Have you ever been alone in a crowded room when I'm here with you?

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room; well I'm here with you...

Hmm...

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/04/28/1402060/pals-win-out-after-swift-pursuit.html

So not only does she write catchy songs, she's also apparently the best person ever? Kinda like the Joe Mauer of music.

Well, looks like I'm going to Fort McMurray next year.

Wow, so apparently the whole "Taylor Swift goes to prom with a random guy" thing already happened once. I mean, not in exactly the same way. It was, for all intents and purposes, HER senior prom, but she didn't really have a high school to call her own so she held some sort of contest and ended up going with one of her fans.

I think that's pretty cool.

Argh! Another pair of jeans has bitten the dust. I'm down to 2 pairs of the 5 that I bought at the end of high school. I don't even remember where I bought them in the first place.

After a 2 year delay, I finally had coffee with Katie.

Queen's bucket list item number 1: accomplished.

I never seem to tire of Lights and Stars. Yay Canadian music. I don't know what kind of impression I convey when I tell people in Singapore that my favorite two bands are Canadian. Canadian music actually makes up a very small percentage of the artists I listen to but it just so happens that my favorite two bands are both from my homeland.

I am slightly concerned with the lack of white, upper-middle class males in the textbooks over here in Singapore. Mayhaps I should start an awareness campaign.

Jon Wong's Biased Account of Taylor Swift as a Musical Artist

Ergh... yes, more about Taylor Swift. Sorry, she's turning into The Girl Next Door of the music world for me; at least in the sense of being an artist that I find myself always referencing. Taylor Swift probably wouldn't make the cut on my list of favorite music but I do find her an interesting musical phenomenon. So let's do a little bit of history work.

Taylor Swift fans probably know this but she has a pretty long musical history. I happen to know this because one of my close friends loves country music and has always cited Swift as being a sellout for moving from twangy-country (or what he dubs "real country") to mainstream pop. So she has a musical career that pre-dates Fearless (the album) in which she was a country star. From her self-titled country album, she released a slew of singles, all of which were pretty successful within the country-music community. However, for some reason or another, one of those songs slipped through the cracks and found its way into mainstream radio: Teardrops On My Guitar. And I firmly believe that it is from that point onward, that we start to see the rise of Taylor Swift as a music sensation.

Grant has always posited that music albums are meant to be listened to as a whole because the order of songs has traditionally been an important component of the "album" as a musical construct. While this is true, I also think it's worth understanding an artist, not just on the sound of her album, but on the order and reception of her singles releases. Since I have not fully gotten around to giving Fearless a proper listening, let's see what her singles can tell us about Taylor Swift as a cultural phenomenon.

Teardrops On My Guitar, which managed to hit #12 on about.com's top songs of 2007, was the first single in Taylor Swift's line of mainstream successes. And in a lot of ways, it marked her transition, not only from a country star to a pop star, but also apparently, from a bitter, man-hating femme fatale (or so my country-music expert has told me), to the softer type of hopeless romantic that we know and love today.

As a side note, I think it's no coincidence that Taylor Swift's change in personality occurred around the same time Pink released Please Don't Leave Me, Kelly Clarkson released My Life Would Suck Without You, and Beyonce released Single Ladies. But that is a cultural discussion for another day. Suffice it to say, I see it as a type of backlash against the aggressive Independent Woman campaign that the early 00s were propagating around: a movement that also coincided with the generally negative air of the musical landscape of the late 90s, early 00s; something else I don't consider a coincidence. Likewise, in the same way that the animosity between artists began stomping itself out around the mid to late 00s, I think the animosity between the sexes went through a similar cleansing process. Like I said, a post for another day but somehow, "coincidence" isn't the term that springs to mind when I think about it.

Anyhow, back to Taylor Swift. In keeping with this triumphant return to "love" rather than "hate," "revenge," or "independence," across the musical landscape (although Ke$ha seems to be doing her darndest to bring "we don't need no education" back into vogue), she released her first single from Fearless - Love Story - and her popularity exploded. Love Story was simply that, a love story, and it was catchy, familiar (with the play on Romeo & Juliet, despite bearing almost 0 resemblance to the original), and with that, "Taylor Swift" as a concept leapt into full prominence. We saw in Taylor Swift something that had been relegated to the "indie music" realm in previous years: simple, unabashed young love.

You see, Taylor Swift didn't just sing about love, she sang about love in a way that might never have gained the type of prominence in the earlier years of 2000. It hearkened back to young, innocent love - the type of love that had never known heartbreak; the type of love that believed that it could conquer all; the type of love untinged by rejection, cynicism or experience. And after years of shouting at love as if it were some kind of misguided distraction that kept your eyes from the "real prize" in life (money, security, independence, "bros," booze, and sex... not necessarily all at once or in that order), we finally saw a return to love in its original innocence and purity. Taylor Swift made a timely appearance on the music scene right when people were getting tired of all the animosity and were starting to realize that there's something to be said about just believing in love and letting it be.

Then she went and released White Horse, which, unsurprisingly, was not nearly as successful as its predecessor. Why? Aside from its obvious musical inferiority, White Horse was a part of Taylor Swift's music that we did not want to know about. After Love Story and its triumphant heralding of giving yourself over to love, we have Taylor Swift warning us that sometimes,

"I'm not your princess, this ain't a fairytale,
I'm not the one you'll sweep off her feet, lead her up the stairwell
This ain't Hollywood, this is a small town
I was a dreamer before you came and let me down."

And this seemed strangely contradictory to Love Story, which WAS a fairytale (watch the music video; she's in a freaking castle, waiting for Prince Charming). However, it wasn't the type of contradiction that reduced Taylor Swift as a concept. It's very hard, for example, to understand Christina Aguilera as a concept when she had songs like "Dirrty" and "Beautiful" on the same album. It is not, however, very hard to understand that one could easily believe in "love" and still be aware that "heartbreak" happens. Love Story and White Horse held conflicting messages, yes, but that didn't necessarily reflect a conflicting artist; only one who was perhaps aware that though it is important to allow love into your life without putting up the barriers that constrict your ability to fully experience it, this could also lead to a lot of unhappiness.

But we didn't want to know about that side of love. We had grown attached to Taylor Swift as an artist who could speak to that pure, unabashed side of love in a way that was honest, heartfelt, and simple. White Horse flopped, not because people thought Taylor Swift was contradicting herself, but more because people just didn't want to know about that side of things. It was almost like "We know that letting love into our lives can hurt us; other artists have been telling us that for years. What we want from you is a reminder of why the risk of getting hurt is worth it."

Ok ok, [said Taylor Swift]. And she did. Because not long after White Horse flopped, she released the juggernaut that was You Belong With Me, which went on to become a massive hit. I've actually considered doing a musical reduction of this song in theory class because from a music theory standpoint, it is flawless. If there was a formula for how to write a pop song, you could map it onto You Belong With Me and it'd probably fit every requirement. It is simply incredibly catchy. Music aside though, watch the music video. I mean, it's basically, "unreasonable love interest gets rewarded with a happy ending". Ah yes, this is the Taylor Swift we love. The Taylor Swift that speaks to something we've all felt at some point in our young lives. Because who hasn't known the sentiment "you belong with me" at some point or another? It's the age old story of unrequited love. Told in such a way that would normally sound very pathetic, if it were not within the context of being a song, but one that hits home to so many of us that we'd feel hypocritical calling her out on it. I mean, that's the crazy thing about these sentiments. Obviously, out loud, nobody these days admits to being a sentimental schmuck who pines away for someone who won't return our attention. But we're so conscious that we DO secretly do this every so often (except for those of us who are in happy relationships) that when Taylor Swift sings about this, we find ourselves secretly empathizing with her sentiments.

And so, Taylor Swift becomes even more of an international phenomenon, particularly after she wins the award for best music video right before being snubbed by our resident doink, Kanye West. Soon thereafter, she releases a song that I'm now thinking maybe the mass public wasn't quite prepared for. Either that or from a musical standpoint, it's simply not catchy enough. I'm referring to Fifteen of course: a song with many very poignant lyrics that for some reason, failed to move the general public as much as it should. I am, however, very ready to chalk this up to the song itself simply not being catchy enough. If that's the case, this would be a fine example of how you must NEVER neglect the musical aspects of your song, no matter how brilliant or poignant your lyrics may be. Mind you, your music doesn't have to be incredibly original, it just has to be catchy. And Fifteen is quite noticeably NOT as catchy of a song as You Belong With Me... but it is beautifully written.

"Cause when you're 15 and
Somebody tells you they love you
You're gonna believe them
When you're 15 and your first kiss
Makes your head spin round
But in your life, you'll do greater things
Than dating the boy on the football team
But I didn't know it at 15"

I mean, just reading it as lyrics, I am always struck by just how TRUE those sentiments are. It's one of those things that I pray I don't forget when I grow old: that what we consider important must always be understood in the context of time in which they take place. And maybe that's part of the reason why Fifteen didn't make anywhere near the splash that You Belong With Me did: we will always be able to relate to unrequited love (until we're happily married, I guess). But for a lot of us, the ability to relate to Fifteen doesn't last nearly as long. I mean, if I were to take a generous estimate, I would say that most people between the ages of 12 to 25 (and possibly older) should be able to relate, in some way or another, to unrequited love. However, the window for relating to the sentiments in Fifteen is, at best, 4 years. And as I have noticed, people tend not to be very good at remembering how they used to feel, only how they currently feel - hence the "growing old" and "not understanding things like first kisses and their importance within the relative context of the world in which those feelings took place."

Make no mistake though, the lyrics to Fifteen are far more significant and poignant than anything Taylor Swift has released. It is an account (and a fairly accurate one at that) of how fifteen year olds tend to understand the world around them. High school is a crazy place (I can't believe I've committed my life to spending 40+ hours a week in that setting) and to be able to capture the sentiments of being 15 in the way that she did deserves a good bit of credit, I think. So there's a good chance that Taylor Swift has depth in her music, even if she chooses to express said depth through somewhat mainstream channels. Fortunately, our landscape of pop music has evolved to allow us to believe that Taylor Swift understands and embodies the ideas and feelings she expresses through her music. And until she does something to prove otherwise, I will always have a kind of respect for her and her music.

For those of you who made it through all that, here's a treat!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQq0rUn03K4

Tiffany Alvord might be incredibly unpolished as a songwriter but she's got good looks and a good voice. In other words, she's good at doing covers but not so good at writing her own material. Shame. Still, there's a chance she could start writing some really good songs and become the next big thing.

A message to educators everywhere:

Stop shitting on lecture-style lessons. Seriously. Just stop. I can't even travel halfway around the world without hearing some schmuck ramble on about differentiated learning and how every second of every class should be spent doing group work. My music associate was quick to point out that it's gotten to the point where if you don't do differentiated instruction all the time, it means you're a bad teacher... so you're basically saying that every teacher who has ever existed before the past 3 years were bad teachers? Yeah ok. God forbid that I spent 4 years of undergrad studying the English language. Apparently, I am no more qualified to tell students about English language and literature than they are themselves as long as they talk to each other about it. Well then why on earth do teachable subjects exist? Seriously, just throw me into a grade 12 biology class. I'll just have the students read the chapter and through group work, they'll be able to figure everything out.

In fact, here's the deal. Since they're doing group work in every second of every other class, they can come to mine and learn about how to learn by listening to someone talk. In fact, my lecture-style lessons will be different because I reckon students don't remember what that means anymore. And if your kids are so ADD that they can't sit for 45 minutes and listen to someone tell them about English without feeling the desperate need to punch their neighbor in the face, maybe they need to be sedated.

Ironically, the people who insist on never doing lecture-style classes because they claim that it's hard for students to absorb information that way (a questionable assumption as it stands) are the same folks who then INSIST that students are engaged during every single second of your lesson. Do you need to take 2 minutes to write something on the board? Well then you better make sure your students have an "activity" that will engage them for those 120 seconds. God forbid we give our students a 2 minute break. Has it ever occurred to you people that the reason why I deliberately refrain from giving my students work while I put notes on the board might be because I want to give them time to absorb what they just learned? Didn't we learn in teacher's college that students can only focus for 7 minutes before they need a break? Well maybe I'm giving them that break AND making productive use of said break by writing notes on the board. Oh wait, that's never occurred to you because you're too busy because a hypocritical doink.

Ugh...