Album Rating: 4.2
"sounds like her but better"
This is pretty much where I arrived too after 1 spin. It does sound a lot like her at times, but it's dramatically better than anything TS has put out since 1989. Actually, maybe that's unfair - I totally forgot folklore exists, and it has tracks like seven and august. But as far as a front-to-back experience, yeah this is just better than most of her modern day catalogue.
"(To be fair, ask me again in a month or so when the initial gleam has worn off)."
One of the only downsides of being staff now is I find myself going back to months-old reviews and often feeling pretty differently about my ratings haha.
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Album Rating: 4.5
Folklore is more folk-pop than mainstream pop, so for me it doesn't enter the conversation. Same with Hayley Williams (more alt-pop if that makes sense). Rosalia is classical (?) pop, and that probably deserves the honors as well. I suppose it really depends on how you want to define pop, but at this point, I think Miley's Something Beautiful is the other big "mainstream pop" album of the 2020s for me, although even that deviates quite a bit from traditional pop tropes. Lady Gaga is also in the conversation somewhere.
I know exactly what you mean about second guessing everything, and yeah, it's only magnified at the staff level lol. I think ratings are a forecast where it's within reason to have something grow or fade +/- 0.5, so as long as your initial take is somewhat close, nobody will bat an eye at some slight preference movement. Like you said, the real regret comes in the reviews, when your opinion on very specific aspects of a song or the album at large changes and you don't agree with your own writing anymore 😂
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Album Rating: 4.5
This is my preferred tracklist order, accompanied by song ratings:
Stupid Song - 4/5
Drop Dead - 5/5
Maggots for Brains - 4.5/5
Begged - 5/5
U and Me - 4/5
Purple - 4/5
Honeybee - 5/5
What's Wrong With Me - 4/5
The Cure - 4/5
Expectations - 3.5/5
My Way - 3.5/5
Less - 5/5
Cigarette Smoke - 5/5
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nobody cares sowing
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Album Rating: 4.6
I do!!!
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Album Rating: 4.5
Hey budgie, do you need a hug
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Album Rating: 3.5
I'm always up for a hug Sowing. Love your tracklist, will create a playlist of it
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Album Rating: 5.0
I definitely don't have a unique tracklist or anything but so far I can say with confidence that Expectations, What's Wrong With Me, Stupid Song, and Begged are the ones I've been coming back to most frequently. Went down the YouTube rabbit hole and watched Rodrigo's last SNL music performance, and the live version of Begged is so unbelievably good.
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Album Rating: 4.5
Her SNL live performance of All American Bitch is still an all-timer
https://youtu.be/bR-pos12iTA?si=PU6tSrN9-JqLX600
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Album Rating: 4.5
And regarding the tracklist there's absolutely nothing wrong with the original, I just wanted to balance the tempo a bit more -- and Stupid Song is a slam dunk as the opener.
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Album Rating: 5.0
Hadn't thought of it before you pointed it out but I could totally see Stupid Song working as an opener.
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Album Rating: 4.5
I immediately thought it sounded like the perfect build-up track to Drop Dead, in fact it's weird to me that the order is reversed lol.
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Album Rating: 4.5
I guess 'drop dead' comes first in a narrative sense (which is the way the entire album is structured) and yes, the piano that starts off 'stupid song' is slightly jarring on first listen after how big the end of 'drop dead' sounds, but she still pulls it off
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Album Rating: 4.5
Yeah there's definitely a narrative and intentional order to the tracks, so it's important not to screw with it if you want that experience.
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Album Rating: 4.5
Speaking of which, the narrative order on this is near-flawless; haven't had that much fun dissecting an album's narrative since Melodrama. She has evolved her pen tremendously since GUTS and knows how to better sequence her tracks (as opposed to the thrown-together sequence on her first album and the somewhat start-stop feel on her sophomore one). And I love the many callbacks and references here: from 'maggots for brains''s chorus having the same melody as 'the cure''s chorus to Olivia feeling sick on two completely different occassions (first on 'drop dead': "And I feel like I might throw up" and then on 'what's wrong with me': "My head is spinning and my stomach is sick"). Also the various references to her bed in almost every song feels far more intentional than the whole "you dated someone else in two weeks" from previous records.
In short, there's a lot to dig into here in terms of story and emotional investment
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Album Rating: 5.0
I don't have my earbuds with me as I'm writing this so I can't check myself, but am I crazy for thinking that the opening seconds of Purple is nearly the same as the opening of Cigarette Smoke?
I'm not usually one to dive into the nitty gritty details of an album and its narrative, but I've been listening to this on a near nonstop loop since yesterday lol
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Album Rating: 2.5
This just straight up sounds like a post-Evermore Taylor album
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Album Rating: 4.5
Ehh yes and no. Definitely plenty of Swiftisms here, but at the same time Taylor could never pull off these ballads.
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Album Rating: 5.0
@Get Low - For what it's worth, my wife agrees with you lol.
She said the album was around a 2.5 or 3 and made the same Taylor Swift comp.
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Album Rating: 4.6
What the fuck man???
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