Taylor Swift rare - Just South of Knowing Why
Check out my list of Taylor Swift rare/unreleased songs if you want to trade
Here - http://amazedbyrobsten.tumblr.com/post/52404454811/taylor-swift-rare-song-trade-updated
More you might like
when taylor swift gave a fan nearly $300 for a hotel room because they didn’t have anywhere to stay… when taylor swift gave a fan $90 so they could buy themselves a nice meal for their birthday… when taylor swift sent her fan nearly $2000 to help pay off their student loans… when taylor swift donated $2000 to a fan that became homeless because their family kicked them out… when taylor swift donated $15,000 to a family who were victims of a severe car wreck… when taylor swift doesn’t charge for meet and greets (unlike most artist who charge hundreds)… when taylor swift has been the top charitable celebrity (donating more money and supporting more charities than any other celeb) since 2012…
but taylor swift is the one who is “money hungry” because she believes music should be paid for
logic.
in case anyone wants sources:
- $90 for birthday meal (at Chipotle lmao)
- $1,989 for a fan’s student loans, in a package with several other personal gifts
- at least $2,000 to homeless a fan that she had previously met when she invited him into her home
- $15,000 to firefighter who saved his own family from a severe car wreck
- she’s been meeting fans for free at her concerts for a long while now, consistently since like 2009 i think:
T-Party for the Fearless & Speak Now Tours, Club Red for the Red Tour, ‘Loft 89 for the 1989 Tour (Many of these ppl have tumblrs and she personally chose them and asked her mom or the staff to look for them in the crowds) - Dosomething.org ‘s top charitable celeb 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
(the only one i couldn’t find was the $300 for a fan’s hotel room, someone add a link if it’s found pls lol)
there are literally so many other causes and people that she’s donated to, like $250,00 to Kesha, $50,000 to NYC Schools, $50,000 and a personal message to a fan who couldn’t attend her concert due to cancer treatment, $100,000 to the Iowa chapter of the Red Cross, $50,000 to back up dancer’s nephew when he was diagnosed with cancer, and these are just the ones i remember off the top of my head
… so anyways i hope the ‘tswift is greedy and money hungry’ joke dies soon, or that people would actually consider what she does with that money. that would be nice.
She also paid for the funeral of a girl that went to my college (JSU)
me, pouring wine out: and another thing! like taylor swift being in that body suit as a direct response to the usage of her nude form without consent is the very definition of empowerment. so many people claim taylor swift only uses feminism to sell records, but i think anyone who uses feminism to hate on taylor swift at this point just hates sexual assault victims because we’re not “feminist” because we were “damaged” and that’s not “empowering”.
[takes a swig of wine] and if an abuse victim decides to done a nude body suit and display their body on their own terms, that’s a reclamation of the narrative. that’s taking back that someone had touched her ass without her consent, that’s taking back that someone put her naked body on display without her consent. it’s saying fuck you, you want a peak so bad? here it is - but on my terms. and screw you if you think that isn’t “feminist” enough for you or “empowering” enough for you. women have always been told how to display their body, when to display their body, and what to wear.
taylor swift is having none of it! and she will show whatever she damn well pleases on her own damn terms! her relationship, her body, and her own mind is hers and hers alone. and you get it on her terms, not the terms of some skeevey paparazzi, some jilted friend who hates her for reasons unknown, or some angry ex boyfriend who wants to tell everyone how she’s crazy. reputation is all about a reclaimation and that includes the reclaimation of her own body.
we don’t think about pop stars having their bodies stripped from them and put on display without consent, but that’s what paparazzi photos vye for (remember how everyone was trying desperately to get a shot of emma watson upskirt the second she turned eighteen? how britney spears even made a reference to the desire to sexualize female pop stars the minute they think they can get away with it in her “piece of me” music video where a paparazzo attempts to photograph her upskirt) and that’s what k*nye did in his f*mous music video. any time a female pop star displays their own nude image in their music video, they’re doing it on their terms because everyone wants a piece of them anyway.
so it’s going to be on HER terms, dammit.
**this article was written in February 2018 but i’ve never seen it before? it’s genuinely one of the best most insightful articles i’ve read about taylor’s music**
Disclaimer: Yes, it’s a little embarrassing how thoroughly I researched this article and how many pages of lyrics I obviously had to go through to come up with this list. It’s ridiculous to care this much about Taylor Swift when everybody knows cool people with Good Music Opinions don’t do that. But consider this: My apathy toward having a Good and Cool Music Opinion is equal and opposite in strength to how deeply I care about chronicling the evolution of the Dress as a motif in Taylor Swift’s music. Also, for the pedants out there, yes, “Love Story” has a dress in it but I left it off of this list because it’s a wedding dress and I just don’t think there’s much deeper meaning to it (I still <3 you, “Love Story”). We good? Good.
1. “Tim McGraw”
Key lyric: “When you think happiness / I hope you think ‘that little black dress’”
Taylor Swift has built a career out of weaponizing memory. Her gift is in the details: conjuring up tiny moments so specific and intimate that they become universal enough to stab you in the heart. She reveals just enough so that it feels real, but not too much that it feels like it’s only Taylor-applicable. When a Taylor Swift song comes on the radio, we’re invited to not only to listen to her story, but also to understand how it’s our story, too. It’s no accident that this was the first song Taylor ever released, all about how memory can turn heartbreak into something a little gentler, a little more bittersweet. In “Tim McGraw,” she turns moments of their time together into relics of a time long gone: the song they used to dance to, a pair of jeans and, of course, a dress. Really, she’s repurposing these memories to construct an image of herself: “When you think Tim McGraw / I hope you think my favorite song… / When you think happiness / I hope you think that little black dress.” It’s about the power of a reminder. Just like that, it’s not any old dress anymore. And in his memory, that’s how she’ll be forever: wearing that black dress, dancing to that old song. What’s funny though is how that image stuck, not just in his memory, but in ours. Taylor in a dress is one of her defining images, and it’s embedded deep in our cultural databank. Because the Dress isn’t just a piece of clothing: It’s Taylor herself.
2. “Fearless”
Key lyric: “I don’t know why / But with you, I’d dance in a storm in my best dress / Fearless”
Sometimes the Dress is a distillation of Taylor herself, and sometimes, like we see here, it’s a shorthand for a certain grandness of feeling — the Dress as a way to externalize the process of a heart swelling. The album art that accompanied this song in the lyric booklet is appropriately melodramatic (and in classic Swiftian fashion, a completely unsubtle and literal reenactment of the lyrics), Taylor in a fabulous blue evening gown with her back arched as she dances on a rain-soaked street. The Dress signifies an emotion here, a ridiculous, almost embarrassing-to-say-out-loud emotion that doesn’t make sense in words, it only makes sense in actions (or in a Taylor Swift song). Saying it isn’t enough — dancing in a storm in your best dress might cut it, though.
3. “Today Was a Fairytale”
Key lyric: “I wore a dress / You wore a dark grey t-shirt / You told me I was pretty when I looked like a mess / Today was a fairytale”
Taylor is so good at picking details. She offers no commentary here, she just presents these precious and tiny memories like facts. Today was a fairytale — that’s not her opinion, it’s just what today was. Again, the Dress is a way of creating an image of Taylor in an aftermath. She writes in the first person here, but it’s like she’s imagining herself as part of a story, reflecting on an experience from a comfortable third-person distance. At this point in her career, it’s “Today was a fairytale / I wore a dress” but later it’ll become “It was rare / I was there / I remember it all too well.” In both cases, her memory is sharp, and it’s used as evidence of a feeling. Somebody else might try and deny it happened but she was there. Today was a fairytale and this is a fact, as concrete and airtight as the fact that she wore a dress.
Also important to note is that Taylor knows the connotations of a dress — the way the vision of a pretty girl in a pretty dress can make a story immediately softer, more romantic. And I mean, Taylor’s work has always built on this distinctly feminine association — all hand hearts and red lipstick and kittens. Emotional and messy, pretty and soft, a close examination of the whims of a teenage heart. I think this is why people tended to write her off, especially in the early years, because, well, there’s nothing especially important about a girl in a dress, right?
4. “Dear John”
Key lyric: “The girl in the dress wrote you a song”
Yeah, so there’s a lot that’s important about a girl in a dress. “Dear John” is a culmination of sorts. Taylor spent the first five years of her career-defining herself by a fluttering, deeply emotional romanticism, and “Dear John” is, I think, a defining moment in Taylor’s evolution as an artist: It’s the point when shit started getting really, really real. Not that I think there’s anything light or frivolous about her earlier work (“Fifteen” packs a hell of a punch and “Forever & Always” is full of enough vitriol and spite to kill a dozen Jonas Brothers, let alone the one it was written about), but “Dear John” is almost seven straight minutes of emotional excavation that completely hollows you out before lighting your heart just a little bit on fire. It’s the Dress, though, that really kills me. “The girl in the dress wrote you a song” could easily be a one-line manifesto for Taylor’s entire career. It’s an acknowledgment that there are strings attached to being a girl in a dress, a thing the world sees as meaningless, effeminate, stupid.
The Girl in the Dress isn’t taken seriously, not ever. Nobody ever expected her to fight back — to write something as sharp and painful and true as “Dear John.” Nobody expects the girl who wrote a song like “Love Story” to write lines like: “And you’ll add my name to your long list of traitors who don’t understand / And I’ll look back in regret how I ignored when they said, / ‘Run as fast as you can.’” But that’s the whole point. The Girl in the Dress is a fragile, frilly thing who’s pretty and gentle and has her heart perpetually broken. Well, she’s angry now, and she has something to say. There’s a reason this song resonates so well, a reason that the crowd is full of shining tear-stained faces every time she performs it. Taylor knows that what it’s like to feel underestimated and small — but she also knows how to turn her vulnerabilities into strengths. The Dress, something that once coded her to the world as soft and feminine and weak, becomes her weapon of choice. “Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with” sounds like an admission of hurt, and it kind of is, but the way she sings it makes me think it’s more an attack than anything else. You hurt me, she seems to say, and that’s on you. “The girl in the dress cried the whole way home / I should’ve known” becomes “The girl in the dress wrote you a song / You should’ve known.”
On the Speak Now tour, Taylor used to act out this transition in vivid color. She would perform this song wearing a purple dress and a ponytail, and sang part of the song hunched over her microphone, sitting on the stairs in a grand show of heartbreak. But somewhere between “I should’ve known” and “You should’ve known,” she would always stand up, the song building in momentum. When she got to the line “I’m shining like fireworks over your sad empty town,” massive sparks would shoot from the stage, and for a minute all you could see was her shape against the lights — the silhouette of a girl in a dress, singing you her song.
5. “Better Than Revenge”
Key lyric: “They didn’t teach you that in prep school so it’s up to me / but no amount of vintage dresses give you dignity”
So we’re gonna ignore the unfortunate 2010-era slut shaming that permeates this song and instead focus on the fact that Taylor Swift wears more vintage dresses than like 99 percent of people in this world, so this insult is either a self-aware many-layered joke or a deeply hilarious self-burn. Either way, it makes me really happy. Also, Taylor refers to boys exclusively as toys and property in this song and I am very proud of her.
6. “Holy Ground”
Key lyric: “Spinning like a girl in a brand new dress / we had this big wide city all to ourselves”
Like in “Fearless,” the Dress is a shorthand for a sparkling feeling. A girl in a brand new dress spins and it’s a signifier for the wide open emotion of first love and youth. She’s so happy that she twirls; she can’t contain it. In “Holy Ground” memories stack on top of each other, the words coming quickly and breathlessly as if she can’t help herself, she just has to get this off her chest. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this song is the perfect tempo to spin along to (not that I’ve tested it out or anything — ahem). The whole song sounds like a rush of emotion — it sounds the way spinning in a brand new dress feels. It’s notable here, though, that Taylor herself isn’t the Girl in the Dress anymore. She’s spinning like the girl. The image of herself as the fluttery romantic girl is a past tense thing now, a self-created archetype relegated to memory. “Darling it was good / never looking down / and right there where we stood was holy ground,” she sings, and you get the feeling that the brand new dress is a piece of that ancient history. The old Taylor isn’t dead yet, but she’s fading away.
7. “Dress”
Key lyric: “Only bought this dress so you could take it off”
I don’t know if Taylor Swift wrote “Dress” using every single narrative device I love most in this world specifically with me in mind, but I am very grateful it exists anyway. After spending 10 years building a distinct image off being a Girl in a Dress, she quite literally throws that dress on the floor. Reputation may not have been the image overhaul we expected based on its marketing, but “Dress” is a quiet deconstruction of the Taylor she used to be. “Dress” is what happens when a hopeless romantic grows up. Instead of “Today was a fairytale / I wore a dress” it’s “Flashback when you met me / your buzz cut and my hair bleached / even in my worst times / you could see the best in me.” These are still gentle, tender memories, full of love, but they’re less about using retrospect as a way to construct a romanticized version of the past, and more an admission of honesty.
For the most part though, “Dress” is a completely different kind of Taylor Swift song in that it’s written in the present tense. She’s careful to say it’s a “flashback” rather than the usually unspoken agreement between listener and singer that the whole song is a memory. With the exception of maybe “Sparks Fly” I don’t think she’s ever written a song about wanting somebody in the now. But the Girl in the Dress is getting older, and so she turns all of her old habits on their head in “Dress,” a song all about the nuances of the now. “My hands are shaking from holding back from you,” she sings, and there’s nothing bittersweet about it, the way her details usually are. It’s unfiltered, clean, straight to the vein emotion, no hazy layers of memory between the Taylor singing and the Taylor experiencing.
Up until this very moment, the Dress has been a marker of a Taylor long gone, a Taylor alive only in a memory. The Dress has been in dusty pickup trucks, it’s gotten ruined in the rain, it’s been worn on first dates and last dates, it’s been a sign of weakness and a spectacular show of strength — but it has never made it into a present tense song before. The Dress has been a distillation of Taylor herself and it has been an image Taylor sees from a distance, watching herself wearing it. But in the end, it’s always been part of a story. It’s a way of turning her life into a narrative, a process that grants her a kind of immortality — because an image can live forever in the memory of someone long gone.
It’s powerful stuff, writing yourself into a story, into someone else’s very heart. But if Taylor Swift has taught me anything, it’s that the Girl in the Dress is a lot more than a memory. She’s real.
“Some people won, some people lost [the Grammys] but Taylor Swift gets to wake up as Taylor Swift so she’s winning.”
— Josh Peck (via sweeter-than-fiction)
General public: TAYLOR SWIFT IS A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING SHE IS LITERALLY THE SPAWN OF SATAN
Taylor Swift:
• invites fans to her house for an album preview listening party where they’re served food and drinks, get five minutes alone with her for private conversation (on top of hanging out all night), and get photos taken
• send fans massive boxes full of personally handpicked gifts for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or just for no reason at all
• regularly supports NYC schools with supplies
• shows up to surprise fans at their weddings/bridal showers
• holds 16 hour meet & greet and doesn’t sit down the entire time “because the fans didn’t get to, so why should I”
• randomly invites a fan from Tumblr to her New York apartment to bake cookies and chill with her cats
* gives someone $90 for dinner after finding out they’re about to go for birthday dinner with their friend
* Donates money to Mariska Hargitay’s “Joyful Heart” foundation after winning her sexual assault case
* surprises WWII veteran Cyrus Porter, 96, at his home in New Madrid, Missouri, with a performance inside of his home for him and his family
* provides a fan with expert medical care & resources for a second opinion after learning doctors warn she may miscarry - all expenses paid
* donates $5,000 on a GoFundMe page to help raise money for fan Katie Beth Carter, who died in an Alabama car crash over the Labor Day weekend.
* makes donation to Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on behalf of her godson Leo Thames upon his birth
• donates $1 million to Louisiana flood relief
• regularly visits hospitals and children’s wards to play and sing for the kids
• personally invites 13 year old fan Jorja Hopes backstage upon learning that the girl’s biggest dream is to see her live before she loses her hearing due to an inner-ear condition
• donates 25,000 books to inner city NYC schools through the Taylor Swift Education Center
• organizes worldwide online dance party for four year old terminally ill girl Jalene Salinas, who is dying from cancer but keeps her spirits up because of “Shake It Off”
• pulls her ‘1989’ album from the Apple streaming service after learning that the company would not pay writers & producers during the free three-moth trial
• donates $15,000 to firefighter Aaron Van Riper after learning that he rescued his wife and young son from a nearly fatal car crash
• donates $50,000 to her dancer’s baby nephew Ayden’s GoFundMe page to help pay for the 13-month-old’s cancer treatment
• comes online daily to talk to and interact with fans on social media and created an app in her own name to make that interaction easier
• donates $250,000 to singer Ke$ha to help cover legal costs in her sexual assault court case
• sees fans for free backstage both before and after each show - that’s approximately 200 fans a night - and spends a good five minutes with each person. Autographs and professional photos included free of charge
• regularly stops her car if she spots fans walking down the street wearing her shirts, just to chat
• buys fans pizza when they wait outside to catch a glimpse of her at tv shows
• wrote “Ronan” about a four year old boy with cancer whose mother’s blog she happened to stumble upon late one night, and donated all proceeds to charity while also listing the mother as co-writer, giving her legal rights to royalties
• regularly supported 32 separate organizations in 2014 alone and was that year’s most charitable celebrity
* and on, and on, and on, and on
But yeah; truly a terrible person, that Taylor Swift.
Taylor saying “Oh shit” before going onstage in Tokyo
still important
taybigail