The First 4 Eras: Results (Part 4)

Awards!  We need some more awards.  The awards cupboard, alas, has been locked by an overly paranoid security guard at this nuclear bunker in Birmingham from which all our announcements are now being made, and he has thrown away the key.  It is thought that he overheard a conversation in which I mentioned the song Treacherous, and misinterpreted it as a security threat to the venue.  Now, though, having broken into the cupboard and retrieved all the awards, we are able to resume the ceremony.  Let us turn off the blue and green spotlights, and focus only on the red ones…

RED: THE TOP 5

I meant to write this section a few days before I actually got round to it.  As it happened, I got overtaken by a few events.  One of these was a university lifesaving competition (yes, lifesaving is a competitive sport – try it out if you get the chance, because it’s terrific fun and a noble cause), held at the University of Warwick, about two hours’ drive away from my club’s base camp.  We had to get up at 6am to make the trip, but it was a magnificent day – the most fun I’ve had in a long time.  In the evening, after dinner, everyone took part in a good old dance party, and one of the songs that got played was a certain I Knew You Were Trouble.  Not all of my teammates knew that I was a Swiftie – two had found out about it just two days earlier, our veteran members had known for a long time, but most of our newbies had no incline about it – but those that knew wasted no time in turning the spotlight on me as soon as IKYWT came on!  It was so brilliant to be able to dance to it on such a scale.

The following morning, having slept in a local Scout Hut overnight, we ate breakfast in a nearby Harvester eatery before heading home.  We had quite a revealing Taylor-related conversation over breakfast, which I feel is definitely worth sharing.  One of our newbies mentioned that she “shared [my] love for Taylor”, but she didn’t call herself a Swiftie; in her own words, she was much more partial to Tay’s recent dance-type songs (IKYWT, SIO…) than her fantastical early releases (Love Story got mentioned).  I know that there are quite a few Swifties out there who don’t hold the same views, and I also fall more into the “traditional” than the “dance-type” camp, but this admission speaks volumes about Red’s biggest victory.  It’s a musical chameleon of an album.  It’s 16 (+3) songs of pure, personal Swiftian storytelling, and it integrates the traditional and dance-type camps to create a playlist of grown-up heartbreak and grown-up rediscoveries, thus demonstrating the musical versatility that has latterly become so decisive in Taylor’s high standing in the industry.  I love both camps for differing reasons, although, as I say, the traditional camp is where most of my sympathies lie.

Ever since Love Story failed to put in an appearance at my Year 11 Prom, I’ve been waiting for the day that I would be able to dance to a Taylor song at a similarly grand event.  Speak Now was never destined to give me that moment, as it sadly passed under the radar of most of the popular press and broadcasting organisations in the UK (which was perhaps for the best – Speak Now is one for the Swifties, if not for the mainstream charts).  Red broke down the wall and gave me that moment (well, lots of them so far, actually, with Warwick’s IKYWT moment being the best of them by a comfortable margin).  It, more than any other Taylor album to date, has been one for the Swifties old and new, and one for the mainstream charts.  It has moved my traditional inner Swiftie and given me boundless dancing fun, both of these being integral loves in my life.  Now that’s immortality.

On that note, let’s find out which gems are burning the brightest shades of red…

5) The Moment I Knew
For me, this is definitely one of the biggest surprises of the entire results table.  It never really stood out to me for any reason, and I’m afraid I’ve long since held the view that the lines “slow motion” and “red lipstick” are a bit laboured/overplayed, and don’t really say a great deal.

However, upon relistening to it recently, I have had to eat a few of my words.  Certainly, musically, The Moment I Knew is incredibly strong, with the mournful piano setting the tone perfectly.  The backstory, however, is its main selling point by a country mile.  It tells of one of those unthinkably painful situations that you’d never want to imagine yourself in, thus setting it beautifully apart from every other Swiftian story.  I’ve been in a number of situations where everyone’s been very pleased for me, but there’s been a lingering thought on my mind preventing me from sharing that sentiment, but never the exact circumstances documented in The Moment I Knew; even so, I can relate.

This number also plays an integral part in the jigsaw puzzle of lyrics in the great overarching story that runs through much of Red, which lifts its importance and cleverness greatly!

4) State of Grace
When Rolling Stone Magazine announced, back in 2012, that Red was to contain a soaring rock ballad reminiscent of U2’s work, I remember being more than a little bit perturbed.  This wasn’t her style!  This is a giant leap into I-don’t-know-where!  Thankfully, when the full album was released, it didn’t take me very long at all to repeal my earlier concerns.

Those soaring guitars in the opening turn out to be absolutely sublime, setting the dreamy, euphoric scene with ease.  They also lead into that dazzling “You were never a saint” pre-chorus, symbolising great danger just as well.  Having them pick up again at “These are the hands of fate” after a classic, intelligent Swiftian diminuendo at “This is a state of grace” is an artistic masterstroke, illustrating the perils of a great emotional dilemma.  And don’t get me started on how haunting and hypnotic the backing singers are over the second and final choruses.

In fact, State of Grace is probably my favourite song from Red, largely because it’s packed with the drama and thrills that we’ve come to expect from Taylor, albeit in a package quite unlike any other, and a package with true grandeur at that.  After my friend and I shockingly acquired our Red Tour tickets in the middle of January this year, State of Grace was the first song I listened to, largely because I knew it would be the tour opener, and thus the song during which I would be able to see Taylor live for the first time ever.  When that moment eventually came, it was worth every second of the two weeks (and, by extension, four years) that I’d spent waiting for it.  The memories are inseparable for me these days.  It certainly helps that State of Grace is perfect as a tour opener.

3) Holy Ground
“This guitar opening is very old-school.  Nice touch.  It’s a beautiful opening in its own right as well.”  These were my initial thoughts as I listened to Holy Ground for the first time.  I stand by them to this day.

I mentioned in one of the other results blogs that I am a very nostalgic character.  As a result, Holy Ground is right up my street, and Taylor doesn’t waste any time in letting me know that – “I was reminiscing” is how the song begins!  What an opening hook.  Another highly noticeable, and noteworthy, selling point is that the tempo of the song is a neatly self-referential metaphor.  It’s fast, breezy and hypnotic (with another load of enchanting backing singers), as if to say, “Here’s a short-lived whirlwind of memories of an equally short-lived whirlwind of an encounter.”  And it’s not an entirely good whirlwind of a whirlwind.  It was good, but it haunts her still to this day (“I see your face in every crowd”).  Holy Ground is thus a small masterpiece.  Not a big one, because its lyrics and tone are hardly breaking the ultra-high ground, but a masterpiece nonetheless.

That said, “Took off faster than a green light, go” is my favourite one-liner from Red by a comfortable margin, encapsulating the self-referential metaphor just like that.  Needless to say, Holy Ground was thus one of my very favourite songs to sing along with on the Red Tour.

2) Begin Again
Musical albums are, or at least should be, highly multi-layered works of art.  When one puts together an album of however many songs, the end result is invariably either (A) a stirring pot of tracks thrown together in any old order, or (B) a beginning-to-end narrative, with subtle storyline threads weaving through.  Album 1 starts with nostalgia and ends with a sly self-reference that reflects 16-year-old Taylor’s romantic and career hopes in one fell swoop.  Fearless starts with a utopian first date, dismantles the notion of utopian romance in the middle (despite attempting to uphold the possibility of the existence of utopian romance a few times) and ends with reflections on how 18-year-old Taylor, having been picked on over her greatest dream and come home crying about it, dares to hope that “change” will come and things will get so much better.  Albums 1-3 as a whole start with uncertainty and isolation, progress through disappointments and dreams, and ultimately end with Long Live, which speaks volumes.

Red starts with romantic danger, pain and agony (lots of them), toys with the importance of circles of non-romantic friends, continues to toy with the prospect of utopian romance (yes, we’re looking at you, Stay Stay Stay), and ends with, er, a utopian romance.  This, coming after all that’s come before it on Red, is why Begin Again is such a touchingly optimistic triumph.  “We all need our Begin Again moment,” someone once said – and we do.  It’s a song of mature affection, of an undramatic connection based purely on mutual admiration, of simply getting to know a new person through going all out to express one’s inner human being.

I’d better visit a café next Wednesday.

So the time has come to unveil Red’s top dog!  I think we all know what’s coming… and I’m afraid WANEGBT and the Award for Best Song from Red are never ever getting back together, not that they were ever together in the first place!  No, the Best Song from Red Award, with as much predictability as the daily sunrise, goes to…

1) All Too Well
“Another very melancholy one.  Not as sad as Last Kiss, but then again, how can a break-up song ever be sadder than Last Kiss?”

I hate to admit it, but this was my initial reaction to All Too Well, particularly its opening instrumental!  Certainly, it and Last Kiss are analogues of each other from across their respective albums, in that they mark the peaks of post-break-up regret.  I still don’t think All Too Well is a sadder song than Last Kiss, primarily because the latter is so unrelentingly downbeat, Taylor’s voice is consistently on the verge of breaking, and the sad-ending-to-a-beautiful-fantasy approach fits so seamlessly into the Speak Now era, and makes for a more emotionally cutting narrative.  But that’s just me.

All Too Well, however, is definitely its own beast.  There are so many mesmerizingly powerful details in it that I feel obliged to emphasise them all as bullet point-type sentences, rather than bogging them all down in a paragraph…

The recurring, ever-brutal “cold” and “cold season” (“Autumn leaves”) metaphors.  The memories that you wish weren’t all in the past and can’t let go of (“something about it felt like home somehow”).  The mournful “I don’t want it to be all gone” instrumental after “..even now”.  The regular reminders that they are all “gone” (“I was there”).  The utter helplessness of seeing your greatest hopes/loves shattering irreparably.  The brutal middle eight.  The entire bridge (“a full-blown bloodletting” in the words of one critic).  The immediate diminuendo after the bridge.  The final crescendo.  The switch-of-perspective trick.

What a lot of triumphs.  As for which one-liner from All Too Well should win the Award for Best One-Liner from All Too Well, that’ll have to be a completely separate awards ceremony.  The fact that I’m resigned to this conclusion says a fair bit about how staggering Swiftian lyricism is when it’s at its very best.  I’ll offer the Best One-Liner award to “So casually cruel in the name of being honest” on a provisional basis.

There ends the Album Review stage of the First 4 Eras Awards Ceremony.  Next time, it’ll be the film soundtracks and other miscellaneous singles facing the music, and then it’ll be the full results table.  Tune in again soon for both of those!