{"id":7711,"date":"2020-12-16T18:39:25","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T22:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=7711"},"modified":"2020-12-16T18:39:25","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T22:39:25","slug":"songwriting-done-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=7711","title":{"rendered":"songwriting done right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I used to write songs, quite a few decades ago. I don&#8217;t think much about the process anymore, but I still have an idea of how difficult it is to do really well.<\/p>\n<p>As you may have heard, Taylor Swift released a surprise album back in July called &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Folklore_(Taylor_Swift_album)\"target=\"_blank\">folklore<\/a>.&#8221; Then there was a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Folklore:_The_Long_Pond_Studio_Sessions\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">documentary<\/a>, including live performances of all the songs, and then, another surprise album called &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Evermore_(Taylor_Swift_album)\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">evermore<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m enjoying both albums, and the soundtrack of the documentary (which is basically <em>folklore<\/em> with less production), but this is the standout for me (and for a lot of other people &#8212; I&#8217;ve already seen it hailed as either the best song Swift has ever written, or #2 behind &#8220;All Too Well&#8221;):<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2s5xdY6MCeI\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the last great american dynasty<\/a>&#8220;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve listened to it many times, and at the end of the bridge, when it shifts from being a song about <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rebekah_Harkness\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rebekah Harkness<\/a> to being a song about Taylor Swift, I confess I always laugh out loud. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>They say she was seen on occasion<br \/>\nPacing the rocks staring out at the midnight sea<br \/>\nAnd in a feud with her neighbor<br \/>\nShe stole his dog and dyed it key lime green<br \/>\nFifty years is a long time<br \/>\nHoliday House sat quietly on that beach<br \/>\nFree of women with madness<br \/>\nTheir men and bad habits, and then it was bought by me<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The confluence of old money, new money, New England, and mad, loud women. I think my mother, who knew a lot about all of those things, would have liked it.<\/p>\n<p>(With story songs like this, it&#8217;s not uncommon to hold back the chorus until after the second verse, so you&#8217;ve already made the case for whatever the chorus is saying about the story as a whole before you  deliver the chorus, but Swift doesn&#8217;t do that here. She asserts &#8220;the maddest woman this town has ever seen; She had a marvelous time ruining everything&#8221; before actually showing all the &#8220;madness&#8221; and &#8220;ruining&#8221; that was going on. That goes very nicely with the overall attitude of the song.)<\/p>\n<div class=\"pdfprnt-buttons pdfprnt-buttons-post pdfprnt-bottom-left\"><a href=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F7711&#038;print=pdf\" class=\"pdfprnt-button pdfprnt-button-pdf\" target=\"_blank\" ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/pdf.png\" alt=\"image_pdf\" title=\"View PDF\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F7711&#038;print=print\" class=\"pdfprnt-button pdfprnt-button-print\" target=\"_blank\" ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/print.png\" alt=\"image_print\" title=\"Print Content\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used to write songs, quite a few decades ago. I don&#8217;t think much about the process anymore, but I still have an idea of how difficult it is to do really well. As you may have heard, Taylor Swift released a surprise album back in July called &#8220;folklore.&#8221; Then there was a documentary, including [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7711"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7716,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions\/7716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}