WEBVTT - How Taylor Swift Transformed with “Blank Space” 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.239 Welcome to Rolling Stones five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:08.799 based on Rolling stones hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversial list. 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:10.840 I'm Britney Spanos and. 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:13.440 I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:17.240 greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great. 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:20.799 So we have a song that a song bite artist 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:24.200 that Rob and I have many many hours of recorded 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:28.600 conversations on, even more hours of unrecorded conversations on. And 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:32.320 that is Taylor Swift and her song blank Space, which 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:36.040 made the twenty twenty one list at number three hundred 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:38.960 and fifty seven. It is one of two Taylor songs 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:40.880 are on the list, the others All Too Well, which 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:44.240 made it at number sixty nine. Robin, I figure that 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:46.239 we've talked about all too Well more than any two 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:49.760 people have spoken about All too Well. You can listen 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:51.559 to Rolling Stone Music now if you want to hear 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.120 more of us talking about All tu Well. We haven't 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:56.280 talked enough about Blank Space, though. I feel like we've 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:57.440 talked about it a bunch, but not. 0:00:57.520 --> 0:00:58.760 Enough, never enough. 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:01.200 Yeah, this song is just totally inexhaustible. 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:03.520 Yeah, And I mean even like just to wrap up 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:05.679 All Too Well, quickly. Is the fact that it came out, 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:07.920 that the list came out before the ten minute version 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:10.400 even came out is pretty remarkable. 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.720 Absolutely, the list really needs an asterisk on it specifying 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.399 that this is all pretty the ten minute all too well. 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:21.880 So. Flank Space is on Taylor Swift's twenty fourteen album 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:25.679 nineteen eighty nine. This is Taylor's full pop moment. This 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:29.800 is the album where she completely shakes off any of 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:31.800 the country sound of her past. She started to do 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:33.160 it a little bit with the Right. Of course, that 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:35.120 was the first time that she worked with Max Martin 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:37.759 and Shellback, and she had her first number one hit 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:40.000 with we Rt Never Getting Back Together, So it was 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:44.080 very promising already that people really loved pop Taylor, And 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.440 of course with nineteenighty nine she brings in Max Martin 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.280 and Shellback even more. She worked on nine of the 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:54.440 sixteen songs. If you think about the deluxe editions of 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:57.040 nineteeny nine, nine of the sixteen songs that she released 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:00.440 during that era with Max Martin and Shellback, and of 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:03.040 course blank Space is one of them. It's the second 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:06.160 single from the album, and I mean, I think everyone 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:08.839 was shocked when they first heard it. I think every 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.080 Taylor fan. It's hard to shock a Taylor fan nowadays, 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:15.520 but like we've just always that base level shocked. Yes, 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.200 But like Blank Space, I think was the first time 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:20.720 where people were really like, oh, this is like a 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:21.560 brand new tailor. 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:25.480 You could ask, is this one of the two big 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.840 shocks of in terms of Taylor's long history of shocking 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:35.320 people folklore obviously like such a huge shock, But nineteen 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:37.760 eighty nine it was the complete opposite of what she 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:40.440 should have been doing. It made no career since no 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:46.119 commercial sense for her to be taking the red formula, 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:48.600 which she could have milked forever and just throwing it 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:50.320 out the window and doing something new. 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:53.679 Yeah. I mean even with Redd the album, I mean, 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:55.680 we both love that album so much, and so much 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:57.760 of the joy of listening to it is that it 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:01.120 is kind of all over the place. She's talked about 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:03.720 it as her her Jackson Pollock album, where it's like 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:05.320 meant to be a little bit of a mess and 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:08.399 meant to be something that captures the messiness of breakup, 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:11.800 captures the messiness of being in your early twenties, captures 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:14.440 the messiness of her kind of figuring out the next 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:16.880 step of who Taylor Swift is, just because there are 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:19.600 so many of these country songs, but they also are 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:22.600 kind of a little bit like heartland rock ish, where 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:24.440 you know, kind of kind of moving a little bit 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:26.960 away from the country that she was making before and 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.200 those big pop songs of course, but nineteen nine it 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:34.200 is like such a cohesive album, especially in comparison to 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:36.880 to Red having a little bit of those multiple sides 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:39.520 and multitudes to them. But nineteen nine is so cohesive. 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:41.360 It's such a great sound. I mean, it's just like 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.600 it's just a really perfect album. I've only grown to 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:46.880 love more and more over the years. 0:03:47.240 --> 0:03:50.600 Absolutely, it's funny because now it's such a classic album, 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:54.520 one of her most beloved, and yet because it's so 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:57.880 beloved and canonical, it's easy to forget that at the 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:01.720 time it seemed like total self sabotage. There's so much 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:05.920 of the trademark Taylor sound she just totally ignores. There's 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:10.000 no twanging on the album, the whole steel guitar thing 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:12.480 she did. There's very little guitar at all in the 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:16.080 first half of the album, especially Yeah, and what people 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:20.600 thought of as the Tailor sound is a complete departure. 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:23.680 The first single, shake It Off. Yeah, that was one 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:27.200 of the songs that sort of cemented the tradition of 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:31.680 the Taylor lead single, which is usually a total departure 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.320 from the album. But blank Space, I think that's the 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:38.240 one that we think of when we think of nineteen 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:38.960 eighty nine. 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:42.040 Right, Yeah, I mean that song is so specific about 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:44.840 how it responds to a lot of criticism that Taylor 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:47.880 had been getting, and I think a lot of unjust 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:50.400 criticism that a lot of women, a lot of famous 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:53.839 women tend to get, which is her dating seemingly a 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.919 lot or the idea that she was dating for the 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:59.680 content for the songs, that she was a man eater, 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:03.040 that she she was playing the victim, whatever criticism people 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.359 would throw and you know, again, thinking about it just 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:10.200 in realistic terms, she is turning twenty five of the 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:12.080 year that she really she's twenty three or twenty four 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:15.240 when she's recording these songs. It's kind of insane to 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:17.880 think about all of those things being wielded at someone 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:21.440 who's in their early twenties and is famous and happens 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:23.599 to just also be dating famous men, and that's just 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:27.200 how life works. But this song sort of is her 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:31.080 directly responding to the haters in a way that is 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.960 even more kind of pointed than shaken office. Shake it 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:35.680 Off's more of kind of a general kind of like 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:38.960 this doesn't bother me, and playing space is her being 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:42.120 very satirical about a lot of those comments that people 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:44.799 have been wielding at her for years at that point. 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.680 Yes, absolutely, And it's mind blowing to go back and 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:50.839 read the kind of stuff that was written about her 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:54.560 in the speak Now era, in the Red era, so 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:59.000 many interviews with her where it's all about her boyfriends 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:03.480 and nothing else. There's a really shocking Vanity Fair cover 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:07.919 story around this time where it's almost entirely about her boyfriends, 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:10.279 and at one point Taylor says, can we talk about 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:13.839 something besides my boyfriends? Maybe talk about my songs? Like 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.400 lots of young women have boyfriends, lots of young women 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:19.919 do a lot of dating, only one of them is 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:22.680 writing all these songs, making all these albums. She was 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:25.039 the biggest star in music at the time, but to 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.640 so much of the music world in the public at large, 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:31.480 she was just seen as this boy crazy young girl 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:36.400 who who wrote all her songs about her boyfriends. And 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:39.400 for a lot of people, they would explain away her 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:42.279 success by saying, oh, well, people just they like the 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:44.960 celebrity aspect of what she does. I know it was 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:47.160 exasperating for you at the time as a Taylor fan, 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:49.600 definitely exasperating for me at the time as a Taylor fan, 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.119 And yet this was her responding to it in a really, 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:55.280 like you said, brilliantly satirical way. 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:59.080 Yeah, I mean, and also kind of all the flack 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:01.320 that she got for right now, so many breakup songs, 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:03.640 I mean, it's not unusual thing in pop music. As 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.480 we've talked about extensively, it's not an unusual thing for 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:10.000 a songwriter to want to explore a breakup in their 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.320 music and kind of the emotions because a breakup is can. 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:14.160 Be very inspirational. 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:16.160 There's a lot of things that come, a lot of 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:18.600 emotions that are unexpected that come from a breakup, and 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.160 Taylor is very good at pinpointing those and finding those 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:24.000 and really good at sort of finding like kind of 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:27.080 weird nuanced threads and scenes that she's able to pull 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:27.400 out of it. 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:28.360 And I think within a lot of. 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:31.600 Nineteen y nine, so much of it is so fascinating 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:35.280 lyrically and blank space in particular, where there's this kind 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.720 of give and take in the relationship where she's not, oh, 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:42.120 she's not acting perfectly, her partners are not acting perfectly. 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:44.240 A little bit of playing with that and a lot 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:46.400 of her songs, which I think is such a it's 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:49.400 an almost subtle move that if you're not listening I 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:51.640 guess closely to a lot of Taylor's music, it's kind 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:53.600 of you're still going to assume it's a lot of 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:55.560 breakup songs and all this stuff, but there's a lot 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:58.040 of kind of fun ways that she twists what the 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:00.160 idea of a breakup song can be, especially what the 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:02.520 idea of Taylor swept breakup song can be. 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:05.760 Totally. I love that she's always had that great sense 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:08.280 of humor about herself from the very beginning. It's like 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:11.600 at the time, people did not hear her clearly enough 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.600 to hear that she was in on like those sorts 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:16.480 of jokes, and she was the first one making them, 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:20.360 and it's wild that also, just the people for a 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:23.520 long time I think missed the pain in this song 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.680 and the anger that now like people have come to 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:31.120 sort of more appreciate those aspects of her songwriting, but 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.679 a lot of pain a lot of anger in the vocal, especially. 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.960 Yeah, Yeah, I think with Taylor and sort of the 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:41.440 arc of her songwriting too is you are very much 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:46.760 in real time witnessing a young woman sort of kind 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:49.840 of shed a lot of the fantasy and illusion of 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:53.560 what love is thinking about. Even just like her first 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.880 three albums, self titled, Fearless and To Speak Now, all 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:59.800 of those songs are so baked into the idea of 0:08:59.840 --> 0:09:03.200 a fairy tale romance, Like she's using fairy tale kind 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:08.120 of lyrics and illusions in all of her songs through 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:11.160 those three albums. Of course, we have like the Shakespeare 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:13.800 reference and love story and a song like Enchanted where 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.920 she turns this crush into this like big kind of 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:20.240 you know, castle kind of meet and greet that she 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:22.960 has with this like this guy for like five seconds, 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:24.599 you know, And that's so much a big part of 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:26.880 the way that she views love in the first three albums, 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:29.480 and then by Ride it's completely that's you know, when 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.520 she starts to get to real kind of very realist 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:34.760 lyrics that she's doing and these like scenes and these 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:37.480 kind of very like sort of like tortured kind of 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:40.320 feelings and moments that she has in exchange like both 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:42.880 with the person after the person's gone, and with nineteen 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:45.480 eighty nine, it's kind of fun to see her take 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.440 that to another level where she's able to kind of, 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:50.240 you know, she has a song like Wow This Dreams, 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:52.920 which kind of has that sort of almost larger than 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:55.760 life kind of fairy tale essence to it, but still 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:58.800 like the lyrics themselves have this very kind of directness 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:01.559 and this very like you know, like I am now 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:03.840 the fantasy for you, like you'll be dreaming of me. 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:09.000 I love that. I love that, and that that wit 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:12.640 really starting to take off at this phase of her songwriting. 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.920 One of my all time favorite Taylor punchlines is in 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:18.560 Holy Ground Yeah song I know you love as much 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.120 as I do, And I never hear that song without 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:24.880 laughing hysterically at the part where she's talking about how 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:28.080 she's met this guy there. They're soulmates, they get each other, 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:31.560 They've all these private jokes. They're so absolutely and sinc 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:33.840 it's meant to be. And that was the first day. 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:38.080 I just yep, that's the first day. She just goes 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:40.400 from zero to sixty, and she definitely does that in 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:41.200 Blank Space. 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:45.240 Yeah, I mean, I love the bridge on it where 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:47.480 she says boys only want love of its torture. Don't 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:50.360 say I didn't warn yet. It's very very much like 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:53.240 the kind of like she's been through it and she's like, 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:55.960 I told you, Yeah, did you listen to my previous 0:10:55.960 --> 0:10:59.960 four albums? Like have I not told you enough of 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.480 out how this works? Like how this goes. It's such 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:04.480 like a great great line. Also just I mean the 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:07.000 way that that light is. It's so funny and it's 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:08.600 so kind of like direct with a lot of that, 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:11.040 but I mean just the vocal layering on it. I mean, 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:13.959 there's so much newness to how Taylor's thinking about herself 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:15.840 as an artist, thinking of how a song of hers 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.400 can be produced, thinking about how her vocals can be 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:21.560 on a song. That is such a big part of 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.960 what makes nineteen nine work so well and sounds so great. Yeah, 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:28.400 and still sounds so I mean, just like I mean, 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:30.480 just ahead of its time and what we've heard from 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:31.520 pop music since then. 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:35.280 Yeah, totally. She talked a lot about being inspired by 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:39.439 eighties pomp, and it was very much in that mode, 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:41.760 you know, she she didn't go halfway. The whole album 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.440 sounds so much like the first pet chop Boys album, Yeah, 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:47.640 and first Erasure album. For much of hearing the album 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:51.880 for the first time, I was I kept wondering, where 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:55.599 are the ballads? Where are the guitar ballads? And I 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:58.520 kept thinking of girls like my niece, who is like 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.600 very young and who, like so many millions of girls, 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:04.520 learned to play guitar because she loved Taylor so much. 0:12:04.880 --> 0:12:07.160 And I was thinking, what are all these fans going 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.400 to think when they hear her completely throw that overboard 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:13.840 and start over. And I guess I got my answer 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:18.040 when my niece was texting me the morning that nineteen 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:19.719 and I came out, and she said, this is the 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:23.319 best album of all time. It's not just Taylor's best album. 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:26.360 I think this was the first time that Taylor made 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:30.240 a big challenge like that to her audience, and the 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:31.960 rest of the world was shocked to find out that 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:35.240 the Taylor audience really liked that challenge. Yeah, and they 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:38.040 liked that she was always doing something different and they 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:40.680 loved going along with it. Yeah. And I think for 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:43.400 a lot of people who must have been wondering how 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:46.320 this crazy move was going to go over, it was 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:50.240 a shock that people loved hearing her do this. People 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:51.600 loved hearing her have fun like this. 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:54.360 Yeah, I mean it was. I mean, just the amount 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:56.760 of success and how successful it was, and how much 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:00.600 of a cultural phenomenon this album in particular was at 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:03.920 that moment is kind of surreal. And also it's so 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:06.760 funny to think about in comparison to the moment that's 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:10.080 happening right now, because that felt so big and all consuming, 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:12.840 And we had spoken before before we started recording this 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:14.960 episode of just like the fact that I found my 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:17.920 year in Taylor Swift from twenty fifteen, and it literally 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:21.559 is just about how massive and omnipresent she was in 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:24.520 over the course of that year. And so it's so 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:26.880 fascinating because this was the one of the last times 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.040 that any artist was able. It was like her and 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.080 Adele where sort of the final two artists to do 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:33.840 the thing where they dropped the album but didn't have 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:37.079 it on streaming, and like, obviously no one does that anymore. 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:38.560 There are very few artists who were able to do 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:40.600 that then anyway, But I mean, that was such a 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:44.440 big moment because Taylor was sort of fighting against how 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:47.120 little streaming pays and had taken all her music off 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:49.800 of Spotify, and kept it off of Spotify for the 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:51.920 first I think maybe month or a couple of weeks 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:53.760 or something, and Adele did the same. 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:54.880 With twenty one twenty one. 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:57.800 Yeah, so that's the last time that artists had been 0:13:57.840 --> 0:13:59.720 able to do that, and of course this was for 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:01.280 someone like Taylor to be able to do that. This 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:03.440 says a lot of fully note her fandom and the 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:05.600 fact that the album is still able to be as 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:09.240 big as it was and still is, but the fact 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:12.640 that it was just the beginning of even more kind 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:15.840 of wacky career decisions that like only Taylor Swift can 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:19.720 get away with, and that leading up to a moment 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.560 where you know, Blank Space can chart again because she's 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:24.960 playing it on tour. But I mean even before she 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:28.600 re released the re recorded version, people just were excited 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:30.160 to hear it on tour and it brought back all 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:33.320 those memories and made the song another big kind of 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.080 chart moment for her. And next up we will be 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:38.800 joined by Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hyatt to talk 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:43.840 even more about Taylor Swift Blank Space. Welcome back to 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:46.480 five hundred Gray Songs, and we were talking with Rolling 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.520 Stone senior writer Brian Hyatt and Brian, I know that 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:51.800 you love Taylor as much as we do. What did 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:53.560 you think of blank Space the first time you heard it? 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:55.960 Is before we heard All of nineteen eighty nine? Of course, 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.440 it was the second single from the album. What was 0:14:58.440 --> 0:14:59.720 your immediate reaction to it? 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.040 All of nineteen eighty nine is obviously kind of a 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:06.600 huge leap for Tailor. She had hinted a little bit 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:10.400 at some of this, maybe unread, but this was it 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:13.760 was a blank slate that she started from that included 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:14.360 Blank Space. 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:18.440 She wiped the board and was starting over. 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:22.600 Sonically, Blank Space is probably the ultimate expression of that 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:27.760 at the time because of how stripped down and radical. 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:30.720 And minimalist and electronic it was. 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:33.560 For an artist who's pretty much everything had been pretty 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:37.720 organic and non minimalist up until then. Well, the artist 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:40.800 I think about original wizes prints, you know, and something 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:43.600 like when doves Cry, maybe kiss a little bit less, 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:46.320 but when doves cry, you know, just that where the 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:51.520 kind of the main instrument is a very carefully chosen 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:54.920 drum machine and a very carefully chosen reverb on the snare, 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:57.720 and then sure there's other things like a buzzing low 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:02.120 synth and some synth chords, but the main idea is 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.680 like basically like Tailor in this perfect drum machine, which 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:08.600 is why for me, Taylor's version is one case where 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.320 I can't quite hang yet with Taylor's version because the 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:15.160 slight differences that they had to make in the snare sound, 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:16.760 in the reverb like throw it off for me, because 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:18.920 it's it's for me. It's all about that exact thing. 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:21.040 I knew that she was gonna have a tough kind 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:22.760 of rote a ho with with that, with that one, 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:25.520 and yeah, that's one Tailor's version that doesn't like kill 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:27.760 it for me, although it's a valiant effort, it's as 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:28.560 close as you could get. 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:30.040 It had to be slightly different. 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:30.880 And this is a song where if you make it 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:34.440 even slightly different, it's not right. And that that's sonically right. 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:37.080 So then it's also the other thing is she always 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:39.520 was self aware. It's a new kind of self awareness 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:42.560 and a new level of irony and a new level 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:49.200 of sort of like postmodern self reflexifity where she's taking 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:53.200 in the media perception of her and twisting it and 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:56.040 reacting to it and making art out of it. Is 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:58.480 kind of a it's it's very pre reputation. In that way, 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:01.960 it anticipates what she do with the reputation, and you know, 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:03.800 of course she does it unshake it off as well, 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:05.600 but this is kind of a more sophisticated way of 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:06.000 doing it. 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:07.840 And you know, it's another thing where you could just 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:08.359 her mind. 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:10.760 You can see a mind at work and everything in 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:13.679 the sonics of it and in the you know, and 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:15.439 like I said, in the lyrics, in the way that 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:18.840 she's exaggerating this persona. And I think a lot of 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.640 people didn't quite or at least some people didn't quite 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:23.560 get what she was doing there. They took it way 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:26.919 too literally, and they didn't understand that she's she's playing 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:30.080 a character. She's mocking the character, she's exaggerating the character. 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:32.439 The character is a version of her. She's pretending like 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:34.320 she is the version of her from the tabloids. 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:35.520 And then you know, and it's. 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:37.520 Just so much going on there. It's just you know, 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:39.760 it's a brilliant song, and it's one of the songs 0:17:39.800 --> 0:17:44.080 where it's as much as you expected from the artist. Again, 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:45.479 it kind of wipes the table and you're like, oh, 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.840 I have to expect much more. It's just a you know, 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:49.760 an amazing, ridiculously great song. 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:50.359 Yeah. 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:52.880 Yeah, it always shocks me the people who thought that 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:57.159 it was genuinely her like being very serious about it 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.800 and being like, yes, I'm crazy. Like it's like it's 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:03.280 very clearly like a funny, satirical song, and it's so 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:06.160 wild to me that so many people didn't immediately read 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:09.240 it as like this is very funny, very wacky to 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:12.480 me that people took that too seriously. 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:15.480 Her careers is that people fail to notice her sense 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:17.880 of humor and when it's clobbering you over the head, 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:21.040 it's a really funny. But with this song especially, it's like, 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:24.400 how exactly do you watch the video of your ass off? 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:27.680 It's like, absolutely brilliant. I always it's funny. The video 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:30.480 I always associate with when your. 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.040 Pinned tweet was like that still from the. 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:35.640 Video where she's got the knife and she's slashing through 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:39.359 the curtains. Loved her eyes. I love that you found 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:45.159 that frame as like the like absolute peak of that video. Esthetic. Yeah, 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:47.200 it's really one of the greatest videos of all time. 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:48.960 It's definitely her greatest video. Yeah. 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.679 I mean I've had a mixed relationship with her videos 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:54.280 over the years, but that video definitely her best in 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:56.920 my opinion, I think number one video for her because 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.919 she just is having a lot of fun. Obviously lyrically, 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.199 we just talked about like there's so much humor that 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:05.880 she's finding in it. I mean, it's her funniest song, 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:07.920 and it's like a song where she's able to really 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:10.720 let loose and try something new for herself and have 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:12.960 sort of like real anger towards the way that she's 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:16.439