hi barbie!!
i am patiently awaiting the rest of your tortured poets department takes when you are ready to share them. thank you in advance!
sincerely,
your fellow intern 💌
Hi darling! 💛 I will give you my less “instant gut punch” and borderline trauma dumping takes here. 😭I’ll get into the Substack post in the morning (the funeral skipping lore is so much, I will dive into it more😭)! 💛
First, earnestly defending her right to date a nasty racist is certainly a choice. Hate the muse a lot! I feel like she’s kind of messed up her view of what criticism is and what it means? It’s not always baseless, Ms. Swift!
Anyway, further takes! The second half of the album is phenomenal. The first half is so sonically cohesive it almost becomes boring. For a while I could barely differentiate between each song.
From the first half, my top three (excluding So, Long London.) were:
Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?- The imagery in this song is incredible. She’s enraged. She’s dead. She’s a ghost. She’s haunting everyone. She’s a caged circus animal. It’s so visceral. The production works flawlessly with her lyrics. It’s literally like a score from a horror film. But I hate the way the song builds up to a natural crescendo and then she abruptly stops and slows it down again. It just feels too jarring for a song that flowed so perfectly from the beginning.
Florida!!!- I’m a simple woman. Florence starts singing and whatever it is, I love it. I love the ambiguity of it all. I love the hooks, the paradox of your home being a place you’re a guest, a place where you’re a criminal, instead of the way we usually view home as a sanctuary. The production is incredible. It’s frenetic and frenzied. It’s jarring and loud. Florence’s backing vocals are incredible.
The Alchemy- It’s so atmospheric. It’s not even particularly well written compared to the other songs on the album, but the flow of the music just draws you in. The production brings this song to life. It feels like an early 2000s song you’d hear on the radio in the summer. Just great vibes.
From the second half my top three are:
How Did it End?- The mortifying ordeal of being known. The instrumental being stripped back for so much of the song gives it a haunting quality. The piano is the loudest instrument in the song, the absence of any other bold production tactics perfectly captures the soul baring essence of the song. It’s simple. She doesn’t know how it ended. She’s both asking and being asked.
The Prophecy- A classic case of hope vs. faith! She has hope that she will find love again. She doesn’t have faith in it. That’s why she’s begging. Hope is good, but faith is more tangible. The lines “I guess a lesser woman would’ve lost hope/A greater woman wouldn’t beg”, alone make this essential listening. She’s too proud to lose hope. She’s not proud enough to not beg.
Cassandra- Personally, I believe she telepathically connected her brain to Meghan Markle’s to write this. I don’t care about the lore or the whole story with K*nye and the Kardashians. “Blood’s thick, but nothing like a payroll?” “You can mark my words that I said it first /In a mourning warning no one heard?” It’s about being hung out to dry while knowing that you’re not the first woman this has happened to and you won’t be the last! The family will protect its own, not out of love but out of desire to protect its entrenched financial interests. It’s about the fact that you will be punished by both the men and women around you when you step out of line. They remain silent while she is tormented and when she’s vindicated. 10/10 song. Great storytelling.
What are your thoughts my fellow intern? 💌💛