Question about TS Grammy acceptance speech and announcement of new album (and not critique of how she announced it; I don't care how she announced it and I'm erring on the side of not being cynical - i.e. reading it as a gift announcement to her fans that she credited with her Grammy win and not a great marketing strategy where she had a captive audience to announce the album, although probably of mix of both)....
She said she held the "secret" for two years or so in her acceptance speech. Midnights came out in Oct '22 so she had the TTPD in the barrel that long (maybe or maybe not fully recorded but at least a rough timeline and conceptualized)?
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I went on a bit of a TS journey recently. I have a friend who is a big TS fan - went to the Eras tour, any gifs in our WhatsApp chat are usually TS-related. Anyway, I was only familiar with folklore, evermore, Midnights and the singles but had never really given her other albums a listen (again, outside of the singles). I got into via folklore simply because of the rave reviews and they were accurate - stellar album and I thought evermore and Midnights were great too. Although I wasn't really inspired by The National-adjacent cred as I'm sure some were, as The National have never really done much for me.
But I ended downloading Hi-res versions of 1989, Lover, Red, and Reputation (I stayed away from the country-pop early stuff because, while I like pop and just hadn't ever listened to TS albums, I do not care for country-pop in general so I'm not sure any artist would sway me).
Great listens! Again, only being familiar with singles from the albums ('cause how could you avoid them, right?), I thought they were, more or less, cohesive listens. And I'm really an album-oriented listener. The only time I listen to mixes/shuffle is when I am working out or out-and-about with earbuds. But my general listen is to listen to a full album. TS really makes great albums and non-single songs that are often better than the singles. For example, I believe Out of the Woods off of 1989 was only a promotional single (? Swifties can correct me if I'm wrong); nevertheless, I'd never heard it and don't think it would be considered a "signature" song (again, await any corrections from those in the know); but, boy, that song is one of my faves of her's. The vocal back n' forths of "Are we out of the woods yet? Are we in the clear yet?" are so satisfying.
Now, having given (again, excluding the early pop-country albums and will possibly relent to any strong arguments as to why I should abandon this approach) Red through Midnights ample listens here is my very unofficial, gut-reaction (as I haven't had a lot of time with some of the albums) rankings (best to least best:
1. 1989
2. folklore
3. Red
4. Midnights
5. evermore
6. Reputation
7. Lover