Summer reading, summer listening
Plus: Thoughts on Taylor's re-recording process
Hi everyone,
After a truly wonderful spring, this New York summer has been, well, cruel. I’d like to make it to the beach at some point, but it keeps raining every day I have off. Here’s hoping next weekend is a little nicer.
In other news…I wrote about the increasingly outrageous expectations (and expenses) that now accompany any milestone event, from weddings to birthday parties. If you’ve ever wondered how someone can afford all of the vacations they’re posting on Instagram or TikTok, the answer is, well, they can’t. A lot of people have a lot of debt.
And student loan forgiveness, at least in its original form, is dead, though Biden said his administration will try a different, more time-consuming route to debt cancelation. I guess we’ll see how that goes.
I haven’t published as much recently because I’ve been working on a story that is very much not like anything else I’ve written, and it’s been such a fun, challenging experience. Of course, I’ll link to that when it’s live.
In this week’s issue:
1. Summer reading
2. Thoughts on Taylor’s Taylor Versions
3. Links
Summer reading
A couple weeks back, after years of deliberating, I finally justified buying a Kobo e-reader (I’m not kidding, I had the website tab open in my phone for more than a year). The justification? Well, I had wanted it for years. And my birthday is in a few weeks. So there you go. With the case, it cost around $210, a major expense but still within my budget, assuming I limited the rest of my discretionary spending for the month. It also helped, mentally, that I have $150 sitting in my “Happy” bank account, which I can use for things that, well, make me happy. I don’t think I’ll need to use that to pay this off, but it’s nice to know it’s there just in case.
And the e-reader definitely makes me happy (apologies to my friends who have heard me talk about it incessantly for the past two weeks). I immediately connected it to my NYC library card via Overdrive, and so far haven’t purchased any of the books I’ve read on it—so it’s almost like I’m saving money. It’s lightweight, the screen is easy to read, and I just love it.
It’s been especially great this season because I can borrow all of the fun, summery books I want to read—I love a hokey beach read, a YA fantasy, a cozy mystery—but don’t necessarily want to spend $$$ on. (The library, y’all. What a concept.) And this way, I can really lean into how I’m feeling in the moment, and borrow a book in line with my mood.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve read so far:
Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou: This one kept me reading, but I can’t say I loved it. I found some of the commentary to be pretty cliché rather than clever.
Flying Solo by Linda Holmes: After loving Holmes’ first book, Evvie Drake Starts Over, I was so looking forward to this one, and I absolutely adored it. A perfect summer read, especially for East coasters.
The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty: This is a weird one and I really enjoyed it.
The Hangman by Louise Penny: I love Louise Penny but I did not realize this was a novella until I was done. I was definitely in the mood for a longer mystery so this didn’t quite hit the spot.
Verity by Colleen Hoover: I wanted to see what all the fuss was about with Colleen Hoover and…good lord. This is maybe the worst book I’ve ever read? But hey. At least I know now.
Because I felt like I needed to mix in some veggies, I also started listening to Guns, Germs, and Steel on audiobook. Next up, I may change tack completely and read The Great Displacement, which details how climate change is changing American society. This also looks pretty interesting.
I have a list of books I want to read, but I’m always open to suggestions. What are you reading this summer?
Speak Now (Alicia’s Version)
You can’t discuss Taylor Swift without eliciting strong feelings from people (some warranted, others not so much), and I debated writing this. Please trust that this is not an attempt to paint her as perfect or beyond reproach. But I do not want to add a million disclaimers throughout this piece, so take this as one giant TO BE SURE.
As I write this, I’m listening to Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Taylor Swift’s latest re-recording of her first six albums. It marks the half-way point of the project, and, like the Taylor’s Versions already released (Red TV and Fearless TV), it looks to be a resounding success.
Taylor embarked on this journey after the rights to her masters were sold to a businessman she loathes, named Scooter Braun, in 2019, and, according to her, she wasn’t given the option to buy them herself first. “This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept,” she wrote at the time. “And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it.” Depending on your feelings about Taylor, you’ve pledged to never listen to the original versions of her songs again so as not to line the diabolical Braun’s pockets, or you think she’s making herself into the victim again, an ongoing criticism of her throughout her career. I’m less interested in that conversation and more interested in just how well the re-recording process is going.
I have long admired Taylor’s work ethic, and seeing her quite literally take ownership of her music, story, past, and future has only increased that admiration. Granted, I am exactly the audience for this re-recording project: I’ve been a fan of Taylor since her first, self-titled album, and I very much believe all artists should own their work. I’ve grown up with Taylor’s music, and I see a lot of myself in it, which is exactly her superpower as an artist. (As The Atlantic’s Elaina Plott Calabro wrote, “Any artist who reminds you of who you were when you were young is bound to stay with you forever.”) We have very little in common, of course, and she has more talent in her little finger than I do in my entire body. Still, I consider our journeys to be similar in many ways. Delusional? I know, I know. But that’s why she has such a fervent fan base.
What I’m saying is, I’m not exactly unbiased in my assessment of this re-recording journey—I’m rooting for her. As are tens of millions of other fans. And those relationships, if you want to call them that, have transformed the re-recording process from a passion project to one of the biggest successes in music. Fearless TV, the first re-recording, out-sold and out-streamed the original in its first year, not necessarily surprising when you consider how much more popular TS is now than she was in 2008, when the OG Fearless was released. But it also had the biggest debut week for any album in 2021 when it was released, and spent 11 weeks in the top 40 of the Billboard 200. Red TV performed better, even sending a 10-minute song to #1 on the Billboard chart. Many of the Taylor’s Versions of songs have now out-streamed the originals, and all of the versions licensed in shows and movies since she began this process are the TVs.
Though it’s still too early for official first-week sales figures, Speak Now TV seems to be blowing both of the other re-records out of the water. It is projected to sell 650,000 to 700,000 units in its first-week, compared to 605,000 for Red TV (as many of 600,000 of those sales could be on vinyl, breaking her own record for most vinyl sales in a single week). It had 126 million first day streams on Spotify, compared to 91 million for Red TV. Again, this is for a re-recorded album. We’re all heard most of the songs before.
Combined with the success of her current tour, her mastery of streaming in an increasingly fragmented music environment, her domination of the charts, and every other record she’s breaking within the industry, Taylor is enjoying something of a fourth career peak. It’s safe to say this project will have reverberations throughout the industry—and perhaps in other creative industries—and influence how other artists construct their contracts and approach their work going forward.
Yet despite all of that, despite her enormous popularity and her 10 million Grammys, she still somehow seems like an underdog, and not just in the re-recording process. (I remain flabbergasted by a male journalist I know saying “I guess she’s a big deal?” after her tour overwhelmed Ticketmaster. You don’t have to be a fan to know how many she has.) It does not matter how many videos are out there of her literally writing her lyrics, hooks, and melodies, there are still somehow the detractors who say she cannot possibly be responsible for her own success. It’s Max Martin, it’s Jack Antonoff, it’s Kanye West. Plenty of people give her her flowers, we don’t need to feel too badly for her (see: the 10 million Grammys). But the ongoing refusal among some people to acknowledge she is more than “Shake It Off,” more than a girl who writes nasty songs about her exes, has long fascinated me. It feels so, well, representative. If you’re a woman, people will doubt your abilities, and belittle your achievements to fit their own narrative. She’s a young woman who writes songs about feelings. It just can’t be that serious. (And Taylor is rich and white. Multiply the roadblocks by a million for anyone else who is not a white, cis man.)
So there is something wholly satisfying about seeing this woman—whose songs are so unabashedly feminine, who loves glitter and rainbows and cats, who was defined by her relationships to men for so long, who has been told time and time again she’s not good at what she does—rewrite her own story and just fucking kill it. Yes, she’s calculated. Yes, she’s improved tremendously over time. Yes, she’s just as good at the business side of the music business as she is at making the music. I just don’t see those things as negative.
One of the biggest criticisms of TS among even her fans is her White Feminist, Capitalist Queen tendencies. It’s a fair critique. She is often so focused on her own legacy she misses the bigger picture. That feeds into another criticism, which is that she is too much of a try-hard. We cannot tolerate it when a woman is so obvious about her desire to be #1: on the charts, in ticket sales, in Grammy nominations, and so on. It’s a little thirsty, isn’t it? A little gauche.
But part of what I love about Taylor is that she has no chill. In a world that demands women play it cool, keep their emotions at bay, and do everything effortlessly, she is extremely earnest, she is a little cringe, all she does is try, try, try. She works damn hard, and now, she owns that hard work. The girl in the dress is on top of the world. Long live.
Links
Yes the show went off the air a decade ago, but I love these takes on Joan Halloway Harris and Peggy Olsen from Mad Men.
The U.S. workforce is the oldest it’s ever been. That’s bad news for us younger people. (But also…bad news for Boomers who will need to shell out for long-term care.)
Speaking of Taylor Swift, my partner and I watched the second season of The Bear, and I absolutely lost it at the needle drop of a certain pop star in episode seven. Just so good. (Don’t click on that link if you don’t want it spoiled.)
Obsessed with this line. “The TriBeCa apartment also presents a new challenge for Ms. Calderone, whose adult life has been a self-made take on the New York dream, refracted through contemporary Brooklyn’s real-estate mania in the age of the multi-hyphenate lifestyle guru.” Actually, obsessed with the whole article.
Robots say they won't steal our jobs, rebel against humans. Phew.
“The impediments to providing housing are stubborn; even if it were feasible to seamlessly build new developments, it would be impossible to persuade the public to simply wait a decade for the housing supply to catch up with demand. For now, all we have is our existing vicious cycle, in which the government tries to intervene in less visible ways, and the loudest members of the public claim that nothing is changing.” How to actually address homelessness.
Folkstreams is a non-profit “dedicated to finding, preserving, contextualizing, and showcasing documentary films on American traditional cultures.” h/t Ann Friedman
That’s it for now. Have a great week,
A
P.S. If you know someone who would like this newsletter, please forward it along!
P.S.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!