BIG POP GIRLS 2024
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To absolutely nobody's surprise, it's...
11 x 1
@Lila
HIGHEST
10 x 3 (@maverick_79 @Ashling92 @bad karma)
LOWEST
2 x 5 (@HeartSwells @Verandi @Sleepycat @Dātura @Pure Shores)
Sorry but this is crazy asdfghjkl.
If I had just been a lowly voter in this rate, I would probably have made a louder, bigger case for this song, but as a host you don’t really want to be seen trying to steer because everyone will think you’re communicating a spoiler (which… sometimes, but a lot of the time I’m just chatting shit) and honestly, you’re all probably more likely to do the opposite of what I want you to do anyway. I think “Peter” was the victim of being close to the end of a very long, very… cohesive album, more than it was being a bad song. Let’s get into why.
I think I’ve probably spent more time in the back half of Tortured Poets than a lot of people on this forum, because I genuinely find it the more interesting section. There’s a lot of stuff here that kind of takes Taylor completely away from popstardom and places her more into the kind of trobairitz (a word I learned thirty seconds ago double checking that troubadour was the word I was looking for. It was! And also wasn’t!) lane that she has flirted with in the past. That sort of Regina Spektor-esque approach to music where things get a little intense and esoteric and allegorical. Samson, meet Peter. It reminds me a lot of how fable-like her writing became on evermore, and how in retrospect she was communicating the slow, years-long, agonising rot of her long-term relationship before anyone realised by placing her emotions into the stories of fictional characters.
“Peter” is essentially about holding a torch for someone for years who, while you started out with crazy chemistry and intensity and loads in common, a gap begins to appear when a maturity chasm begins to widen. Taylor essentially casts herself as Wendy to her tattooed golden retriever’s Peter Pan (a metaphor I think we can all agree works far better) and the entire thing just soars because Taylor at her best when she actually doesn’t blatantly tell us the full story but gives us enough to put all the pieces together. Putting herself into the story of Peter Pan does plenty: how she continued to grow up and mature and change and how he was cursed to stay the same forever and trapped in another world that she was able to visit when she was young, but became more and more distant as she got older. Yes, a Taylor Swift song about maturing! It communicates so much; how wonder fades, how one day you’re head over heels for the most fantastical, charismatic person on the planet. A superhuman! A unique individual! No one has ever felt this intensely! We’ll be together forever, won’t we?
…but then life happens to you, you go through more, things change, and you see that person again and… he’s just a mere mortal. A man. Not even a man, a boy. Still? And you remember promises from children mean nothing. And the distance grows and grows, and you realise that the behaviour that seemed wild and exciting then is sad and stunted now, and the boy is actually not entirely to blame, but powerless to do anything about it. Neverland is hard to leave after all. Why would you ever give up being able to fly?
The song is just fucking excellent, really. How each performance of the chorus loses a bit of shine and sounds sadder every time as if years are passing between them (NO JOKES FROM HIGH-BPM-OR-BUST BOTTOMS PLEASE CAN’T YOU SEE I’M SPINNING A YARN.), the lone piano, the really sparingly used backing vocals, and just how generally desolate it sounds to the point that I can’t believe she wrote this when she was on top of the world. There’s a really interesting character study to be done with this data dump of an album occurring while everything around it happened, but I don’t know Taylor well enough to do it. I do think it’s fascinating that she released what is probably her bleakest ever album at what will probably be the peak of her career’s popularity. It’s such a weird soundtrack to everything that happened last year. It doesn't feel like victory. It feels like... having everything and it still not being enough for people in your life. And that's sad.
The lyrics are also outstanding. Such a beautiful contrast to that fucking insipid Gracie Abrams song I eliminated a few nights ago (which this barely beat COME ON). I’ll even be fair and highlight the same section from this song as I did with that one.
And I won't confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn
As the men masqueraded, I hoped you'd return
With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned
'Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned
And you said you'd come and get me, but you were twenty five
And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired
Lost to the Lost Boys chapter of your life
Forgive me, Peter, please know that I tried
To hold on to the days
When you were mine
But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light
FUCK. A monolithic middle-eight! I remember when “the lakes” came out and it was a clumsy thesaurus of a thing full of words that Taylor had clearly just learned and wanted to use. She’s genuinely come so far. I’ve said it before but I think her pen on this album is healthier than ever. So here it is in the bottom ten of the rate I guess lmao.
“Peter” got a couple of outings before the Eras Tour finished. The first one was just by itself in Stockholm which then got an official release to, I don’t know, piss off her gay stylist after he did her brows poorly and block Charli XCX from No.1 or something. The second one, which validates my evermore comparisons, was when she mashed it up with that album’s title track, which not only feels thematically appropriate, but she did a better job than usual of weaving them together. Good sibling tracks, I’ll say. Love and youth are not evermore, no... but neither is pain. Enjoy!
11 x 1
@Lila
HIGHEST
10 x 3 (@maverick_79 @Ashling92 @bad karma)
LOWEST
2 x 5 (@HeartSwells @Verandi @Sleepycat @Dātura @Pure Shores)
Sorry but this is crazy asdfghjkl.
If I had just been a lowly voter in this rate, I would probably have made a louder, bigger case for this song, but as a host you don’t really want to be seen trying to steer because everyone will think you’re communicating a spoiler (which… sometimes, but a lot of the time I’m just chatting shit) and honestly, you’re all probably more likely to do the opposite of what I want you to do anyway. I think “Peter” was the victim of being close to the end of a very long, very… cohesive album, more than it was being a bad song. Let’s get into why.
I think I’ve probably spent more time in the back half of Tortured Poets than a lot of people on this forum, because I genuinely find it the more interesting section. There’s a lot of stuff here that kind of takes Taylor completely away from popstardom and places her more into the kind of trobairitz (a word I learned thirty seconds ago double checking that troubadour was the word I was looking for. It was! And also wasn’t!) lane that she has flirted with in the past. That sort of Regina Spektor-esque approach to music where things get a little intense and esoteric and allegorical. Samson, meet Peter. It reminds me a lot of how fable-like her writing became on evermore, and how in retrospect she was communicating the slow, years-long, agonising rot of her long-term relationship before anyone realised by placing her emotions into the stories of fictional characters.
“Peter” is essentially about holding a torch for someone for years who, while you started out with crazy chemistry and intensity and loads in common, a gap begins to appear when a maturity chasm begins to widen. Taylor essentially casts herself as Wendy to her tattooed golden retriever’s Peter Pan (a metaphor I think we can all agree works far better) and the entire thing just soars because Taylor at her best when she actually doesn’t blatantly tell us the full story but gives us enough to put all the pieces together. Putting herself into the story of Peter Pan does plenty: how she continued to grow up and mature and change and how he was cursed to stay the same forever and trapped in another world that she was able to visit when she was young, but became more and more distant as she got older. Yes, a Taylor Swift song about maturing! It communicates so much; how wonder fades, how one day you’re head over heels for the most fantastical, charismatic person on the planet. A superhuman! A unique individual! No one has ever felt this intensely! We’ll be together forever, won’t we?
…but then life happens to you, you go through more, things change, and you see that person again and… he’s just a mere mortal. A man. Not even a man, a boy. Still? And you remember promises from children mean nothing. And the distance grows and grows, and you realise that the behaviour that seemed wild and exciting then is sad and stunted now, and the boy is actually not entirely to blame, but powerless to do anything about it. Neverland is hard to leave after all. Why would you ever give up being able to fly?
The song is just fucking excellent, really. How each performance of the chorus loses a bit of shine and sounds sadder every time as if years are passing between them (NO JOKES FROM HIGH-BPM-OR-BUST BOTTOMS PLEASE CAN’T YOU SEE I’M SPINNING A YARN.), the lone piano, the really sparingly used backing vocals, and just how generally desolate it sounds to the point that I can’t believe she wrote this when she was on top of the world. There’s a really interesting character study to be done with this data dump of an album occurring while everything around it happened, but I don’t know Taylor well enough to do it. I do think it’s fascinating that she released what is probably her bleakest ever album at what will probably be the peak of her career’s popularity. It’s such a weird soundtrack to everything that happened last year. It doesn't feel like victory. It feels like... having everything and it still not being enough for people in your life. And that's sad.
The lyrics are also outstanding. Such a beautiful contrast to that fucking insipid Gracie Abrams song I eliminated a few nights ago (which this barely beat COME ON). I’ll even be fair and highlight the same section from this song as I did with that one.
And I won't confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn
As the men masqueraded, I hoped you'd return
With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned
'Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned
And you said you'd come and get me, but you were twenty five
And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired
Lost to the Lost Boys chapter of your life
Forgive me, Peter, please know that I tried
To hold on to the days
When you were mine
But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light
FUCK. A monolithic middle-eight! I remember when “the lakes” came out and it was a clumsy thesaurus of a thing full of words that Taylor had clearly just learned and wanted to use. She’s genuinely come so far. I’ve said it before but I think her pen on this album is healthier than ever. So here it is in the bottom ten of the rate I guess lmao.
“Peter” got a couple of outings before the Eras Tour finished. The first one was just by itself in Stockholm which then got an official release to, I don’t know, piss off her gay stylist after he did her brows poorly and block Charli XCX from No.1 or something. The second one, which validates my evermore comparisons, was when she mashed it up with that album’s title track, which not only feels thematically appropriate, but she did a better job than usual of weaving them together. Good sibling tracks, I’ll say. Love and youth are not evermore, no... but neither is pain. Enjoy!
He/Him
Starting to think you're obsessed with me or something.
Dddd yeah but her aunt had nothing to do with Sabrina winning that Miley contest or getting a role on Disney.
Lila
Staff member
To absolutely nobody's surprise, it's...
11 x 1
@Lila
HIGHEST
10 x 3 (@maverick_79 @Ashling92 @bad karma)
LOWEST
2 x 5 (@HeartSwells @Verandi @Sleepycat @Dātura @Pure Shores)
Sorry but this is crazy asdfghjkl.
If I had just been a lowly voter in this rate, I would probably have made a louder, bigger case for this song, but as a host you don’t really want to be seen trying to steer because everyone will think you’re communicating a spoiler (which… sometimes, but a lot of the time I’m just chatting shit) and honestly, you’re all probably more likely to do the opposite of what I want you to do anyway. I think “Peter” was the victim of being close to the end of a very long, very… cohesive album, more than it was being a bad song. Let’s get into why.
I think I’ve probably spent more time in the back half of Tortured Poets than a lot of people on this forum, because I genuinely find it the more interesting section. There’s a lot of stuff here that kind of takes Taylor completely away from popstardom and places her more into the kind of trobairitz (a word I learned thirty seconds ago double checking that troubadour was the word I was looking for. It was! And also wasn’t!) lane that she has flirted with in the past. That sort of Regina Spektor-esque approach to music where things get a little intense and esoteric and allegorical. Samson, meet Peter. It reminds me a lot of how fable-like her writing became on evermore, and how in retrospect she was communicating the slow, years-long, agonising rot of her long-term relationship before anyone realised by placing her emotions into the stories of fictional characters.
“Peter” is essentially about holding a torch for someone for years who, while you started out with crazy chemistry and intensity and loads in common, a gap begins to appear when a maturity chasm begins to widen. Taylor essentially casts herself as Wendy to her tattooed golden retriever’s Peter Pan (a metaphor I think we can all agree works far better) and the entire thing just soars because Taylor at her best when she actually doesn’t blatantly tell us the full story but gives us enough to put all the pieces together. Putting herself into the story of Peter Pan does plenty: how she continued to grow up and mature and change and how he was cursed to stay the same forever and trapped in another world that she was able to visit when she was young, but became more and more distant as she got older. Yes, a Taylor Swift song about maturing! It communicates so much; how wonder fades, how one day you’re head over heels for the most fantastical, charismatic person on the planet. A superhuman! A unique individual! No one has ever felt this intensely! We’ll be together forever, won’t we?
…but then life happens to you, you go through more, things change, and you see that person again and… he’s just a mere mortal. A man. Not even a man, a boy. Still? And you remember promises from children mean nothing. And the distance grows and grows, and you realise that the behaviour that seemed wild and exciting then is sad and stunted now, and the boy is actually not entirely to blame, but powerless to do anything about it. Neverland is hard to leave after all. Why would you ever give up being able to fly?
The song is just fucking excellent, really. How each performance of the chorus loses a bit of shine and sounds sadder every time as if years are passing between them (NO JOKES FROM HIGH-BPM-OR-BUST BOTTOMS PLEASE CAN’T YOU SEE I’M SPINNING A YARN.), the lone piano, the really sparingly used backing vocals, and just how generally desolate it sounds to the point that I can’t believe she wrote this when she was on top of the world. There’s a really interesting character study to be done with this data dump of an album occurring while everything around it happened, but I don’t know Taylor well enough to do it. I do think it’s fascinating that she released what is probably her bleakest ever album at what will probably be the peak of her career’s popularity. It’s such a weird soundtrack to everything that happened last year. It doesn't feel like victory. It feels like... having everything and it still not being enough for people in your life. And that's sad.
The lyrics are also outstanding. Such a beautiful contrast to that fucking insipid Gracie Abrams song I eliminated a few nights ago (which this barely beat COME ON). I’ll even be fair and highlight the same section from this song as I did with that one.
And I won't confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn
As the men masqueraded, I hoped you'd return
With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned
'Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned
And you said you'd come and get me, but you were twenty five
And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired
Lost to the Lost Boys chapter of your life
Forgive me, Peter, please know that I tried
To hold on to the days
When you were mine
But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light
FUCK. A monolithic middle-eight! I remember when “the lakes” came out and it was a clumsy thesaurus of a thing full of words that Taylor had clearly just learned and wanted to use. She’s genuinely come so far. I’ve said it before but I think her pen on this album is healthier than ever. So here it is in the bottom ten of the rate I guess lmao.
“Peter” got a couple of outings before the Eras Tour finished. The first one was just by itself in Stockholm which then got an official release to, I don’t know, piss off her gay stylist after he did her brows poorly and block Charli XCX from No.1 or something. The second one, which validates my evermore comparisons, was when she mashed it up with that album’s title track, which not only feels thematically appropriate, but she did a better job than usual of weaving them together. Good sibling tracks, I’ll say. Love and youth are not evermore, no... but neither is pain. Enjoy!
ARE YOU TAKING THE PISS
he/him
When Tom Cruise is with her, who can be against her?
To absolutely nobody's surprise, it's...
11 x 1
@Lila
HIGHEST
10 x 3 (@maverick_79 @Ashling92 @bad karma)
LOWEST
2 x 5 (@HeartSwells @Verandi @Sleepycat @Dātura @Pure Shores)
Sorry but this is crazy asdfghjkl.
If I had just been a lowly voter in this rate, I would probably have made a louder, bigger case for this song, but as a host you don’t really want to be seen trying to steer because everyone will think you’re communicating a spoiler (which… sometimes, but a lot of the time I’m just chatting shit) and honestly, you’re all probably more likely to do the opposite of what I want you to do anyway. I think “Peter” was the victim of being close to the end of a very long, very… cohesive album, more than it was being a bad song. Let’s get into why.
I think I’ve probably spent more time in the back half of Tortured Poets than a lot of people on this forum, because I genuinely find it the more interesting section. There’s a lot of stuff here that kind of takes Taylor completely away from popstardom and places her more into the kind of trobairitz (a word I learned thirty seconds ago double checking that troubadour was the word I was looking for. It was! And also wasn’t!) lane that she has flirted with in the past. That sort of Regina Spektor-esque approach to music where things get a little intense and esoteric and allegorical. Samson, meet Peter. It reminds me a lot of how fable-like her writing became on evermore, and how in retrospect she was communicating the slow, years-long, agonising rot of her long-term relationship before anyone realised by placing her emotions into the stories of fictional characters.
“Peter” is essentially about holding a torch for someone for years who, while you started out with crazy chemistry and intensity and loads in common, a gap begins to appear when a maturity chasm begins to widen. Taylor essentially casts herself as Wendy to her tattooed golden retriever’s Peter Pan (a metaphor I think we can all agree works far better) and the entire thing just soars because Taylor at her best when she actually doesn’t blatantly tell us the full story but gives us enough to put all the pieces together. Putting herself into the story of Peter Pan does plenty: how she continued to grow up and mature and change and how he was cursed to stay the same forever and trapped in another world that she was able to visit when she was young, but became more and more distant as she got older. Yes, a Taylor Swift song about maturing! It communicates so much; how wonder fades, how one day you’re head over heels for the most fantastical, charismatic person on the planet. A superhuman! A unique individual! No one has ever felt this intensely! We’ll be together forever, won’t we?
…but then life happens to you, you go through more, things change, and you see that person again and… he’s just a mere mortal. A man. Not even a man, a boy. Still? And you remember promises from children mean nothing. And the distance grows and grows, and you realise that the behaviour that seemed wild and exciting then is sad and stunted now, and the boy is actually not entirely to blame, but powerless to do anything about it. Neverland is hard to leave after all. Why would you ever give up being able to fly?
The song is just fucking excellent, really. How each performance of the chorus loses a bit of shine and sounds sadder every time as if years are passing between them (NO JOKES FROM HIGH-BPM-OR-BUST BOTTOMS PLEASE CAN’T YOU SEE I’M SPINNING A YARN.), the lone piano, the really sparingly used backing vocals, and just how generally desolate it sounds to the point that I can’t believe she wrote this when she was on top of the world. There’s a really interesting character study to be done with this data dump of an album occurring while everything around it happened, but I don’t know Taylor well enough to do it. I do think it’s fascinating that she released what is probably her bleakest ever album at what will probably be the peak of her career’s popularity. It’s such a weird soundtrack to everything that happened last year. It doesn't feel like victory. It feels like... having everything and it still not being enough for people in your life. And that's sad.
The lyrics are also outstanding. Such a beautiful contrast to that fucking insipid Gracie Abrams song I eliminated a few nights ago (which this barely beat COME ON). I’ll even be fair and highlight the same section from this song as I did with that one.
And I won't confess that I waited, but I let the lamp burn
As the men masqueraded, I hoped you'd return
With your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned
'Cause love's never lost when perspective is earned
And you said you'd come and get me, but you were twenty five
And the shelf life of those fantasies has expired
Lost to the Lost Boys chapter of your life
Forgive me, Peter, please know that I tried
To hold on to the days
When you were mine
But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light
FUCK. A monolithic middle-eight! I remember when “the lakes” came out and it was a clumsy thesaurus of a thing full of words that Taylor had clearly just learned and wanted to use. She’s genuinely come so far. I’ve said it before but I think her pen on this album is healthier than ever. So here it is in the bottom ten of the rate I guess lmao.
“Peter” got a couple of outings before the Eras Tour finished. The first one was just by itself in Stockholm which then got an official release to, I don’t know, piss off her gay stylist after he did her brows poorly and block Charli XCX from No.1 or something. The second one, which validates my evermore comparisons, was when she mashed it up with that album’s title track, which not only feels thematically appropriate, but she did a better job than usual of weaving them together. Good sibling tracks, I’ll say. Love and youth are not evermore, no... but neither is pain. Enjoy!
Peter, I’m so sorry I was not your mother.
he/him
Me when @Popjustice finally stops paying the server fees
he/him
Peter is a fine song but my business' evil landlord is named Peter and he pisses me off almost hourly so this song continues to evade my interest.
