Tag: Taylor Swift

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Taylor Swiftย from “teenage wunderkind” to “artist of the decade” (part 1)

“From ‘country & western to crossover’ is a recurring theme in recent posts. Now is the perfect time to focus on Taylor Swift. At the start of her career, she decided to focus on this genre. After releasing three albums, she has since become a versatile artist.

Taylor Alison Swift is born on 13 December 1989 in Reading, Pennsylvania, US. Her parents named her after American songwriter James Taylor. To get right to the point, she is currently considered the world’s best singer-songwriter in the popular genre.

At nine, she performs at local festivals, singing her own songs. Taylor travels regularly with her mother to New York, where she take singing and drama lessons. Taylor feels attracted to the narrative nature of country and western music. She was a great admirer of Shania Twain.

At the age of 11, she recorded some songs. With these, she and her mother visited several record companies, but they thought she was too young. Yet she did not go unnoticed, because at the age of 15, Sony/ATV hired her as a ‘songwriter’ and record company Big Machine Record offered her a contract. The family then moved to Nashville.

In 2006, she debuted her first album ‘Taylor Swift’. This album subsequently spent 157(!) weeks on the Billboard 200 list. This made her the youngest artist in US history to reach number one with an album full of self-penned songs. 

First album ‘Taylor Swift’

You can listen to one of the songs from this album, titled ‘Tim McGraw’, here. He is also a singer-songwriter. In the song, she asks her ex-boyfriend to always think of her when he hears Tim McGraw’s song ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’. This recording shows Taylor meeting Tim McGraw and his wife Faith Hill. She was 16 years old at the time.

Click here for the lyrics of ‘Tim McGraw’

Other songs from this album that topped the charts were Teardrops to my guitar, Our song and Pictures to burn. You can also listen to these songs by following the links.

Before I delve a little deeper into the development between 2006 and now, I want to illustrate her abilities. This recording was made during of the 2019 American Music Awards ceremony. The show is a ‘potpourie’ of seven songs from previous years. Swift herself was awarded the title ‘artist of the decade’ (2010 – 2020). She had previously been named ‘woman of the decade’.

I consider the last song, Lover’, one of the highlights of her work.ย 

On next versionย of the same song, she accompanies herself on guitar along with the band that has accompanied her for years, including during the big stage performances.ย 

Click here for the lyrics of ‘Lover’

I return to the beginning. In the early years, like Shania Twain, she was considered a country singer and on her first three albums ‘Taylor Swift’, ‘Fearless’ and ‘Speak now’, it was evident.ย 

Three characteristics are often mentioned as distinguishing country music: its narrative character, simple melody and the choice ofl instruments.ย ย As for the first characteristic, even her later songs are about personal experiences. The typical country instruments such as banjo, dobra (steel guitar) and violin soon disappeared from the scene. Her songs are not complicated, but their literary content exceeds that of the average country song. The tempo is also much faster and therefore suits a younger audience better.

Fearless

Her second album is Fearless. Half a million albums were sold in its first week of its release. This turned into 18 million worldwide. It is also the most acclaimed album in the history of country music. Here is from this album Love story, the song with which she broke through internationally (2008). It tells the story of Romeo and Juliet, with Taylor in the role of Juliet.ย 

Click here for the lyrics of ‘Love story’

The songs on the first three albums were fueled by personal experiences: Infatuation, heartbreak and insecurity. A rotten afternoon at school could easily produce a world hit. She usually wrote down what she felt first and corresponding melodies bubbled up naturally.

Red

From the fourth album ‘Red’, you have already heard a song during her show at the American Music Awards ceremony: ‘I knew you were trouble’.

You can now watch and listen to another song from this album ‘We are never ever getting back together’. The song expresses her frustration over a revolving-door relationship with an ex-boyfriend, in which she also felt humiliated by his lack of appreciation for her music.

You can look and listen to three versions of this song. the first one is a recording for a limited number of fans, with her accompanying herself on guitar.

Clickย hereย for the lyrics of ‘We will never ever get back together’

Then compare this with tversion wo more ones from her world tours, namely theย Red tourย and theย 1989 tour. You can hear the ‘pop’ content increasing; especially in the latter version where Taylor starts with a long introduction on an electric guitar.

Other songs you can listen to and watch here are: ‘Begin again’, ‘Everything has changed’ (featuring Ed Sheeran), ‘The last time‘ and ‘Red’.

1989

In 2014, she announced that her album ‘1989’ would be her first ‘proper’ pop album. On previous occasions, she had always waved away criticism from the Nashville establishment that her music was more pop than country, saying “I leave the genre labelling to other people”. Now she did just that herself. She considered it a ‘rebirth’, hence the reference to her birth year of 1989. The album is predominantly synth-pop, 80s-style and was widely praised and Taylor was now also added to the line-up of the decade’s best pop stars.

From ‘1989’, you’ve already heard ‘Blank Space’.  Other big hits from ‘1989’ were ‘Shake it off’, ‘Bad Blood, ‘Style’, ‘Wldest dreams‘, ‘New romantics‘ and ‘Out of the woods’. You can hear the latter song here. In it, Taylor accompanies herself on the piano. 

Click here for the lyrics of ‘Out of the woods’

The song describes a fragile relationship full of uncertainty and doubt .The recurring question ‘Are we out of the woods yet’ describes her unrequited desire to stabilise this relationship. According to critics, this song succeeds best of all the others on ‘1989’ in approximating the synth-pop of the 1980s.  Of course, you hear less of that on this acoustic version. On the music video, which you can see here, Taylor tries to escape from a magical forest.  The beautiful footage was shot New Zealand.

The two subsequent albums, ‘Reputation’ (2017) and ‘Lover’ (2019), unlike ‘1989’, include crossovers to rhythm & blues and hip-hop.

Reputation

In ‘Reputation’, she broaches the drawbacks of her celebrity after a period in which she had received a lot of negative press attention because of her many and what she considered opportunistic relationships, and themes of alienation and sexism come up. Reputation has a heavy sound and is made almost entirely with synthesisers and (drum) computers except for the last song ‘New year’s day’ which was recorded with only an acoustic piano. You can see the premiere of this song here.  Other songs include ‘Ready for it‘, ‘End game’, ‘Delicate‘, ‘Getaway car’, ‘Look what you made me do’and ‘Georgeous’, which you can watch now.

This song is dedicated to a new love, but whether it will be something she does not know. In any case, she doesn’t take it too hard: In that case “I’ll just stumble on home to my cats… alone”. Critics call the song a relief compared to the sombre nature of the rest of the album.

Click here for the lyrics of ‘Georgeous’

Lover

‘Lover’ covers the whole spectrum of adult relationships and love and, according to Swift, is “a love letter to love”. She also takes a stand on human rights, feminism and against racism. The production is lighter in nature than ‘Reputation’ and besides electronics, acoustic instruments make their return. In terms of style, it contains elements of country, folk, funk and pop. The album was received very positively by critics, critics also saw in it a consolidation of the qualities she had established before Reputation. Some raise the question, what will Swift come up with next…. 

You have already heard the title song ‘Lover’; it was the piano solo in her 2019 American Music Rewards performance. Other hits from ‘Lover’ include ‘I forgot that you existed’, ‘You need to calm down’, ‘me‘, ‘Soon you’ll get better’ and ‘The man’. Finally, an acoustic rendition of this song. It’s about double standards: much more is accepted from men than from women, so she imagines what it would be like if she were a man. For the witty music video, directed and played by Swift, she received an MTV Music Award.

Clickย hereย for the lyrics of ‘The man’

What you’ve heard so far now reflects Taylor’s first six albums.ย ย In the next post, I’ll explore the last five ones and then you’ll get acquainted with other aspects of Taylor Swift’s singing.

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Shania Twain, exploring the crossover between country and pop music

Since the 1950s, there are musicians, who want to enrich country & western music by building bridges to other types of music (‘so-called crossovers’), such as European pop, rhythm & blue sand rock. From the late 20ste century, the popularity of crossovers seems to have surpassed that of traditional country & western. A person that has contributed to this is Shania Twain who thus paved the way for Taylor Swift among others. To get acquainted with Shania , listen to her rendition of ‘Man, I feel like a woman’, a song from her third album.

Back to the beginning. Eilleen Regina Edwards was born on 28 August 1965 near Ontario.  She never knew her father. She was raised by mother and her stepfather, whose name she also took. He was an Oibwa, a Canadian First Nation and from his language would also come the name Shania, which she started using as a stage name around the age of 20. From the age of eight, she worked alongside her school to help earn a living for the family.  She cleaned in pubs and worked with her father in forestry.  Later, she became a singer in several bands with which she gained much appreciation.

Here is a clip from that time of otherwise poor quality on which she sings the song ‘What Made You Say That’, a song she did not write herself.

The lyrics of this song are here

Her Cinderella days were yet to come to an end. At her 22the, she took up caring for her younger brother and sister when her parents were killed in a car accident. 

She managed to get the attention of a record company, Nashville-based Mercury, and on her 28the , she released her first album: ‘Shania Twain’. It also contained the song ‘What Made You Say That’. The record company produced a rather explicit music video with it for the time, which you can hear here.

The album was not a commercial success, but it did attract the attention of producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange, whom she married soon after and who was a key support on the three albums she released between 1995 and 2002.

The woman in me

The first of these (her second album) ‘The woman in me’ (1995) sold 20 million copies. Her husband had an unerring sense of marketing and replaced the country ‘flavor’ in this album for sales outside the US with ‘pop’ elements, for instance swapping violins for synthesisers. Market segmentation would continue in subsequent albums. 

The two most successful songs were ‘(If you are not in for love) I ‘am outta here’ and ‘Any man of mine’, a clear example of a ‘crossover’.  One of the rare pure country & western songs is ‘Whose bed have your boots been under?’, which is accompanied by a funny music video.  You can listen and watch it here.

‘I’m outta here’ is the first of the two recordings from this album. This song also has a humorous video, that also has several versions.  You can watch the somewhat absurdist ‘Mutt Lange pop remix’ here. In this video, drums play an important role. This was also the case in her concert tour.  This song was usually closing number (before encores) and she was always accompanied on stage by a local drum band in the process. Watch and listen here:

The lyrics of this song are here

The second song from ‘The woman in meโ€, that you can listen to and watch here is ‘Any man of mineโ€™

Read the lyrics here

With this song, Twain reached No 1 on the country charts in the US for the first time. You can watch a live performance filmed in Dallas. The widely viewed music video (watch here) undoubtedly boosted Shania’s acceptance as a country singer. 

From the songs in this album, I picked a couple of good recordings:ย Come Over Here,ย Don’t Be Stupid (You Know I Love) andย From This Moment On.

Critics were generally positive, praising the way Shania adapted country & western music to the inevitable influence of rock and pop. Others felt that the album had nothing or little to do with country & western anymore. Still others felt that Twain did not need her superficial flirtation with country & western at all to excel as a singer. Critics looking back on this album a decade later believe that she has definitively put ‘country pop’ on the map as its own genre. Taylor Weatherby of Billboard speaks of a ‘brilliant fusion of country, pop and rock’.

Up

Shania’s fourth album ‘Up’ (2002), which sold 20 million copies, plays even further into the differences between outlets. Here  is the title track ‘Up’, live in Chicago. 

Three different CDs were released, a green CD that has a predominantly country & western character and also contains some acoustic songs, a red CD, on which pop and rock dominate and a blue CD with a dance and South American character. Using the links above, you can compare the three genres using the three official music videos of the title track ‘Up’. I think the differences are very small.

Again, comments were mostly positive. Something for all tastes, surely seems to be increasingly becoming Twain’s (or Lange’s) trademark, but it was also noted that ‘Up’ is “too generic and emotionless for that level of diversity”.

You can now watch two other songs. The first is “Thank You Baby (For Makin’ Someday Come So Soon)”. The music video was shot at a gallery in Vancouver and released only in Europe. 

You can watch and listen to this video here.

Read the lyrics here

Next, watch and listen to ‘She’s Not Just a Pretty Face’, live from Chicago. Billboard’s comments did not lie: The song is an “ultra-lightweight country-girl power anthem” but also “exquisite country pop”.

The lyrics are here

Her next new studio album came just 15 years after “Up”. Lyme disease significantly weakened her voice and she endured open throat surgery to strengthen her vocal cords. Moreover, she divorced in 2008, after Lange got into a relationship with her best friend. She remarried in 2011 with Frรฉdรฉric Thiรฉbaud,  ceo of the Neslรฉ group[1]. She did not perform again for the first time until 2012.

Now

For this album ‘Now (2017) and for the subsequent ‘Queen of me’ (2023), Shania Twain not only wrote all the songs, but she also took responsibility over the production, something her former husband did for the previous albums. Listen to from ‘Now’: ‘Life’s About to Get Good’.

You will find lyrics here

The song, which is about coming out on top after a difficult time, was well received.  Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger called it ‘Come on over’-worthy (her third and best-reviewed album, 20 years earlier)

Queen of me

Netflix made a documentary of Shania Twain’s life in 2022. It was called ‘Not just a girl’, after a 2022 song that is also on ‘Queen of me’.  I am showing the ‘unofficial’ music video of this song, which consists of a collage of photos and videos covering her entire life as a singer. Those who want to hear ‘Not just a girl ‘live’ listen to the (mediocre) recording in Las Vegas here.   

Lastly, listen to a song from ‘Forever and for Always’ (album ‘Up’), recorded during the ‘Queen of me’ tour in September 2023.  The song is about friendships that last a lifetime. I noticed for the first time that her voice was lower than before. You (finally) start to see the age (58!).                                      

read the lyrics here

Music critics generally hold her songs, her vocal performances and her stage performances in high regard. That appreciation applies to a slightly lesser extent to her two latest albums. ‘Queen of me’ contains mostly unadulterated electro-pop. One critic notes that Twain “tries so hard to capture current trends that it already sounds behind the times”.

My next post is about one of the singers for whom Shania paved the way, Taylor Swift, whose artistry will be explored in the next two post.

[1] His name came up in another blog post of mine ear a few years members after this company was accredited as a ‘benefit corporation’, expressing that social considerations, consumer interests and nature carry equal weight with shareholder value.