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

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

The beat dropped on "I Knew You Were Trouble" and everything changed, Taylor Swift had gone pop. Nathan and Nora break down Taylor's fourth album, 'Red,' and her transition from country to pop. They discuss Max Martin's influence on the album, the importance of songs like "All Too Well" and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," and some of the things that were going on behind the scenes in Taylor's life at this moment. Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard  Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringers Charles Holmes and co-host Grace Spellman present the most notorious new podcast in the industry, the Ringer Music Show. Every Tuesday, they'll bring you the latest news, the hottest takes, and the deepest reporting about the wild world of music and the chaotic industry that creates it. Check out the Ringer Music Show exclusively on Spotify. Hello and welcome to every single album, Taylor Swift. I'm Nora Prentiotti. I'm a staff writer at The Ringer. I'm joined by Nathan Hubbard. And we are here today to talk about Taylor Swift's album, read. And I'm going to go ahead and drop us right in, Nathan, to a minute and five seconds into the fourth song on this album, I knew you were trouble. And there's a bass drop here that I think changes the course of Taylor Swift history. But what I'm hoping you will do is build out around that what this album is and what the context that that seismic shift of a moment on that song, when you hear a dubstep beat from this woman who has been grounded in country music up to this point does, because the things that surround it, the space that encapsulates that moment is almost as interesting as the moment itself.

Would you agree? I would. There's no going back. The dubstep comes in and we know that we are on a journey somewhere forward that is not going to look like anything from once we, came. And this album is, in a nutshell, for me, it is this album about transition. It's like this window into the cocoon of a butterfly going through metamorphosis. She is transitioning in her musical life. She is transitioning in her personal life into the sort of stratosphere of celebrity. And there's all kinds of transition happening in her business life because of the musical choices that she makes on this album.

And some of that transition was happening as the album was being created, right? Because a lot of these songs, she did with Nathan Chapman. She did them in the same sort of way that she'd written her three previous albums. And she sent them to her label and pretty much everybody was satisfied. But the one person who was not satisfied was Taylor Swift. That's right. And towards the end of the album creation process, they'd made a bunch of songs,

but she felt like we need to push the envelope a little bit. We can't just do the thing that we've done before. And that led to the song I Know You Were Trouble that we just referenced. It also led to We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together the first single that was released from this album and a huge hit.

And that is where she shatters the box that she had constructed around herself, that had been constructed by other people around her. and launches fully into the butterfly flapping its wings phase of that metamorphosis. Yeah, she really, at the end of speak now, was at the edge of the forest of what she could do within that format. You could tell she was getting antsy, she was getting uncomfortable, and I think she might even tell us that she was getting bored. And so she started to try some things. Taylor's never bored.

But working with new people is a hard thing to do. I mean, she has said, even recently, that her greatest anxieties are that the musical people that she likes won't like her back. And so to open herself up and try working with a new group of people took a ton of courage. We talk about those songs that you just mentioned and I knew you were trouble, 22, we are never ever getting back together. Those were the Max Martin and Shellback tracks. These guys were the producers and songwriters of most of the hit pop in the 2000s. And they get the headline here for sure. But what kind of got lost in three, thinking about this album is that she worked with a ton of other producers. She worked with Dan

Huff on Red Starlight and Begin, who was another Nashville country producer. She worked with the guys from Snow Patrol on last time. She works with Jeff Basker who had done We Are Young by Fun, but by the way, also did the Duelipa album that she just beat for album of the year. She worked with Jeff on Holy Ground and Lucky One. She worked with Dan Wilson from the band Semi-Sonic on Tretress and Butch Walker on Everything has changed with Ed Shearin, which, by the way, Everything has changed as a song is an interesting Easter egg as to what's happening on this album. But the point is, this is an innovation lab. She is trying a bunch of new things with a bunch of new people trying to look for where she's going next in charter course.

And we get a window into that on red. So put a pin in that for one second, because we should just touch on Max ever so slightly more, right? Because this is the person responsible in addition to Britney Spears for. Hit Me Baby one more time. This is the person responsible for I want it that way. And pretty much, I mean, so many earworms. If you, anyone who hasn't ever done this, give Max Martin a Google because you will just be blown away by the number of year-defining, era-defining pop songs that he had a hand in

creating. It's going to be May. Incredible. But if you couple that craftsmanship with Taylor Swift's own, it creates these incredibly special songs that were kind of the headline for this. But what you were just describing in terms of Red being this innovation lab is the album as a whole, which has that back and forth quality. I mean, let's go down some of the tracks here and how they come together. because one of the core critiques of this album, and probably the reason that it didn't win a Grammy for album of the year,

is that it's not a cohesive sound. It's not defined by sonic consistency or a particular genre. Yes, and she made this as an album about the emotions from unhealthy romantic relationships, which in a way, those emotions are all over the place. You're whipsawing back and forth between, you know, joy and despair and glee and pain. And the color red was the way that she viewed that in almost a synesthesia kind of way,

the way that she viewed those emotions. And so there is a little bit of sort of a metaphorical purpose to the way that these songs go back and forth. But at the macro level, it feels a bit like she is straddling the old world of country and the new world of pop and having to breadcrum us. from where she was to where she's going. If we think about her catalog at the top level, we've just had three country-ish country pop albums.

We know that what's going to follow Red in 1989 and Reputation and Lover are definitely pop albums. So this is that album that bridges the two, and it is so hard to break out and crossover, especially from Nashville, especially as a woman in Nashville. And so this album is a ton of work to lead us to where she's going.

In real, I think, goodness, we don't have to pick. But if you had to pick between what's this album doing, is it breadcrumbing everybody who she needs to make sure stays on board the ship as she goes from port to port versus, is she doing this because this is just what she's feeling? Is one of those or the other more compelling to you in terms of telling the story of this album? I think in the arc of the narrative of Taylor Swift,

she understood better than anybody that she had to do this. She had to make the jump from country to pop slowly and to ease us along, to ease her record label and her team around her along. And certainly for her fans, she had to the core fan base

she really had to do the work to make it safe to move in that way, but also the rest of the music industry, right? She had worked so hard with the debut album to ingratiate herself with all of the country, music DJs and the publications and so forth who had supported her. And there was a real fear

that those people were going to feel abandoned. Remember, on the last album, Speak Now, we had two number one songs on the country charts that came off of Speak Now. So she's still very much at the forefront of stardom in the country world. This was not an easy transition to make. And I think the reason that it feels choppy to those, to whom it does, is because it was purposeful. There was a reason why we ordered the tracks this way. And we should actually go through the tracks and talk about them because one by one, they show us going back and forth between where she's been and where she's going. Well, one of the ones that's really instructive for that is track nine, stay, stay, stay.

Which is a country track she did with Chapman and think about that title. Sort of. Yeah, that's right. And it is this parody of a country song. She's almost sort of laughing, not just at herself, it's kind of wonderfully self-deprecating, but she's also leaning heavily into the twang, and this comes literally right after the song

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together when she has absolutely the opposite of twang. And it is that stretch. It's just a little on the nose. Yeah, and it's that stretch really all the way through the album. State of Grace, Red, Tretress, those could have been songs from Speak Now. Right?

We know even in the Deluxe verse, that red has a little country precursor that they chose not to go with. This shows us that she's advancing it, but it could have been on speak now. But then, bam, you get punched right in the mouth on, I knew you were trouble at the end of that first verse. She whipsaws back to all too well,

that big booming ballad, but then bang, back to a Max Martin on 22. I almost do, goes back to the ballad, and then boom, we're right back on We Are Never. It sort of ends with stay, stay there. But from that moment, all the way through the back part of the album, she's really testing with some of the indie producers that she worked with, some of the rock producers, the last time with, I mean, it's a Snow Patrol song, right?

Right. She's trying stuff out. I also do think that Taylor's called this her only true breakup album. Right. And some of the gut-wrenchingness of the real breakup songs, I need 22. I need we are never, ever getting back together. I need those breaths of fresh air.

And I don't want to step on our all too well conversation because it's going to be a huge part of this. But my like pinnacle moment with that song was a few years ago. I was very upset about a boy situation that seems totally stupid now. But I hadn't been able to bring myself to listen to that song for a few months. And it was New Year's Eve Day. and I was in a spin class because I'm a cliche and a loser. But it was like an extra long New Year's themed thing. And my friend Maddie, who was teaching the class,

she at a really like towards the end of it played all too well. And the song starts and I'm like, oh crap, I'm going to just cry, aren't I? This is going to be bad. This is going to be embarrassing. People are going to notice. And then it starts playing. I walk to the door with you. The air was cold

But something about it felt like home And I'm loving the song Because it's an incredible song But I just wasn't It did not feel applicable To that situation in my life Which was a really, really pleasant surprise In that moment

I was like, oh, that dude does not deserve this song for me. Like I'll save that for some other time When it's more meaningful And by the end of it I was almost like cracking up on the bike because when you feel like, oh my gosh, I don't need to feel that way about this situation anymore,

what do you want to do right after that? You want to like dance and scream and wave your hands around. And what does this album do right after that song? It gives you 22. We've got to recognize that this album is capturing that emotional roller coaster too because Taylor had had this tumultuous relationship with Jake Gyllenhall. And then she'd started dating Connor Kennedy of the Kennedy family who was a high school student in Massachusetts at the time.

And she'd had this experience of breaking up and getting back together again and breaking up again and then finally moving on. And I just think there's such a purposefulness in those transitions that might feel random or jarring because of the chaotic weight of emotions that she's trying to put into this. Again, wouldn't wish a horrible breakup on my worst enemy. No, but still. the journey that you go through in an unhealthy relationship, where there's this bullion and

it feels like life is incredible, you're on a massive high, and then you're dragged down playing the saddest, singing the saddest songs and sort of wallowing. And so this, in hindsight, it does take you on that emotional journey. But I think the way that it was received at the time was she doesn't really know who she wants to be. There's something, you know, here's the big C word that always gets layered on that has all kinds of connotations that aren't fair. This is a calculating album. She's, you know, how do we actually classify this album? Which, again, completely missed the point.

Because what you actually had was an artist who was exploring new frontiers for the songs that she was writing and looking for new formats to pour these songs into. And doing some of her absolute best work at the same time. Let's start breaking this album down into some of our categories because the biggest song here, which is our first category is, in my view, we are never, ever getting back together, which is one of those songs where it is tongue-in-cheek, it is reactive to the situation. And she drops some hints, right? But this to me is the biggest song because it's her first billboard number one.

It is funny. I think that's a huge part of it. Like Taylor is a very funny person. I don't think that gets talked about enough with her. But do you think that this song made the splash that it did just because of the content into the song, or you're also bringing in the indie record that's much cooler than mine. And that becomes part of, oh, who would that be about? Who did this? Who did that? And so that's one of those examples where those two things converge. Yeah, I think we got more

into the drama underneath the song after it had already been just absorbed into the bloodstream of the fan base so quickly. I mean, this album debuts, at number one. It sells 1.2 million copies in the first week. It's the biggest single week sales of 2012, and it passes Garth Brooks as the fastest selling country album. We got to put that in quotes, right? But this is just an absolutely huge album, and it's driven by that song. And I love that song. I mean, I just, I cannot get enough of it. I know it's not everybody's favorite, but for me, it just is one of those things that endures. It just feels like a song that groups all kinds of of groups of people can sing, and that was the way it was received. So this song made this album

because it just was so easily adopted by her fan base. In hindsight, man, there was a pretty big risk in putting this one out first. You could see a lot of people protecting her country route saying, I'm just not open to this. This is a sellout, right? But she didn't have to do that, I think because she had managed her brand publicly so well, and frankly because some of her relationships were with artists who performed this kind of music. It made it easier for it to be more sort of mainstream accepted by the readers of 17 Magazine.

They were already listening to this. Do you think there's a world in which they would have done? I knew you were trouble first. I think it had less of a catchy hook. in position on the album as the fourth song coming after a slate of songs that could potentially have been on Speak Now. Stay to Grace, Red, right?

Those are songs that absolutely we could have seen on fearless from that perspective, but certainly speak now. I just think that there was something about that little guitar hook and then the all-female chorus sing-along that just drew people into groups to participate in this. song. It was probably the best decision they've made about the first single to release from an album. It's so good. And the much cooler than mine is super special. But the moment that I love on this song

is just right at the beginning where it's, I remember when we broke up. And then you can just hear it in her voice when she's like, the first time. It's perfect. It's perfect. It's absolutely perfect. And what is the legend of the background bridge, you know, spying on the conversation? Ugh, it's just exhausting. What is the background on that? Was that an actually captured conversation on a hot mic? Was that replicated? So he calls me up and he's like, I was exhausting, you know? Like ever. So there's debate over this because either. And look, let's be honest. Taylor has told this story differently a couple times over the years. It's not super materially different,

but there are some nuances. I hear, while they're in a recording session, a friend of her ex comes into the studio or he calls her or someone calls her and says basically, oh, I heard you guys are getting back together. And she's working with her producers and she's just like, like, ugh, we are never getting back together. And then starts going and is just feeling it. And all of a sudden, it's a song. So there is some debate over whether was the guy in the room, that seems weird. Like, right? Like, doors closed. Yeah. They're recording a song. Yeah. You're just going to barge in. But weird things happen sometimes. Or if it was a phone call. But either way did come from a real experience where it was just like, are you kidding me? Leave me alone,

dude. Yeah. And there's some strong. strength in that. And a lot of this, she so brilliantly toes the line between saying, I am not cool, but in this case, it makes her cool, right? It brings the people around her as sort of a support network in the confidence to say, no, this is over, this is done, you're ridiculous. That towing of the line, you know, in earlier songs off debut and even off fearless, some of these songs are lonely. you know, she's sitting in those emotions all by herself under the bleachers, feeling like a complete outcast. In this case, she's sort of celebrating her not coolness with the indie record piece, and all of her friends are joining in and singing on the chorus. So she really starts to, again, build her squad here. She starts to play these concerts where she's bringing friends up and out on stage, and she really starts to build the Taylor Nation from, you know, a set of emotions that a lot of people are now connecting with.

it's not lonely and it's also very knowing. And I'll spoil. I knew you were trouble is actually more special to me from this record. But what these two have in common is this knowingness. Why is it more special? It's the base drop. That's just an incredible moment that we talked about. Dubstep.

Dubstep. You're just like, whoa! Taylor Swift did that. And by the way, it still sounds awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So that's incredible, but it's also the knowingness of it, right? The idea that for the first time, really, she's saying, I kind of knew this was a bad idea. And I did it anyway. And though we are never ever getting back together, the knowingness on that is a little bit different because it's more hindsight. It's not talking about, no, no. First thing first, I decided that the high was going to be worth the pain to borrow a phrase that comes later. But they both have. We've talked about the idea of remove in some of her older songs, which was creeping in beforehand. But when you're growing up, you go through a lot of things where you don't quite know how to feel about them and you're insecure and you're, uh, should I say something?

Is this messed up? It feels messed up. But what if I'm wrong? What if I'm overreacting? Whatever? And so it is so satisfying to get her just being like, no, I know. And I'm right. And that's really fun. Well, and the confidence and the knowing is also sells the musical part of this. I mean, that first chorus on I knew you were trouble is an all-time holy shit moment for music. It's just you knew nothing was going to be the same. But this song is also about Harry Styles and it starts a big legend amongst the 1D fans and the Taylor fans. I mean, there's this, the secret note in the lyrics, I think refers to a lyric from sweet disposition, which is a temper trap song, right? And Harry had that lyric tattooed on his arm around the time he was dating Taylor. So it starts a bunch of sort of Easter egg Taylor and Harry internet insanity,

which, by the way, Facebook is going public right now. We really are at peak social internet. Everything is cresting now. And so this song, these songs, this album is being passed around like wildfire through her core fan base using these new technology tools. And nothing more peak internet than competing theories

because the other narrative is, I think Jake Gyllenhaal is friends with the vampire weekend guys. So I think that was... It's one or the other. It can be both whatever. They're never, ever getting back together. So it doesn't matter.

So let's move to the Track 5 discussion because this one, I think probably goes down as the all-timer track five and it is the song all too well we have in years since come to understand that this

was really the first song written for the album it was done during a sound check basically on the Speak Now tour it was at one point ten minutes long with verse after verse after verse it had the word fuck in it We were both raising to who could say that first. You know it.

It has the F word in it in the original version, but it is just a building arena rock ballad that just you think it's done. She brings down the volume. It sort of sounds like it's going to dissolve into the end of the song, and it just keeps coming back and building back up. This is, I think, the iconic slow anthem that Taylor Swift, the most iconic slow anthem

that Taylor Swift has ever written. Agree? I agree. And that confirms to me that you view this as her ultimate track five. The best one she's done, emblematic of the track five experience. I do. I mean, this one builds on what she had done with dear John. Which to me is the other contender here. I think you're right. It's all too well, but if you wanted to

make it a one-two. The silver medal is Dear John, I believe. This song is U-2's With or Without You Musically. But lyrically, the way that she Easter eggs the scarf at Maggie's house and the way that she just portrays the heart-wrenching pain of a failed relationship, it doesn't even matter what is going on in the background. It's almost a chant more than it is a song in that way because there is just

some magic to it that I'm not sure anybody else in the moment in time could have captured. And this is where I think Taylor solidifies herself as just an all-time writer of bridges.

But I will say I think in some way is the quality of the bridge of the song and just the lifespan that it's taken on. It overshadows some other really special moments. Like, for instance, dance around the kitchen and the refrigerator light gives me chills. That's incredible, right?

Like, you just see it. You see the whole thing. And I think this is where, you know, it's interesting because, so this is allegedly a Jake Dillon Hall song. I think it's fairly plain. There are some visuals, like real visuals, things I saw in magazines around the internet,

of the two of them walking with maple lattes, her wearing a scarf. Big sweaters. Yeah. Big sweater energy that are of this era and are kind of seared in my brain. Yeah. And it's amazing that as much as that's true, I can see some of the vignettes just in the writing that are coming from my imagination basically is clearly. And I think that's interesting to me because she is comfortable doing that in the work in a way that she becomes uncomfortable about it being available for public discussion. But that's why this is fascinating, right? Because it's not as though she was always like, no, no, I'll never let anybody in.

We're very much in. We can see it. We can see it on our own. But this is such an example of her being okay doing it on her own terms. but then these things, I mean, Jake Jillenhall posted a photo on Instagram like a couple months ago where it was from when he was a little kid

and he's wearing glasses, which is a line in the song. Every single comment on the thing wasn't all too well lyric. This song has a tail. Well, it does. And what I don't know most people know at the time, like Jake Jillenhall was a huge actor at this point.

I mean, Brokeback Mountain put him into the stratosphere Like a Taylor-Lotner-level star. Yeah. A lot bigger than Taylor-Lotner. But I think my question to you is, how did this shape the way that you viewed Jake Gyllenhaal this album? Because, you know, John Mayer gets eviscerated. Harry Stiles, I think, you know, the fan base walks away,

thinking of Harry is mysterious and dark and, you know, just wild. I'm pretty sure that he, you know, from all accounts, wasn't great to her. And so the fan base was a little more forgiving of him, certainly than they were, of John Mayer. How did this shape the way you thought about Jake Gyllenhaal? Well, think about the dumb story that I told at the top of this pod. I felt sort of affirmed in my own getting over a breakup because I decided that it was not worthy of all too well, right? Okay. So I think you're right.

I think the fan base is a little bit more generous to Jake because it's like if he inspired this. There was family involved. Yeah, exactly. And it's just like, it's so huge. So you can't, the fall is only that rough because of what we imagine came before.

It must have been so incredibly special and powerful. And I have no clue if it was, right? But it's such a big iconic song that I think it's hard to be like, that guy sucks, period? Because if he sucks, how did he become part of the origin of this incredible thing? And so the behavior that we then hear on

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together is forgiven, in part because she's over it and able to manage it and because it gave us this epic all too well. She's over it. She's okay. and he kind of knows he screwed up, right? Oh, yeah. He's sending his friends after her,

either via phone or into the recording studio. So you're kind of like, okay, I'm confident that he's suffering in the way that I want him to be. I also think, on aside, Harry makes out okay in the songs. I got to be honest, for someone who came up in a boy band where maybe there's a little bit of like,

not that I mean, boy bands are hyper-sexualized all the time. Like, Harry seems a little bit. bit more suave and adult and cool because of the way that he's written about in Taylor Sliff's songs. I think he made out just fine. I'm not sure that's how the relationship actually happened, but it is interesting that the fan base has whitewashed Harry a little bit relative to some of the other characters in these episodes. So, Nora, if we're going to talk about her most important collaborator and her best supporting actor, it has to be Max Martin and Shelbeck, right? I mean, we talked about, she used a lot of producers on this album. It gets forgotten. It wasn't just

Nathan Chapman versus Max Martin. She's using, you know, the guy from Fun and all kinds of different producers. But the three songs that they worked on together just stood above the rest. Is there anybody else we even consider? No, it's Max and Shelbeck. And you could, if they were responsible for the drop and I knew you were trouble alone, I would give it to Max and Shelbeck. If you have to pick a before and after moment in her entire career. That's it. That is it. That's it. It's not even the Kanye thing at the VMAs, in part because that wasn't musical. But the I knew you were troubled drop is, is legendary. So we're going to circle back. Since we're in alignment on that, we can move on to the most purposeful Easter egg, which I think is going to lead us to

circle back to all too well and the scarf. It's your sister's house And you still got it in your drawer Even now Because that is my pick Because the scarf Like Maggie Gyllenhaal is getting asked about the scarf On Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen

And I have unanswered questions about this Because when that happened Yes What's the question? My question is first of all Because Maggie Jillenhall In my view feigned a little bit too much clueless about what's going on with the scarf.

When that came up, she was like, I'm totally in the dark about the scarf. I am in the dark about the scarf. It's totally possible. I don't know. Okay. I have been asked to this before, and I've been like, what are you talking about?

I feel like you need to look for the scarf. I don't know if you're totally in the dark about the scarf. Because the lyric in the song is that she left the scarf at the sister's house and you've still got it in your drawer even now. So if she left the scarf at the sister's house And then the scarf somehow makes its way into Jake's drawer Somebody's got to know that the scarf was there Like

Does Jake deny knowledge of the scarf? Jake does not like to get asked about Taylor Howard Stern of all people Could not get him to talk about it really at all And he's had some very testy interviews Where it comes up So he is not helpful on the scarf front I don't know if we can get a forensics team

Or something in here but someone moved that scarf. And I want to know who it is. And Maggie Gyllenhaal feels like our best chance. So Andy, if you ever get another interview, please go back at her. Let's figure this out. It remains one of the best Easter eggs,

not just for this album, but I think kind of for all time. Like, that scarf is an iconic scarf. If we ever found it, it would deserve placement in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It sounds like it's like a, missing murder weapon or something. I think you're right about that.

A distant second for me is the liner notes saying for Ethel on Starlight, which is about the Kennedys. She saw a picture of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy and wrote that song, but it wraps up this massive love affair with New England that she has. She's not from the area, but it is the site of her first stadium. show which happened at Gillette. It is the site of the rain show, famous rain show, where she played a concert at Gillette in the pouring rain and just kept going and the crowd stayed in it and it became the stuff of legends. But she also bought a house next door to the

Kennedys and we know she's going to go on to buy a Rhode Island place. So it is a hat tip to this love affair with that area of the country. I love that story too because to go from buying a place next to your boyfriend's family's house and then growing up into actually my New England Beach house is going to be this this former mansion owned by this sort of eccentric woman that she eventually writes last great American dynasty about. That's very fun. That's a very funny growth story. I do want to make sure that we put into this category as a contender,

the liner note for Begin Again, which is I wear heels now. Yeah. Which you actually pointed out to me once. something that I thought was really clever. I always took that as a subtle dig at Jake Gyllenhaal. Screw you, Jake. Particularly tall. Yeah, I play basketball against him once.

He's not very tall. Is that true? Yeah, it's true at a wedding. Yeah. And if you think he doesn't, you know, and if you think, I mean, I actually feel very empathetic for Jake Gyllenhaal because, you know, he as an actor in Brokeback Mountain,

no one has been subject to more like bro, you know, back asswords thinking, hazing than that guy has. And I think he probably would be rather be hazed than asked about the relationship with Taylor Swift, as you say. Well, and we'll do him a favor then, because you enlightened

me that there's a non-Jake Jelen Hall related reading of that line. Yeah. Which is heels as opposed to what other type of shoe? Cowboy boots. And she, even into the fearless tour, you know, when she played

White Horse with John Mayer on stage, she was wearing a dress in cowboy boots. And so I really read this as her, yes, it's a little bit of a dig at the fact that heaves short and she's 5-11 and so in heels, they really, it didn't work. But I viewed this as her stepping into a new shoe and moving into the next generation of a adulthood, but then musically into a new and different genre. We've been living in all too well land and we are never ever getting back together land and all. these songs that we absolutely love, but we are going to have to cut songs from this album, which is pretty painful. But I'm going to make you do it. Well, so there's two for me. And we should note that this album has 16 songs on it. And what she had done previously was

she would release slightly shorter albums and then put out deluxe versions with more stuff on them. She did that here, but this one is already 16 deep. So it makes it a little bit easier for us now, going forward to start trimming a few songs because, you know, the trouble we had on Speak Now was, gosh, I can really sign up for all of these. I love the songs on Red. I do want to talk about one that she omitted that just to this day haunts me. But if I've got a cut from the main album, I think I'm going to cut Sad, Beautiful, Tragic. It sounds a lot to me like Mazzie Stars fade into you. I love the house inside you. I love it.

lyrically what that means and says, but the song for me is kind of a shoulder shrug at the moment that it comes through. It doesn't add a whole lot to my view of the whole record. And then I just can't, I just can't not say that in the deluxe version there's a song called Girl at Home, and I don't know how that happened, but I'm glad it wasn't on the main album. As am I, as we go through this category, the little thing that's in the back of my head often while we're doing this is, okay, I mean, it's not the best song on the record, but I'm glad it exists.

I'm glad I get to listen to it. I would be fine if we launched a girl at home into space and never let it return. But, you know, the exception that proves the rule, I suppose. My argument for sad, beautiful, tragic, I'm not burning down the house for it, but I love the name of the song. I love the idea that, I mean,

she's just packing as many feelings as possible. into one concept. Yes, it's very Taylor-esque title. That's why it's hard to cut. I could also do without the Ed Shearren song. You could? Yeah. It doesn't do a whole lot for me. I just, I think they sound nice together. I know they're really good friends. I'm super happy for them.

I don't always need boys in the clubhouse, you know? Fair enough. Thanks for letting me on this pod. But I will say this. The Ed Shearren thing is important because it speaks to her eye for talent. She brought Ed out. on the road. When she does the 1989 tour, the first opening band is Sean Mendez. She has a great eye for the next thing. She knows what a songwriter looks and sounds and performs like. And that I'm always reminded of on the Ed Shear and thing. Let me ask you this, and I know this is going to be

a little bit controversial. State of Grace and Holy Ground, they are very, very similar songs. I mean, State of Grace is just two chords for three minutes and 30 seconds. She just goes from the E to the A. But State of Grace, which opens this album, has heavy duty, Come Talk to Me or Red Rain vibes, which are two songs that start Peter Gabriel albums. Holy Ground is the same chords in the same key. She opened the Red Tour with both those songs together.

Did we really need them both? I'm happy to have them both. Those are both songs that have grown. on me immensely. I take a point that they are similar. Sometimes I think the first songs on her albums are kind of stage setters and sometimes I wonder if she

writes very much with the tour in mind. Because those are lovely songs to hear just fill an immense space. That's right. They're soaring, warm up the arena crowd openers. Again, like Peter Gabriel's come talk to me or Red Rain. Like, that's

what they feel like to me. but they're sort of painting the canvas more than, you know, love story or something. They really create a sort of harmonic and melodic environment more than they are just like, wow, that is a killer song. Which is fine. I'm happy for them to serve that purpose. I want to add, just because we talked about it with Last Kiss, there is another, the influence of Grey's Anatomy is present on this album as well, I allege. Snow Patrol is very important to the Grey's Anatomy soundtrack.

If I lie here, if I just lay here. Hugely important. Chasing Cars, this is Chasing Cars 2.0, isn't it? And I think this is Taylor basically saying to herself, man, I love that show. I named my cat after Meredith Gray. How can I insert myself into the Grey's Anatomy soundtrack without actually doing it? Gary Lightbody, come on down. Yeah, I completely agree. And it works.

I mean, I think what's interesting here is she gives the first verse to the men that she collaborates with. And this becomes a recurring source of some frustration in the fan base, doesn't it, Nora? It's not my favorite thing. I love, I actually love is maybe a little bit strong because it does frustrate me that. that dude is just taking the first verse of the song. By the end of that song, the last time, it kind of explodes. And it turns into something that I think is really, really, really good,

which makes me even more frustrated, frankly, that it's like, okay, you're Taylor Swift. Sing first, damn it. Yeah, but there is a, there is, we talked about this before. There is a Kiss the Ring part of this that all these artists who come to join her on stage, they're coming to her show.

They're coming to her house, and she is bringing them up at her discretion, you know, with the mercy of the queen. And so there is a humility that she shows in always, in her live performances and in these, letting the artist that she's collaborating with sing first, and then she sort of comes in over on top of them. But they're never outside of her orbit.

That's true. but when you're somewhere to hear Taylor Swift, I have this problem on songs where she's collaborating with people that I think are really, really, really good songs. But when you are there for her, it's actually a tough thing to execute, right? Because it's like,

except this thing that is not the reason that you are here. Would you definitely keep lucky one? It's a song that has a lot of Joni Mitchell vibes to it for sure. We think it's about Joni Mitchell. Red has the same. album cover as Blue in a lot of ways, the picture, you know, we know that she's going to start to

lift Joni vocals when we get to folklore. There's not as much musically from Joni here, but it is a reference back to the emotional bareness that Blue was about. And we know that Left Sets asked her in that, you know, exchange that led to the song Mean on the phone. Left Sets asked her if she'd listened to Joni Mitchell Blue and she said she had not. So I wonder if when he published that, she went back, picked up the album, and if we actually have to credit left sets for getting her into Joni Mitchell. Does this song, though, stand out for you? The song totally works for me. Chose The Rose Garden over Madison Square. Love it. Is one of my favorite lines. I do want to give Britney Spears just a modicum of credit in the origin story of this song, too, because there is something derivative

of the song Lucky as well here. Oh. Come on. Of course. Yeah. Isn't she lucky this Hollywood girl? Yeah. There's no way that wasn't part of the thought process, too. Yeah. Because we're already talking about Joni, I want to get into some of my tailored tidbits from the depths of the internet, because they have to do with that. But before we get there, I just want to confirm with you that you are good with this album title.

You would stick with Red. You don't have any notes as far as the title. No, I mean, my notes were what else would we call it? Screw you, Jake, is what the album could have been called. but red is a theme, and it's reflective of the way that she co-wrote, I mean, by the way, she wrote 10 of the 16 songs by herself. So a lot of this is just her.

That gets lost in the mix, too. She worked with a bunch of different producers, but she wrote almost all of these songs by herself. But it's reflective of the fact that when she did co-write and when she did work with her producers, she brought in the emotion first and built the music around it. And so that plus my affinity for people with synesthesia because my sister has it make me happy with the album title.

Do you like the song Red? Yeah. I like the song. I think what's important about the song Red is actually the stripped down version that's on the deluxe version. Because it shows us where it was. It started more country banjo-centric front and center. and it moved to a much more poppy, rocky song.

And when you put those two songs side by side, it really teaches you how she was thinking as a producer and writer about this music. And they laid down a version that she clearly picked the other road that for her was less traveled. The song itself, I'm okay with. How do you feel about red? I actually really like it.

It's very rarely the first one, you know, sometimes I'm listening to the album in order, but if I'm just going to choose a song from this album, it's very rarely the first one that I click on. When it is, or when I get to it, I'm always surprised by the degree to which it kind of knocks me over. Lyrically, it's really strong, and it just has power.

Is it because you used the Maserati lyric in a column about the Kansas City Chiefs? I did once make that reference. No. This feeling about that song, predates that piece. So red is one of the reasons, and now we're going to get to all of my wonderful internet research and Taylor tidbits.

Red is important because that is where a lot of the comparisons to Joni Mitchell's blue come up. And you mentioned the album cover where Taylor's looking down. It looks very similar. She was the creative director for the art and the visuals on this album. So that's totally her choice. and coming from her. She was also in talks to potentially play Joni Mitchell and a biopic that never happened.

Whoa. Because, yeah. Valentine's Day acting was so good that we got to get her into the Johnny Mitchell. How did it fall apart? She would be great in that, actually. So Joni apparently wasn't happy with it. Interesting.

Like got a hold of a screenplay or something and killed the project. Okay. So we'll never know. but those two have orbited each other in a number of different ways. And they will continue for years to come for sure. Right. The other piece I had was about the scarf, which we've already talked about. I'm going to keep the mic here and move on to the Tom Hiddleston Award,

just because usually this is a fun category and silly. Mine for this is less fun. This is the album where she straightens her hair. And she gets bangs, which is a classic post-breakup. thing. But as we did some research for previous albums, I came across a line that I'd forgotten about in the fearless liner notes. She writes to Scott Borchetta, thank you for believing in me since I was 14 and still trying to straighten my hair, your family. And I got to say it was kind of hard to read because playing with your hair and doing different stuff is fun. Like,

that's great. But this is also a period of her life where I think. think body image becomes really difficult as I think it pretty much does for anybody who's constantly being photographed and in the public eye, not to mention basically every woman growing up ever. Yeah. And judged mercilessly and relentlessly on social media. Right. And I can make jokes about getting bangs after you have a breakup or whatever. But in this moment where she is quote unquote going pop, which is a strategic decision, whatever, but it's also, you know, this is her art. This is the thing that she wants to succeed and thrive and is most meaningful to her. And having those aesthetic decisions about what you look like be kind of a volleyball in that,

it brought me down a little bit. And it made me think differently just about looking back at what she was doing and the different people and influences that were pulling her in different directions. So maybe you have something a little bit more lighthearted for this, but it struck me when I was doing my research. Yeah, I don't actually. The thing that I was going to say is that in parallel to that, she is still out there doing the work at the time, continuing to go DJ to DJ, you know, town to town,

meet people, get this record played. And it is during the Red Tour before a concert in Denver in 2013, 13 when she is groped by a Denver DJ, David Mueller, who she goes on to fight a battle quietly at first and then publicly on behalf, from her perspective, on behalf of all victims of assault to just push this one through and not be bullied and get a decision in court. So she has a lot going on behind the scenes as she is now growing up and being, as you said, you know, her image and the unrelenting move of the press to sexualize any female artist in some way that they can, it carries over into this seedy underbelly part of the industry that she falls victim to.

So I don't have something brighter than that. There's a lot behind the scenes that are sort of consequences of her stardom at the time that we don't even know are battles that she's fighting, that we're going to start to find out in years to come as she introduces the, these ideas into some of her music. It was really powerful for her to do that because I think a pretty common way of, you know, unfortunately a lot of women have experiences like that. And a pretty common way of processing it is grounded in, well, am I going to be okay? Is this going to impact my professional life or my personal life or whatever and a big

substantial way, right? Like, do I have to change my job or do I have to cut off a relationship or something like that? And sometimes when the answer to that is basically no, like you can kind of, you know, she could have gone to her next appointment and she's Taylor Swift. She had a lot of security in a lot of different ways at that time. Acknowledging that just because in some ways you are going to be okay, that the thing that happened was not okay, is really hard to do because, again, she's Taylor Swift. This is some jackass DJ. But that doesn't change how horrible that is. And I think having someone that powerful and that meaningful to people acknowledge that was a really big deal. Yeah. It's the part of celebrity that gets lost. This woman was assaulted. And yet we're still,

you know, seeing her life through the prism of Instagram posts and, you know, gossip magazines and seems like everything's fine. We know at this moment in time behind the scenes, everything's not fine for as joyous as a lot of this album is. What comes after it, not just the sort of heartbreak of the interpersonal emotions, but just sort of what's going on in her own mind. She is entering a period of a little bit of struggle. All right. So. I need to exhale a little bit before we get to Peak Taylor, but thankfully, there is still a lot of joy and exuberance that we have to mind this album for. Do you want to go first? I want to hear your Peak Taylor. Is it buying a house next door to the Kennedys? It was admittedly a little bit of a banana's decision on her part. But you know what? Do what you want to do, Tay.

Live your life. Live your life. That to me is Peak Taylor. It's like, hmm. I now live next door to the Kennedys. Cape Codd Real Estate, too. I think she flipped it in a profit. Can't have been a bad investment. I'm sure she did. Yeah, go get it. No, it's not my Peak Taylor moment.

My Peak Taylor moment is the indie record that's much cooler than mine. And the delivery of that and then how it comes back around when she eventually makes her own indie record. That's really fucking cool. It is such a great moment. that as we talked about earlier in the debut,

like she had written some indie songs, go listen to Maggie Rogers, Tim McGraw version. That ironically, like, she was writing indie songs if you were enough of an artist to figure it out. But with the hindsight of folklore and Evermore, again, I think Jake escapes a lot of criticism given what we now know. He was really wrong.

He also seems so lame. I don't even really really, associate that with with Jake Gyllenhaal, the person, the celebrity, because it's just such a trope, right? Like, that dude who's like, oh, that's, that's very mainstream. Like, this was a time where the word mainstream was very often thrown around pejoratively. Yeah. And never made sense, right?

Like, maybe I'm too shiny and optimistic. A lot of the time when a lot of people love something, it's because it's great. And I think you just, you know exactly how that dude would talk about her music in the way that she responds in that line. And it's just, it captures so much and it's so wonderful and it's certainly taken on a greater life now. It does. It is funny. And in all humor, there's truth. There is a little bit of a seating of her insecurity about the kind of music that she had made here to for that gives us a little bit of insight into why she continued to push herself going forward. A lot of her friends in the music space are all pop stars. She's getting, you know, from her

boyfriend at the time told that her music isn't as cool. Maybe there was a piece of that that hit home for her that pushed her in the direction of exploring. I'm not saying it was the core driver of it, but you got to imagine had something to do with why she kept reaching out. It's the same concept as the thing she wrote about in the fearless liner notes, right? Like, it's not getting over stuff or feeling secure and stuff is not the absence of insecurity. It's just contextualizing it properly and being able to live your life anyway. And that's where the knowingness quality in this of like, yeah, okay, maybe you think that, but this is still a great song.

And sure, I've had those thoughts too, but I'm in a good place with this is really, really, it just, it makes you feel good when you hear it because you internalize that quality. And so speaking of really good songs, my belatedly best song from this album is actually begin again. I look at it as this love letter to her country fans. It's a reminder that she is a songwriter at the core. It is blissfully optimistic after an album that deals with a lot of sort of unhealthy relationship stuff. And it's the last that we hear of this kind of intimate songwriting from her until Betterman gets released in 2016, which she had written and could have put on this album.

How did it not make the record? There it is. There it is. Better Man is one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs of all time. And I thought, until I did the work to know better, I thought she had written the song during the 1989 or Reputation Era and just said, this isn't where I am right now. I'm going to give this the Little Big Town. But no, it was there ready to go on red.

I really wish she'd recorded it. You heard that version of her doing it live at the Bluebird? Yeah. And I like it. It's really great. And it should have been on this album. If we're going to put 16 songs on an album, Better Man, fronted by her, has got to make it.

At the very least, it could have gone on instead of girl at home. Girl at home. Come on, man. God. Taylor. That's right. She's allowed to mulligan on that one. But I would love it if she does a re-record of this, if she'll, you know, if she'll throw that one in.

One thing that's worth saying, when she does come back and revisit this album to re-record it, there are so many different fingerprints all over this album. It's going to be fascinating to see how and if she's able to recapture some of the songs that are that are on this album, and particularly some of the sounds that are on this album, because she really is, for the first time on this album,

using software as an instrument. And that just introduces all kinds of variables into how you create sounds. And starting here, going all the way through reputation, as she thinks about re-recording those, it's going to be difficult

to do an actual carbon copy of these songs. They're just too complicated. I knew your trouble is, is my belatedly best song. And that's a really good example of that, right? Because just, again, that drop is the before and after. And how she executes that, in hindsight, on the re-reporting, is fascinating. I also want to give a little bit of credit to state of grace, treacherous, and holy ground.

Just because those songs in the moment I spent less time with and they've really, they're special to me now. Yeah, treacherous is a special song. It's so good. It really is. So, so good. Well, I don't think we need to spend any time on the next album appetizer because it's the Macs songs, right? Yeah. It's pretty clear. I mean, that's what they end up being.

This album is a bake-off. And Max and Shelbach made the tastiest cookies. And they are the winner-winner chicken dinner for 1989. You're so weird. It's true. Am I weird? because I think the single best lyric is you call me up again just to break me like a promise,

so casually cruel in the name of being honest. Do you disagree? You are absolutely not. Fight me. That is the answer. That is an entire story and a few words. It's really, I think, one of her greatest lines that she's ever written in.

It's why all too well, again, the chord structure and melody is fairly common and derivative, but the song itself is not. One of the best lines she's ever written, I think. And I am holding out hope that on the re-recorded version, we will hear the 10-minute version with the F-bomb. Like, Taylor, release the tapes.

Yeah. But I hope that it's in addition to because those little moments, I mean, who knows if that's on that version or whatever, but I don't want to get into anything where there's a possibility that we lose that line because it is one of the greatest Taylor lyrics of all time. Now, we have to give this album a grade. Well, yes.

It's hard to do, isn't it? I mean, this album critically just, there was so much focus on the back and forth. You know, I think we've broken down why we feel like a lot of that was purposeful in transition. But this album was nominated for album of the year. It lost to daft punk random access memories, but she was alongside Kendrick Lamar,

Sarah Borellis, MacLamore and Ryan Lewis, we know that when she did not win this Grammy, she was floored and she was crushed and she was upset. This tells me that she really felt like this album was great and that it didn't quite get the due that it deserved. And I think, you know, in retrospect, the debate that we have to settle here when we give the grade is what makes a great album,

because some of these songs are the highest of the high. But as a collection of songs, you can hear the schizophrenia on the album. How do you think about this? That's the central debate when we're thinking about how we assign a grade, but in this case, I think she's absolutely right.

This album is an A to me, because my view is actually not just that it's purposeful or okay that it goes back and forth. I think it captures the image emotional roller coaster of a lot of the experiences that she's writing about in this album. And I will remind people, we have not given an A to every album. We're taking this very seriously. This is one, and I like that daft punk album. And I think you could also make the argument about

the Kendrick record that that's really lasted and been important to people. But this is a special, special album that I think among really big Taylor Swift fans, it is most often the favorite album. And if we think about album grades or Grammys or whatever, the purpose being to kind of create a record about what was meaningful and what ended up being lasting, this album should have won and it deserves an A. Well, I agree with you on that front. I think especially in hindsight, understanding her journey and where she was going

and the delicate nature of exiting one genre of music and moving into another one as a songwriter and an artist and performer, this was an unbelievable just move in that direction. She had a lot of risk in putting these songs out.

And in hindsight, she pretty smoothly moved into the pop world and she kept her fan base and she kept giving little bits and bites out to the country world such that they didn't feel abandoned and didn't throw stones at her and create drama that way. So I think historically this album looks even better

than it did in the moment, not just because of the perseverance of the songs, but the ways in which she moved from a career perspective. elegantly and gracefully into a new world musically. On our next episode, we're going to talk about 1989, which is where, to me, Taylor enters her world domination phase. But when you look back at Red, this is where she laid the groundwork. Nathan, this has been wonderful.

As always, Nora, I'm excited for the next phase. Here comes 1989. This has been every single album, Taylor Swift. For Nathan Hubbard, I'm Nora Princiotti. We've just finish talking about red. Join us Monday when we're going to be breaking down 1989 when Taylor goes full pop.