I feel like her voice has never sounded better. As I am guessing most or all of this was recorded in the last year, it makes you wonder if recording the vocals while touring was a hidden benefit. Rather than going in "cold," her voice was already in prime form.
I think age has something to do with it tbh, A woman's voice gets deeper with age due to hormonal changes, I've heard it in singers I've worked with over time as well, Also having a baby does change the voice as well.. I said earlier her voice on this album is deeper and richer...
Currently my favourite little moment is that right panned “He was Chaos, he was reverie!” in But Daddy I Love Him. That outro is perfection.
I think it's cool to be living through the career of a superstar as it's unfolding in real time in front of us. Like, love, dislike or hate her, it's impossible to deny her presence as one of the all time greats in music. And man, how about the output? In the last five years she changed record labels, released Lover, then did a major pivot during the pandemic, changed genres, and released not one but two complete (and unannounced!) indie albums in the form of Folklore and Evermore. Then there were the bonus singles, unreleased tracks, and an alternate Longhand Sessions version. Then she drops Midnights, tours the world for the better part of two years, selling out major stadiums for multiple nights at each stop. Just for kicks and in-between all of that, she re-recorded several Taylor's Version reissues of her classic albums. And now, here we are with yet another album, which of course ended up being really two albums with 31 songs. The next worldwide tour is all but inevitable. How's THAT for a five year plan?! My vinyl version (The Manuscript in white vinyl) is quiet with very little surface noise, but there are severe pressing defects (non-fill, most likely) on side two which ruin that side. I've listened to the album several times (streaming mostly), and I like it. That said, I think she needs to pivot again like she did with Folklore. A new collaborator might be a good idea, like the article in Rolling Stone said. Maybe take a break from the trademark rhythmic pattern delivery of her lyrics. A covers album with her influences? Or maybe a rock album?
Yes I can hear Liz in this too! I was thinking, the guitar in 'So High School' sounds like Kevin Shields doing a classic My Bloody Valentine song; so when people started saying the song had hit potential my instant reaction was how MBV were an uncommercial band - the closest they had to a pop 'hit' would've been 'Soon' or 'Only Shallow'. Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher never had the media machine behind them but Taylor has the world at her feet and can do anything - even if it has '90s indie vibes about it. It's obvious that there's a strong Lana Del Rey influence to this album too, and it made me think again of all the Jack Antonoff tracks - how they almost seem like unfinished synth pad sketches (that's not a criticism of the songs - I think the songs are excellent). I remember waiting in huge anticipation for Lana's 'Born To Die' to come out. The leaked demos I had been hearing were incredible - 'National Anthem' had rock drums and gritty guitars and could've been a Dandy Warhols song or something like that.. 'Summertime Sadness' was a 4-to-the-floor band performance that really took off in the choruses with a real band behind it - you could tell it was a classic even at that stage. 'Lolita' sounded like it came straight from the year 1966/67 with a busy bustling uptempo psychedelic groove - reminding me of a trippier version of 'Blame it on the Bossa Nova' by Eydie Gorme. I was like, "wow.. can't wait for the album"! Well I bought the album and it had the guts of it totally ripped out of it. All the band performances and cool arrangements and propulsive percussion parts were totally replaced by this shimmery dreamy synth wash. In every song! It seems that the record company realised that 'Blue Jeans' and 'Video Games' were the runaway hits on the album, and perhaps issued a directive that each song had to sound just like that! I was beyond disappointed. National Anthem was now a wailing wall of ambient reverb. Every track sounded like it was from Twin Peaks. And every album Lana has done since then has sounded exactly the same. Sparse, cavernous, overdramatic. Not my cup of tea. Going back to Taylor, I can hear the Jack Antonoff songs sounding much much better if they sounded like Lana's 'Born To Die' demos. People seem to love this stripped down, over-emotional pop music style - it sells and it's never going away. Just ask Lewis Capaldi and Adele etc. But I think it serves the songs better if they are performed by people in a room, playing guitars and jamming away. Not by having a producer pushing a few buttons on a synthesizer and drenching everything in thunderous reverb and having the singer sound like they're on the verge of crying. Maybe I'm just yearning for the Taylor Swift of Fearless and Red to come back!
This is the same fault I have on my side 2 of the Manuscript version. I'm going to return it. There a number of others reporting the same issue on social media.
Nobody has mentioned anything about the Atmos mix, which is the only way I’ve really listened to the album so far. (I’ve heard a bunch of it on Sirius XM while driving or doing other things, but all my proper listening has been in my home theater with the Atmos stream on Apple Music.) In my first listening session, which was only the main album, I had the Atmos object viewer from my Trinnov Altitude running on my iPad beside me; this lets me see graphically where objects and other elements are placed in the mix. This helped me get a pretty good sense of the spatialization, and since I found the mix to be fairly consistent across those tracks, I didn’t bother with the visualizer for further listening. It’s not a bold or gimmicky mix at all—instead, it’s mostly about giving Taylor’s voice a ton of space, which I really appreciate, and then adding gentle immersion to the overall track. The main vocal is generally placed in the front left and right, with the reverb on that vocal backed deeper into the room—often as objects placed halfway between the front and sides. When her voice has a double or a harmony—which is a lot—the second vocal is generally in the sides, with its reverb backed out even further into the rears. So in many places, you get multiple spatial layers of vocals: the main vocal at the front of the room, the reverb for that a quarter of the way back, the doubled vocal halfway back, and the doubled reverb three quarters of the way back. You’re really wrapped in Taylor’s voice a lot of the time. (Taylor’s voice in this mix is like the Force—it surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the mix together.) In general, the music is primarily mixed into an ear-level plane in the front half of the room. bounded by left and right fronts and sides. The heights and rears are used mainly for expanding and elevating the sound out of that box. There’s usually not a lot going on in the center speaker. The height channels are often just objects stationed in the middle of each side, gently pulling stuff upward, but now and then, when things get really big, height objects appear in the corners as well. Movement is usually smooth and linear, but there are a handful of effects where sounds—typically synths, but occasionally vocals—move rapidly or organically around the room. On the whole, I think the Atmos mix isn’t going to wow you, but it serves this music well by giving it space, and by deeply immersing you in Taylor’s voice. If you’re curious about what the Trinnov Atmos viewer looks like, check out this video:
She is a prolific songwriter but I must say her music is all much of a sameness to my ears. Apart from Taylor Swift fans, I would think not many of the masses could name a handful of her songs! You know what you are going to get with Taylor. Couldn’t she front a band and have a rockier side like Chrissie Hynde or Debbie Harry, etc?
It really is. Even though I get why some are tired of hearing about her (it's like in college hoops, when people hated Duke because they got tired of them winning all the time; some are tired of Taylor always winning), for the millions and millions who are fans, it is a glorious experience. I got on the bandwagon in the winter of 2020/2021, and little did I know I got on right as she was on the verge of stuffing our faces with new music for years. No one is leaving the table still hungry for more music the last few years when it comes to Taylor Swift.
Let's face it - these two women are two generations apart from Taylor , I don't think we should move our expectations from our older heroes to our new ones
I think as long as she doesn't go the American Songbook or torch song route it's all fine by me ...not matter what style she chooses ,as longs as she has something left to say and a desire to share it with her audience she will have a listener in me ,in the end she is the artist and can do what she likes, without any obligations to the listener
As a new listener, this album is pretty solid with nice intricate production sounding consistent as a whole. Great voice, interesting lyrics and songs. I will continue to explore her catalog. Good stuff!
I’ve been quite surprised reading the negatives comments on here about this album. I think it’s very good with a couple songs that are amongst the best she’s done in Down Bad and Daddy I love him. I’ve only recently started expanding my knowledge of her discography after getting tickets to Eras but I’d say this is better than the last two albums.
Not sure if it has been mentioned, but the LP has a dedicated master. It sounds way better than the CD, which sounds bricked to me with vocals to high in the mix. I don't remember who mastered the vinyl though, I'll check tonight.
So, what you're saying is that you haven't listened to the new album but have decided to comment in a thread about it anyway despite the disclaimer in the initial post? Also, do you really think that anything from folklore sounds like anything on Reputation, or that anything from the latter record sounds like anything from, say, Fearless? Her music covers a number of different genres and anyone who dismisses it as all sounding the same clearly hasn't really listened to much of it.
I agree with all of the above but I think it means she’s now, finally, starting to spread herself too thinly.
My wife says her songs sound "samey" and I just don't get it at all. Folklore is one of my most favourite album by anyone ever and the songs on that one or Evermore are nothing at all like on the last few albums.
Ryan K Smith Pretty sure him or someone at Sterling has done every Ts release since she joined Republic.
listened to just 8 songs today two favourites loml and Clara Bow love the way she sings "But I think I might die if I made it..." "Dazzling" indeed
Now listening to the "Anthology" set, starting at Black Dog, wow, this half of the album is really good (nice contrast to the first 16 tracks). Like the piano throughout the whole project.
I don't think that Taylor's songs sound "samey". She's had a solid amount of stylistic variation throughout her career (starting off in pop-country, adding a bit of rock and synth on her subsequent albums, switching to full pop for a few records (and even there, I hear a pretty big difference between the neo-80s sheen of 1989 and the more jagged modern sounds of Reputation) and then going folky before switching back to pop. I think her last 2 albums have her stuck in a sonic rut, but you can't say that about her entire career. I'm still confused about why her voice leaves me so cold, but I think I have a theory. Every great singer manages to convey their artistic sensibilities and personality through their voice to the point where feel as if you can understand the artist by listening to just the vocal stem. Taylor fits this description shockingly well: she is very technically polished and conventionally "good", her control of melody and range is excellent, but it's the lowest common denominator that a good voice can be. There's none of the oversinging that irritates critics so much, but at the same time, there's no idiosyncrasies that give me a sense of who Taylor is behind the public image that she's so carefully constructed.
