I promise this is not going to become a Taylor Swift Studies blog (for that you need to check out the inimitable B. D. McClay), but I recently dumped the entire discography of my old musical love (Billy Joel, whom I’ve been listening to since I was twelve) and my new musical discovery (Taylor) into one playlist. Then I hit shuffle. Since I haven’t come up with any other content lately, here are ten things I think I think (a phrase I long ago adopted from sportswriter Peter King) about the two of them. Plus the playlist, of course.
10) Their recording careers (if you leave out Joel’s new, and amazing, single, “Turn the Lights Back On”) don’t overlap. When Joel gave up recording to focus on writing classical music and then on extensive touring, Swift was four.
9) They have a remarkably similar number of songs, including a similar percentage of hits and finished projects to demos and alt versions (and lives, bootleg and otherwise).
8) They also have a remarkably similar percentage of unabashed sentimentality to deep angst to carpe diem. It is some measure of societal change, I think, that Swift has so many successful carpe diem songs when that was once a genre reserved almost exclusively for dudes.
7) Their musical styles are complementary, but not in any way identical. Each has a mainstream musical style they seem to feel most comfortable in (classic rock for Billy, country for Taylor early and pop later) but they make occasional forays outside that lane. Interestingly, they both have an indie-tinged album (Cold Spring Harbor and folklore, respectively.)
6) Faith plays a similar role in their work. Which is to say, it doesn’t. Whatever their personal beliefs, in their songwriting they almost never refer to Christianity except, occasionally, as a foil. (Compare “Only the Good Die Young” and “But Daddy I Love Him,” for instance.)
5) They both know how to tell a story, and they both know how to write a banger.
4) They both create unforgettable characters with an economy of words. Will you ever forget the teenager from “Captain Jack”? Or Rebekah Harkness of “Last Great American Dynasty”? (P.S. Don’t get me started on LGAD being removed from the Eras Tour setlist, depriving tourgoers not only of one of Swift’s greatest songs but of the stellar dance performance of Natalie Reid Lecznar, who even looks like Harkness. Grrr.)
3) Their narrators both are and are not them, and in both cases you can enjoy their music without the lore but you also may enjoy it more with the lore. (See “Piano Man” and “All Too Well.”)
2) Everything both of them wrote sounds awesome if you play it on nothing but stripped-down acoustic piano.
1) Compiling the entire playlist was all worth it for the moment “Big Shot” segued into “Castles Crumbling.”
Photo by David Pisnoy on Unsplash
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