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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Album review: Taylor Swift's 'Speak Now'

If any album has a shot at selling a million copies in its first week (and it’s been two and a half years since any album did), it’s Taylor Swift’s Speak Now, which comes out Oct. 25. If nothing else, the follow-up to 2008’s Grammy Award-winning, six times-platinum Fearless will launch a million speculative blog posts, since much of her third album is said to be about “Taylor Swift and that Twilight kid,” as Katherine Heigl put it in a Life as We Know It punchline. Then there’s the song that’s definitely about Kanye West, the single that might be about Glee star Cory Monteith, and the six-and-a-half minute utter excoriation of John Mayer, whose already tough year is about to get a little rougher.

Confronted with subject matter that was gossip mag material before it became lyrical fodder, country fans might quote the famous chorus of Waylon Jennings: “Are you sure Hank done it this way?” Fans of the confessional singer-songwriter tradition in popular music, meanwhile, could similarly ask: Are you sure Joni done it this way?

Indeed, when Joni Mitchell released Blue in 1971, most of her fans weren’t devouring every line to try to figure out whether it was about Crosby, Stills, or Nash. But that was then, and this is Speak Now, very much a product of its transparent times. If Swift’s approach to songwriting is far more diaristic than some of her predecessors, oldsters may see that as exhibitionistic, but her twenty-something contemporaries will recognize it as perfectly in keeping with the candor of the Facebook generation. Why settle for a roman a clef when you can be real?

Speak Now does keep one foot, or at least a couple toes, in teen-pop. The bouncy title track, in which the singer breaks up an ex-beau’s wedding sounding like Feist on happy pills, is arguably the bubblegummiest thing she’s ever done. And “Never Grow Up,” an acoustic lullaby, is so patently anti-adult that Swift advises the baby she’s tucking in for the night to stunt its own growth before the kid has to experience future rejections or desertions. But for the most part, Swift seems comfortable with the whole growing-up thing—which she accomplishes not by tarting herself up, as disastrously attempted by Miley Cyrus, but by fully embracing the singer-songwriter genre and the deeper, more complicated emotions that fuel it.

The best and most shocking song here, “Dear John,” is the one that parents may be reluctant to let their tweens hear—not because there’s any sexual explicitness to it, but because its ravaged emotions in the wake of an ill-advised fling feels like a cold slap in the face to kids who’ve barely exited the Disney princess years. It’s a brilliant song, and not necessarily an easy one to listen to… at least until the chills-inducing climax, when Swift gets past the nastiness and sings: “All the girls that you run dry/Have tired, lifeless eyes/’Cause you burned them out/But I took your matches/Before fire could catch me/So don’t look now/I’m shining like fireworks/Over your sad, empty town.”

It would be a pretty devastating track with or without the knowledge that it is allegedly about John Mayer, with whom Swift was rumored to have a brief tryst. Consider this the unofficial confirmation. The details of Swift’s ballad about a guy with a “sick need to give love and take it away” all square up with what’s known, or suspected, from tabloid reports earlier this year: The disapproving mom (“My mother accused me of losing my mind/But I swore I was fine”), the disapproving public (“I ignored what they said: Run as fast as you can”), 12-year age difference (“Don’t you think 19’s too young/To be played/By your dark, twisted games”), and… the name. Surely Mayer must’ve realized, if he did romance Swift, that she’s not big on pseudonyms.

You expect comeuppance in a Taylor Swift album, if not necessarily the stark kind doled out in “Dear John.” There’s more of the playful sort heard on the previous two albums in “Better Than Revenge,” the most breathlessly paced rocker on the album, which begins with the singer whispering “Now go stand in the corner and think about what you did,” then chiding a rival with the line, “I’m just another thing to roll your eyes at, honey… She should keep in mind that there is nothing I do better than revenge.”

It’s a fun number, but if there were many more along those lines, you might worry that Swift could be falling into a vengeance-is-mine-sayeth-the-lioness schtick. Actually, what’s most surprising about Speak Now—once you get past the bitterness of “Dear John”—is how unexpectedly sweet it is. Swift’s had her moments before, but she’s never treated a boy quite as affectionately as she treated her mom in the previous record’s “Best Day.” This time around, she doesn’t try just a little tenderness, but a lot—and most of it seems to be reserved for a Taylor Lautner-like figure who was loved and, purposely or inadvertently, left behind.

“I feel you forget me like I used to feel your breath,” she sings softly in “Last Kiss.” In “Long Live,” she stands proudly, even as “the cynics were outraged, screaming ‘This is absurd.’” It may sound self-congratulatory, or it may just be someone at the top of her game, briefly paired with someone at the top of his game, latching on for all it’s worth to something that’s destined to fade, as the lyric acknowledges it will.

Will the cynics still be outraged when Speak Now becomes the biggest-selling album of the next year? (“Mean,” the only other song on the album to allude to some defensiveness on Swift’s part, is an utterly upbeat country song that even has a funny and extremely self-aware nod to those who say she “can’t sing.”) They may be out in greater force than ever before, but the stone-hearted among them who listen to Speak Now will find it hard to complain that Swift somehow stole that Best Album Grammy for Fearless. Entirely self-penned, sans the collaborations of the previous albums, it’s an enormous breakthrough in songwriting maturity, while hardly forsaking the childlike lack of pretense that made earlier efforts such guilt-free ear candy. Deal with it, haters: It’ll be decades before she’s holding her peace.

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Mariah Carey's Preview of "Merry Christmas II You"



Robyn's 'Body Talk' compilation artwork and track list revealed



Body Talk: Released…
USA – 22nd Nov
Scandinavia – 22nd Nov
Australia – 26th Nov
UK – 29th Nov
Germany – 3rd Dec

I’m going to keep mixing up my tours with studio time and am hoping to stick to this new way of releasing music next year. This is the third, last part and completion of the Body Talk album. It was never my goal to break some kind of a world record in how many songs I could release in a year. Although I think it would count as a pretty good attempt, it’s been about the process for me. It’s been very interesting to try and figure out a more organic way of making music. A way that is unbiased and has it’s starting point in what feels logical to me, but also to the listeners.

Even though it was never a conceptual idea, but a practical solution to the problem of getting bored with just doing one thing at a time, it has influenced not only the music, but all the visual content for the album as well. And the way I’ve communicated with press and listeners. It’s been amazing to share the process with you. As soon as I have had an idea of what I’m doing so have the fans and that interaction has been super interesting and fun to me. As I’m writing this, I am still mixing the third album.

There are 5 new songs ready to be released and I’m also including music from Body talk pt 1 and 2 to complete this body of work in what will make the turbo version of the Body Talk album. Thanks for tagging along with me on this ride!

1. "Fembot"
2. "Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do"
3. "Dancing on My Own"
4. "Indestructible"
5. "Time Machine"
6. "Love Kills"
7. "Hang with Me"
8. "Call Your Girlfriend"
9. "None of Dem" (featuring Röyksopp)
10. "We Dance to the Beat"
11. "U Should Know Better" (featuring Snoop Dogg)
12. "Dancehall Queen"
13. "Get Myself Together"
14. "In My Eyes"
15. "Stars 4ever"

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Jessica Sutta (formerly of Pussycat Dolls) - "I Wanna Be Bad" Music Video

Rihanna To Open The American Music Awards

Rihanna will be the opening act for this year’s American Music Awards, according to Rap-Up.com and Universal Music.

Rihanna has been nominated for “Favourite Soul/R&B Female Artist” along with Alicia Keys and Sade. Click here to VOTE!

The 38th annual AMAs will air live on Sunday, November 21st, at 8 p.m. on ABC.

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Single Cover for Rihanna's "What's My Name"

PREVIEW: Rihanna Discusses "Bad Ass" New Album

Next month Rihanna will release one of the year's most anticipated albums, Loud, and the singer has a lot of ambitions for it. "It's really expressive and sassy and flirty," she tells SPIN. "It's also blissful and really feminine."

There's a lot on the line with this record. Rihanna's been riding high on the pop charts with her Eminem collaboration "Love the Way You Lie," while her last album, the platinum-selling Rated R, spawned the massive singles "Rude Boy" and "Hard."

The singer took a break from finishing the album to give us a sneak peek of four of the edgier songs, including the Avril Lavigne-sampling "Cheers" and the sexually charged "S&M":

"S&M":
Rihanna delivers some of her most provocative lyrics on this track, including lines like "Sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me." But she says people shouldn't take the sexually charged lyrics too literally. "I don't think of it in a sexual way, I'm thinking metaphorically," she says. "It's more of a thing to say that people can talk….people are going to talk about you, you can't stop that. You just have to be that strong person and know who you are so that stuff just bounces off. And I thought it was super bad ass."

"Man Down":
On this reggae-tinged track, Rihanna delivers graphic lyrics about shooting a man, but it's not like she's armed with a glock and gunning down dudes on the street. "The song is about breaking a man's heart," Rihanna explains. "It's a very cleverly written song and what I love about it is that it's not a lyric you'd normally hear a female singing." As for the reggae vibe of the record, Rihanna says the music is an echo of her roots. "The vibe is Jamaican and West Indian," she says. "That's something that's close to me."

"Cheers":
Rihanna experiments with grungier sounds (heavy guitars, rock beats) on this pub-appropriate anthem, which samples Avril Lavigne's ballad "I'm With You." "It's one of my favorites on the album," Rihanna says. "It's a song you would hear in a bar but I think you could also hear it all over pop radio. It's really grungy and melodic and catchy. And the way the producers sampled Avril — it's like she's an instrument. It's really cool how they combined [the song] with her vocals."

"What's My Name":
Stargate and Ester Dean penned this track, which features guest vocals from Drake. "It's a really fun flirtatious song," she says. "It has a youthful energy. And it's so catchy, like, you can't get it out of your head."

On the video front, Rihanna just dropped her latest, "Who's That Chick," and the production may be her most over-the-top yet. She teamed up with chip-maker Doritos to produce a "day" and "night" version of the video, which allows the user to toggle back and forth between both versions while the video streams. (Check out the Jonas Akerlund-directed clip here.) "It was strange because we had to shoot the exact video twice, the exact same way with the exact same staging and the same choreography," Rihanna says. "But it was cool to see the dynamics of the set, just to see how much it was contrast. I think it's very cool."

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Rihanna - Who's That Chick Night Vs Day Comparison

Who's That Chick (Day/Night Versions) from Jon ALi on Vimeo.

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