My 1001 Albums Journey

A lot of people remember the experience of plugging in a casio keyboard for the first time and wanting to try out all the presets and features all at once. Most of us don't try to call that an album though.

This album is excellent - absolutely masterful production. I kind of knew earlier in a vague "not-her-target-audience" way that Taylor Swift deserves more credit than "pop icon on TV", but I'm very glad to have taken the time and listened to this full album. The poetic sensibility is brilliant: faintly classical in the construction and certain word choices, but naturally modern in overall tone at the same time. There are moments where I think this highly creative lyricism gets in the way of the musicality a tiny bit, but that is really the only flaw - and in the context of so many modern artists who provide nothing of value lyrically, I can't really say that caring about the narrative and poetry of a song just a little bit more than the melody can be seen as a downside at all.

Yeah, this one's really confusing to me. The composition, production, lead guitar, percussion, effects (especially effects) are all incredible. So slick and yet somehow so raw - ahead of their time, for the time. But I just can't get past the vocals - the guy's voice annoys me so much. The rhythm builds into a verse and you want him to belt, at least hold a god damn note for half a breath, but he does some weak ass affectation instead and ruins what could have been a powerful moment. The lead ascends into some wonderfully engineered break as if anticipating a climax in the arrangement, but the singer just steps in like his day job and follows it with some low energy repeat of the same chorus in the same tone as the last one. But you know, his accent is cool or something. It's not like he can't hold a note (life's a gas utilises his tone just right) or command a stage (rip off shows that)... Which implies he just doesn't want to - or maybe it's the studio effect and I'm feeling his apathy from singing the same song 20 times in a row. Or he fucked up his voice in the preceding years when he could still sing like a lead vocalist. Could he? I don't know him. Whatever it is I can very easily imagine a five star version of this album where each song is recorded with a different vocalist who can actually sing like they fucking mean it. Can't listen to this one unfortunately, despite the fact everything else about it is excellent.

I'm too old to waste time listening to this fucking guy yell at me for an hour. Beats are interesting I guess.