in that moment in time

and that's why in the moment it was an A and that's why in the moment it beat a Beyonce album that I think now, you know, almost 15 years later, you look back on and go, objectively, the Beyonce album should have won the Grammy. So what do you give? What's your grade? I'm with you on an A minus.

On an A minus. All right. Well, that's a good segue into the album that we'll do next, which is Speak Now, which was the first Taylor Swift album that I listened to as a high school student. So if you think that this was angst-inducing, just wait. For Nathan Hubbard, I'm Nora Princiotti. This has been the second episode of every single album, Taylor Swift. We're a week into this project and it's been awesome to get feedback from you guys. Please keep it coming. We are on Twitter and Instagram and just eager to hear from everyone who's made this such a fun process. And you can join us again on Monday when we'll be breaking down one of Taylor's most underrated albums, Speak Now.