Taylor Swift Makes Me Wanna Write My Next Album

when a fire is lit in your brain

Feb 08, 2024

Hi!

Okay so maybe you’re opening this email going ‘FOR [expletive of your choice] SAKE I DON’T WANT TO HEAR TAYLOR SWIFT MENTIONED EVER AGAIN’ but please hear me out.

This newsletter is my truth and I have to share my truth, my dudes.

Donck- A Young Man Writing — LAWRENCE STEIGRAD FINE ARTS — me sharing my truth with my dudes

Taylor announced her new album at the Grammys the other day and almost immediately, something occurred, chemically, within my brain.

I have been quietly playing with ideas in my head for the last few weeks for my second album. I know, I know, Album Number 1 (geology album!) hasn’t even come out yet, but knowing how long it takes to write, record and release an album, you gotta start thinking about these things early. I’d been fishing around for some good ideas but nothing solid had materialised yet. I hadn’t written any new songs, or pinned down what I really wanted the album to be about.

💿 Why Albums Are Special

The fun thing about writing an album (as opposed to a collection of singles, or an EP, or whatever it is Spotify Overlord Daniel Ek & his streaming acolytes think we should be doing) is that it’s a body of work. It’s like a book. A poetry collection! An album is separate parts that come together to make a whole. When you write an album it becomes a world you immerse yourself in. It has its own sounds, its own rules, its own visual landscape. It means something.

My favourite albums are like this. Hounds of Love by Kate Bush is an album in two parts, side A taking you through the breathlessness of love and side B immersing you in a story of frenzied dance halls, iced ponds and witch-hunts. Joni Mitchell’s Turbulent Indigo has such a strong sonic signature — those belly-diving bass notes, distant saxophonic outbursts and open-string jangles — and wrestles with questions of art, progress and justice. My Chemical Romance’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge has a narrative thread of man handed a gun by the devil, having to use it to make his way back to the woman he loves.

Brilliant projects, all with their own distinct identities.

So… how do I come up with something brilliant, distinct, complete?

🪡 The Brain Scratchies

It all starts with a collection of disparate ideas. You have to start where you’re at with what’s making your brain itch. Things that stick and won’t go away.

Here are some things which have been making my brain itch lately:

folklore & fairytales
transtextuality (stories which have stories within them, or are retelling a classic literary tale, or feature imaginary texts which inform the plot)
friendships and what it means to make/lose/keep friends in your thirties
the hero’s journey
Dave McKean’s artwork

But back to Taylor Swift. What does she have to do with all of this?

🧳 Creating A Journey

Like every other artist worth their salt, her albums are distillations of ideas. I think because of her re-releases we’ve seen an even sharper distillation of each album’s story and essence. Every album has a colour (Speak Now’s purple, Reputation’s black, Red’s uh…. red) and fans associate certain words, objects and feelings with each one. Every body of work has been so well communicated that a true fan can distinguish between them instantly.

When it comes to Taylor, she makes it look like so much fun.

And it is! Making an album is fun, but when you see long list of easter eggs she’s planted and the teasers and the outfits and the jewellery and the artwork and the photography and the sense of ‘here it comes, something ELSE’ it becomes a different beast.

It’s the ability to take your fans on a journey. More than just dumping a song on their desk and saying “listen tae ‘AT” (best done in a Scottish accent), instead you get to tease them, ignite their imaginations, and say, “here’s how you’re going to feel.” Taylor Swift does that so well, and it gets me excited when I see her do it. Because I want to do it, too.

Already fans are pecking up on intentional crumbs she’s left behind in the last few days. Her Grammys outfit makes her resemble the iconic Venus de Milo statue. Her clock necklace conspires with the ‘ticking clock’ she mentioned in her announcement post (are they lyrics?). She even pulled her own website down with a fake bad gateway and changed the source code so that it featured HIDDEN WORDS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES, ALL OF THEM THEMATICALLY CORRESPONDING WITH THE UPCOMING ALBUM. We haven’t heard a single song and already we’ve been prepped with words and imagery that cast a spell inside us, telling how this album is going to feel.

Tell me that’s not fun! Tell me that’s not exciting! Tell me that doesn’t make you want to write a murder mystery novel or an epic poem and spin little spiderwebs of your own.

🗺 Where I’m At Right Now

So, last night I went to bed, with my brain going “what can I do, what can I do, what can I make, how can I make this fun, what world can I conjure?” About five times in the night I took my phone off the nightstand, just to ‘add one more thing’ to a page on my Notes App.

Song titles that sound like book chapters.

Books which could be songs.

Georgian choral harmonies.

Recording to tape.

‘Velvety weirdness,’ I also typed, whatever that meant.

The really fun thing is that I am not Taylor Swift and I don’t need to be secretive about my album-writing process, revealing it all when I win my next Grammy (might be waiting some time for that bit). I can share the album writing in REAL TIME with you, like I did when I wrote my geology album! Some of you might not know but I started this newsletter to explore those ideas in my head. This newsletter then became the place where I worked out these geology stories and ideas and distilled them into songs, which then became my first album.

So… that’s what I’m going to do here. Part of me wants to cordon it off behind a paywall because I don’t want to confuse people by kind-of showing off two albums at the same time, even if one is a work in progress. But I think this newsletter is a special place and there ain’t nobody here but us chickens.

I am gonna start writing and thinking and figuring out album 2. And maybe once a month or so, you’ll get to see what that looks like. Think essays, moodboards, collages, poems and of course song demos.

📜 JOIN ME IN THE COMMENT SECTION 📜

Do you have an artist, writer, poet, sportsperson (I dunno) who lights a creative fire under your belly?
What ideas have been making your brain itch lately?
Are you watching the Super Bowl this weekend and who are you rooting for
Swiftie question: what is this new album gonna sound like?

a constellation

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