The Tortured Poets Department.

[Who Rattled Your Cage]

God I'm bored of people who sneer at Taylor Swift. She's great and The Tortured Poets Department as an album title is clearly a joke at her own expense. Sure, she doesn't write lyrics like early-mid period Morrissey did, but very few can. (And by very few, I mean none.)

If you're not moved by this song, at the very least, there might be something wrong with you...

Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it
I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it
After plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your own
Now you mail back my things and I walk home alone
But you keep my old scarf from that very first week
'Cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me
You can't get rid of it, 'cause you remember it all too well, yeah
'Cause there we are again, when I loved you so
Back before you lost the one real thing you've ever known
It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well
Wind in my hair, you were there, you remember it all
Down the stairs, you were there, you remember it all
It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well

I couldn't care less what you're bored of. She's vapid popcult dogshit. And oh aye, those lyrics are a 'joke at her own expense.' Sure they are. Reminds me of Pink's more gaudy trite writhing slop, but at least she writes the odd decent song.

Those lyrics I quoted on the first post are not a 'joke', they're clearly written by somebody trying to be taken seriously as a (laughing) 'poet.' There is no self-reflexive, nod-and-a-wink humour in them whatsoever, no obvious satire, unless you can point it out to me. And the lyrics you quoted are simple, puerile, sloppily-written, trite, and risible. I guess there might be something wrong with me: I know good writing when I see it. Still laughing.

 

[nicky wire's legs]

I find "shake it off" to be a really weak song.

I find it, like, so empowering

 

[Who Rattled Your Cage]

Speaking of frustrated creators... (click on it for more comedy)

 

[goinghome]

You know the audience she caters to right? *** People that will outgrow her music. Curiously, that could indeed be the reason for Swift's prolific musical/performance output in the last several years - working that same generation of kids until they eventually grow and discover themselves and then move on to other artists who say more to them. Money making machine through and through.

Tracy Chapman made waves at the Grammys too. A friend of mine was remembering attending one of her concerts in a Dublin pub in 1999. Hot Press did a vivid write-up on it, and in closing, quoted her view on the music scene:

"I think in the end, in the music business, people will listen to money, and if they think that something will sell, they'll eventually get behind it."