Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department
- Thread starter aboutyounow
- Start date
I'm telling you we broke her. She got Swifties searching for clues and making up theories and now she sits back and laughs.
These are fun watches, I wonder why they waited so long to release them? It's fun watching her direct, she seems to really love it.
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evermore rights
I’ve been trying to pinpoint exactly how I feel about it since first listen, but her vocal in some of the songs on TPPD just sound off. Like, she sounds so flat and uninterested in the verses on ‘The Tortured Poet’s Department’. There’s no energy there and her voice sounds…weak? Maybe tired? While I do love her falsetto, she just sounds so one dimensional and emotionless. And then ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’ - the way she delivers ‘oh, here we go again’ like she’s on autopilot just grates on me so much that I get annoyed before the song even really takes off. I’m positive I’ve commented before about how one thing I do enjoy about some of her old material with her untrained and inconsistent baby voice is just how much emotion she approached it all with. It was far from perfect but it was palpable that she was really feeling it. Like in ‘Style TV’ (a sin of such staggering levels that it’s hard to think about) she doesn’t have even an ounce of that hunger in her voice (and I thought by the time 1989 came out, her voice was just fine) that’s present in the original. There are several songs across every re-recording that I personally have noticed it on, but some of those are just simply her using technique (she doesn’t have to warble her way through the notes anymore) and literally not being able to replicate her late teens/early 20’s voice, which was bound to happen and I don’t hold it against her. I do, however, get that with the re-recordings they’re all old songs by now that she’s not connecting to on the same level as when they originally recorded. Interestingly though, I don’t really feel like the vault tracks suffer the same issue. Probably because she hasn’t been performing those for years.
On the new music though? It’s just weird that her voice sounds so…deprived of personality at times. I get that vocals aren’t her bag and never have been, but she’s incredibly capable of emoting despite that. ‘Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve’ is a perfect example of devastating and charged delivery being carried by her more mature technique and vocals. The way she barrels through ‘give me back my girlhood, it was mine first’ gives me chills every single time. You can feel it. It sounds like that scared little 19 year old girl clawed her way out. I don’t think there’s anything on TTPD that quite hits an emotional high from the vocal delivery like that. The bridge in ‘Down Bad’ does come close, though.
This might be nitpicking, but it bothers me whenever those songs in particular pop up on shuffle. I’m hoping that for the next album, she works with some different producers that can inspire/push her to do more than the minimum with the delivery. It’ll make the songs pack more of a punch. The beautiful and impactful writing is already there, and it deserves to be felt and not just heard, if that makes any sense at all.
On the new music though? It’s just weird that her voice sounds so…deprived of personality at times. I get that vocals aren’t her bag and never have been, but she’s incredibly capable of emoting despite that. ‘Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve’ is a perfect example of devastating and charged delivery being carried by her more mature technique and vocals. The way she barrels through ‘give me back my girlhood, it was mine first’ gives me chills every single time. You can feel it. It sounds like that scared little 19 year old girl clawed her way out. I don’t think there’s anything on TTPD that quite hits an emotional high from the vocal delivery like that. The bridge in ‘Down Bad’ does come close, though.
This might be nitpicking, but it bothers me whenever those songs in particular pop up on shuffle. I’m hoping that for the next album, she works with some different producers that can inspire/push her to do more than the minimum with the delivery. It’ll make the songs pack more of a punch. The beautiful and impactful writing is already there, and it deserves to be felt and not just heard, if that makes any sense at all.
Isn’t that the point of the lyric? She’s fed up and over it all.
I actually think the vocals are some of her best ever on this album, she’s never sounded as ethereal as on the likes of Guilty As Sin?, I Hate It Here, Chloe et al.
TTPD is truly her magnum opus in my opinion, and every song is now essential for me, which is wild to think. I’ve hardly listened to her past work all year since it came out. A masterpiece.
Nn I think the vocal is what does the heavy lifting on the title track.
I'm the very same, I've been totally consumed by it all year, a complete masterpiece from start to finish. I never thought anything would surpass Folklore/Evermore but I think TTPD might just do it.