If you haven't heard of it, Taylor Swift recently released a series of (some kind of) new music. These songs were packaged into an extended (very extended) album called "Red (Taylor's Version)", a collection of materials released early in her career, but she hopes to repackage it in her own way, independent of Big's dictatorship. music.
At the end of this 30-song collection is the 10-minute "All Too Well", which is one of her iconic and very sad breakup songs. This song is thought-provoking in its original form. We want to study what happens when you make something that is painful but twice as long. These are our stories.
Our modern media environment-driven by a streaming platform, carnival watching, carnival listening, and at everyone's fingertips at all times-there is almost no way to provide public drinking fountains-day experience.
Enter Taylor Swift’s new ten-minute version of "All Too Well", which is a breakup song about her relationship with Jack Gyllenhaal about ten years ago, but also a song about how wonderful it is to fall in love song. I like to listen to both versions of this song, but the ten-minute version provides a Super Bowl-style public water fountain moment-I haven't experienced this in a long time.
Here are some basic ideas about Taylor Swift, for me: First of all, she is an incredible memoir author. She remembered and archived her experience very well. Secondly, her songs are all about concrete imagery, not ambiguity and "poetic". In general, I think it sounds "poetic" (or whatever) just to be overrated most of the time. Third, she has an extraordinary talent for understanding what the audience wants and then providing those things. Her career has witnessed these three things, despite the fact that I am contrary to any of her musical "target presentations". Regarding demographics, by the way, I am a middle-aged person who only recently discovered Taylor Swift’s work, thanks to some very persistent students in Union.
"All Too Well" may be a perfect song because of the specificity of the image and although it is "about" others, it is actually "about" you, the audience. As far as the magic of Taylor Swift music is concerned, I think it may actually be the most magical thing. Because what does the audience want most in 2021, and if not, do everything for them in the end?
"All Too Well (10-Minute Version) (Taylor's Version) (From The Vault)"-a long and complicated song as long as the title-is a masterpiece. I don't say this because I am a Taylor Swift fan; in fact, I think I can hate her, but still admit the genius of this song. It is so powerful, and so extraordinary. Taylor Swift did what some artists (if any) did: top the charts with an unconventional long version of a song nearly a decade ago.
"All Too Well" has always been my favorite Taylor song, and I admit I have doubts about the longer version. I want to know whether such a good thing can really be improved-it turns out that it can.
"All Too Well" (10-minute version) is a beautifully crafted ballad that captures you from the first word and won't let you go through the entire long experience. The new lyrics are perfectly integrated with the old ones, and the story I thought I knew was magnified into a more piercing and beautiful story from the heart. This is budding love and painful heartbreak, joy and despair, pain and euphoria. Sometimes severe, sometimes sad. This is a broken 20-year-old girl who redefines the word by herself, years later, mature and healed. This is a story intertwined with the audience and the artist himself. This may be the best thing she has created.
My experience with Taylor Swift music is more limited than the above assessment. I know very little about her personal history and public life. Therefore, I was surprised when listening to "All Too Well" and discovered the natural instinct described by Swift. Please note that I do not call it "correlation", it is often applied to this kind of music.
Swift achieves a very...strange...rhetorical effect: She describes specific experiences in general. The anecdote she recalled from the past was full of details—running red lights, dancing in the refrigerator, wearing a plaid shirt and driving in the wind—these tangible photos made it easier for her to understand the feeling she wanted to convey. Even viewers who have not directly shared the same experience—such as myself, who have never financially and irresponsibly broken the refrigerator light like me—can blend into the greater emotions of the song. This is almost a contradiction: by making the image of her experience more specific, thereby reducing relevance, the meaning of the image has a greater impact on a wider audience.
Swift’s original classic "All Too Well" ends with a descriptive narrative. It has become the mainstay of the music industry for a reason: "All Too Well" is a classic example of Swift's storytelling ability. Although the new 10-minute version doesn’t feel as cohesive as the original version, the additional lyrics—for example: “I’m never good at telling jokes/but the punch line is/’I’ll get old, but your lover will stay my age '"——Providing a kind of visceral honesty is one of Swift's decisive qualities in songwriting.
Talkative. Let's all buy some facial tissues, maybe listen to a shorter and happier song. Or, if you want, you can listen to the other 29 songs in the album and be sad for a longer time. Your call.
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