April 17, 2024 • 27 mins
Taylor Swift knows a thing or two about swerving when her listeners and detractors least expect it, but nothing could prepare anyone for her total abandonment of country music on her 2014 album 1989. Sure, she had teased some Max Martin-assisted pop hits on her previous album Red, but 1989 was a total 180 from the country starlet's past, trading her teardrop-soaked guitar for sassier synths instead.
On this week's episode of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs, hosts Rob Sheffield and Brittany Spanos discuss the crown jewel of the 1989 album, "Blank Space". While lead single "Shake It Off" was an empowering kiss-off to the haters, its follow up was an unexpected satirization of Swift's public image at the time as a "maneater" for her romances with famous men and ensuing songs about their times spent together.
Swift fits back against sexist criticism of her writing "too many break-up songs" and her dating habits with this ferociously catchy track that highlights her sense of humor and wit, all while helping break free a bit more from her "girl next door" image. Later in this episode our hosts are joined by their colleague and Rolling Stone Music Now host Brian Hiatt to dig into just how big of a risk her pop pivot had been, as well as explore what makes this song so great and how it shifted Swift's sound and lyricism for the better.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Rolling Stones five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast
based on Rolling stones hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversial list.
I'm Britney Spanos and.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the
greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
So we have a song that a song bite artist
that Rob and I have many many hours of recorded
conversations on, even more hours of unrecorded conversations on. And
that is Taylor Swift and her song blank Space, which
made the twenty twenty one list at number three hundred
and fifty seven. It is one of two Taylor songs
(00:38):
are on the list, the others All Too Well, which
made it at number sixty nine. Robin, I figure that
we've talked about all too Well more than any two
people have spoken about All too Well. You can listen
to Rolling Stone Music now if you want to hear
more of us talking about All tu Well. We haven't
talked enough about Blank Space, though. I feel like we've
talked about it a bunch, but not.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Enough, never enough.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, this song is just totally inexhaustible.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, And I mean even like just to wrap up
All Too Well, quickly. Is the fact that it came out,
that the list came out before the ten minute version
even came out is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Absolutely, the list really needs an asterisk on it specifying
that this is all pretty the ten minute all too well.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So. Flank Space is on Taylor Swift's twenty fourteen album
nineteen eighty nine. This is Taylor's full pop moment. This
is the album where she completely shakes off any of
the country sound of her past. She started to do
it a little bit with the Right. Of course, that
was the first time that she worked with Max Martin
and Shellback, and she had her first number one hit
with we Rt Never Getting Back Together, So it was
(01:40):
very promising already that people really loved pop Taylor, And
of course with nineteenighty nine she brings in Max Martin
and Shellback even more. She worked on nine of the
sixteen songs. If you think about the deluxe editions of
nineteeny nine, nine of the sixteen songs that she released
during that era with Max Martin and Shellback, and of
(02:00):
course blank Space is one of them. It's the second
single from the album, and I mean, I think everyone
was shocked when they first heard it. I think every
Taylor fan. It's hard to shock a Taylor fan nowadays,
but like we've just always that base level shocked. Yes,
But like Blank Space, I think was the first time
where people were really like, oh, this is like a
(02:20):
brand new tailor.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
You could ask, is this one of the two big
shocks of in terms of Taylor's long history of shocking
people folklore obviously like such a huge shock, But nineteen
eighty nine it was the complete opposite of what she
should have been doing. It made no career since no
commercial sense for her to be taking the red formula,
(02:46):
which she could have milked forever and just throwing it
out the window and doing something new.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah. I mean even with Redd the album, I mean,
we both love that album so much, and so much
of the joy of listening to it is that it
is kind of all over the place. She's talked about
it as her her Jackson Pollock album, where it's like
meant to be a little bit of a mess and
meant to be something that captures the messiness of breakup,
captures the messiness of being in your early twenties, captures
(03:11):
the messiness of her kind of figuring out the next
step of who Taylor Swift is, just because there are
so many of these country songs, but they also are
kind of a little bit like heartland rock ish, where
you know, kind of kind of moving a little bit
away from the country that she was making before and
those big pop songs of course, but nineteen nine it
is like such a cohesive album, especially in comparison to
(03:34):
to Red having a little bit of those multiple sides
and multitudes to them. But nineteen nine is so cohesive.
It's such a great sound. I mean, it's just like
it's just a really perfect album. I've only grown to
love more and more over the years.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Absolutely, it's funny because now it's such a classic album,
one of her most beloved, and yet because it's so
beloved and canonical, it's easy to forget that at the
time it seemed like total self sabotage. There's so much
of the trademark Taylor sound she just totally ignores. There's
no twanging on the album, the whole steel guitar thing
(04:10):
she did. There's very little guitar at all in the
first half of the album, especially Yeah, and what people
thought of as the Tailor sound is a complete departure.
The first single, shake It Off. Yeah, that was one
of the songs that sort of cemented the tradition of
the Taylor lead single, which is usually a total departure
(04:31):
from the album. But blank Space, I think that's the
one that we think of when we think of nineteen
eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Right, Yeah, I mean that song is so specific about
how it responds to a lot of criticism that Taylor
had been getting, and I think a lot of unjust
criticism that a lot of women, a lot of famous
women tend to get, which is her dating seemingly a
lot or the idea that she was dating for the
content for the songs, that she was a man eater,
(04:59):
that she she was playing the victim, whatever criticism people
would throw and you know, again, thinking about it just
in realistic terms, she is turning twenty five of the
year that she really she's twenty three or twenty four
when she's recording these songs. It's kind of insane to
think about all of those things being wielded at someone
who's in their early twenties and is famous and happens
(05:21):
to just also be dating famous men, and that's just
how life works. But this song sort of is her
directly responding to the haters in a way that is
even more kind of pointed than shaken office. Shake it
Off's more of kind of a general kind of like
this doesn't bother me, and playing space is her being
very satirical about a lot of those comments that people
(05:42):
have been wielding at her for years at that point.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yes, absolutely, And it's mind blowing to go back and
read the kind of stuff that was written about her
in the speak Now era, in the Red era, so
many interviews with her where it's all about her boyfriends
and nothing else. There's a really shocking Vanity Fair cover
story around this time where it's almost entirely about her boyfriends,
(06:07):
and at one point Taylor says, can we talk about
something besides my boyfriends? Maybe talk about my songs? Like
lots of young women have boyfriends, lots of young women
do a lot of dating, only one of them is
writing all these songs, making all these albums. She was
the biggest star in music at the time, but to
so much of the music world in the public at large,
(06:28):
she was just seen as this boy crazy young girl
who who wrote all her songs about her boyfriends. And
for a lot of people, they would explain away her
success by saying, oh, well, people just they like the
celebrity aspect of what she does. I know it was
exasperating for you at the time as a Taylor fan,
definitely exasperating for me at the time as a Taylor fan,
(06:50):
And yet this was her responding to it in a really,
like you said, brilliantly satirical way.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah, I mean, and also kind of all the flack
that she got for right now, so many breakup songs,
I mean, it's not unusual thing in pop music. As
we've talked about extensively, it's not an unusual thing for
a songwriter to want to explore a breakup in their
music and kind of the emotions because a breakup is can.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Be very inspirational.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
There's a lot of things that come, a lot of
emotions that are unexpected that come from a breakup, and
Taylor is very good at pinpointing those and finding those
and really good at sort of finding like kind of
weird nuanced threads and scenes that she's able to pull
out of it.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And I think within a lot of.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Nineteen y nine, so much of it is so fascinating
lyrically and blank space in particular, where there's this kind
of give and take in the relationship where she's not, oh,
she's not acting perfectly, her partners are not acting perfectly.
A little bit of playing with that and a lot
of her songs, which I think is such a it's
an almost subtle move that if you're not listening I
(07:49):
guess closely to a lot of Taylor's music, it's kind
of you're still going to assume it's a lot of
breakup songs and all this stuff, but there's a lot
of kind of fun ways that she twists what the
idea of a breakup song can be, especially what the
idea of Taylor swept breakup song can be.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Totally. I love that she's always had that great sense
of humor about herself from the very beginning. It's like
at the time, people did not hear her clearly enough
to hear that she was in on like those sorts
of jokes, and she was the first one making them,
and it's wild that also, just the people for a
long time I think missed the pain in this song
(08:23):
and the anger that now like people have come to
sort of more appreciate those aspects of her songwriting, but
a lot of pain a lot of anger in the vocal, especially.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, Yeah, I think with Taylor and sort of the
arc of her songwriting too is you are very much
in real time witnessing a young woman sort of kind
of shed a lot of the fantasy and illusion of
what love is thinking about. Even just like her first
three albums, self titled, Fearless and To Speak Now, all
(08:56):
of those songs are so baked into the idea of
a fairy tale romance, Like she's using fairy tale kind
of lyrics and illusions in all of her songs through
those three albums. Of course, we have like the Shakespeare
reference and love story and a song like Enchanted where
she turns this crush into this like big kind of
(09:17):
you know, castle kind of meet and greet that she
has with this like this guy for like five seconds,
you know, And that's so much a big part of
the way that she views love in the first three albums,
and then by Ride it's completely that's you know, when
she starts to get to real kind of very realist
lyrics that she's doing and these like scenes and these
kind of very like sort of like tortured kind of
(09:37):
feelings and moments that she has in exchange like both
with the person after the person's gone, and with nineteen
eighty nine, it's kind of fun to see her take
that to another level where she's able to kind of,
you know, she has a song like Wow This Dreams,
which kind of has that sort of almost larger than
life kind of fairy tale essence to it, but still
like the lyrics themselves have this very kind of directness
(09:58):
and this very like you know, like I am now
the fantasy for you, like you'll be dreaming of me.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I love that. I love that, and that that wit
really starting to take off at this phase of her songwriting.
One of my all time favorite Taylor punchlines is in
Holy Ground Yeah song I know you love as much
as I do, And I never hear that song without
laughing hysterically at the part where she's talking about how
she's met this guy there. They're soulmates, they get each other,
(10:28):
They've all these private jokes. They're so absolutely and sinc
it's meant to be. And that was the first day.
I just yep, that's the first day. She just goes
from zero to sixty, and she definitely does that in
Blank Space.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, I mean, I love the bridge on it where
she says boys only want love of its torture. Don't
say I didn't warn yet. It's very very much like
the kind of like she's been through it and she's like,
I told you, Yeah, did you listen to my previous
four albums? Like have I not told you enough of
out how this works? Like how this goes. It's such
(11:02):
like a great great line. Also just I mean the
way that that light is. It's so funny and it's
so kind of like direct with a lot of that,
but I mean just the vocal layering on it. I mean,
there's so much newness to how Taylor's thinking about herself
as an artist, thinking of how a song of hers
can be produced, thinking about how her vocals can be
on a song. That is such a big part of
what makes nineteen nine work so well and sounds so great. Yeah,
(11:25):
and still sounds so I mean, just like I mean,
just ahead of its time and what we've heard from
pop music since then.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, totally. She talked a lot about being inspired by
eighties pomp, and it was very much in that mode,
you know, she she didn't go halfway. The whole album
sounds so much like the first pet chop Boys album, Yeah,
and first Erasure album. For much of hearing the album
for the first time, I was I kept wondering, where
(11:51):
are the ballads? Where are the guitar ballads? And I
kept thinking of girls like my niece, who is like
very young and who, like so many millions of girls,
learned to play guitar because she loved Taylor so much.
And I was thinking, what are all these fans going
to think when they hear her completely throw that overboard
and start over. And I guess I got my answer
(12:13):
when my niece was texting me the morning that nineteen
and I came out, and she said, this is the
best album of all time. It's not just Taylor's best album.
I think this was the first time that Taylor made
a big challenge like that to her audience, and the
rest of the world was shocked to find out that
the Taylor audience really liked that challenge. Yeah, and they
(12:35):
liked that she was always doing something different and they
loved going along with it. Yeah. And I think for
a lot of people who must have been wondering how
this crazy move was going to go over, it was
a shock that people loved hearing her do this. People
loved hearing her have fun like this.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, I mean it was. I mean, just the amount
of success and how successful it was, and how much
of a cultural phenomenon this album in particular was at
that moment is kind of surreal. And also it's so
funny to think about in comparison to the moment that's
happening right now, because that felt so big and all consuming,
And we had spoken before before we started recording this
(13:12):
episode of just like the fact that I found my
year in Taylor Swift from twenty fifteen, and it literally
is just about how massive and omnipresent she was in
over the course of that year. And so it's so
fascinating because this was the one of the last times
that any artist was able. It was like her and
Adele where sort of the final two artists to do
the thing where they dropped the album but didn't have
(13:33):
it on streaming, and like, obviously no one does that anymore.
There are very few artists who were able to do
that then anyway, But I mean, that was such a
big moment because Taylor was sort of fighting against how
little streaming pays and had taken all her music off
of Spotify, and kept it off of Spotify for the
first I think maybe month or a couple of weeks
or something, and Adele did the same.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
With twenty one twenty one.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, so that's the last time that artists had been
able to do that, and of course this was for
someone like Taylor to be able to do that. This
says a lot of fully note her fandom and the
fact that the album is still able to be as
big as it was and still is, but the fact
that it was just the beginning of even more kind
of wacky career decisions that like only Taylor Swift can
(14:15):
get away with, and that leading up to a moment
where you know, Blank Space can chart again because she's
playing it on tour. But I mean even before she
re released the re recorded version, people just were excited
to hear it on tour and it brought back all
those memories and made the song another big kind of
chart moment for her. And next up we will be
(14:36):
joined by Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hyatt to talk
even more about Taylor Swift Blank Space. Welcome back to
five hundred Gray Songs, and we were talking with Rolling
Stone senior writer Brian Hyatt and Brian, I know that
you love Taylor as much as we do. What did
you think of blank Space the first time you heard it?
Is before we heard All of nineteen eighty nine? Of course,
it was the second single from the album. What was
(14:58):
your immediate reaction to it?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
All of nineteen eighty nine is obviously kind of a
huge leap for Tailor. She had hinted a little bit
at some of this, maybe unread, but this was it
was a blank slate that she started from that included
Blank Space.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
She wiped the board and was starting over.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Sonically, Blank Space is probably the ultimate expression of that
at the time because of how stripped down and radical.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
And minimalist and electronic it was.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
For an artist who's pretty much everything had been pretty
organic and non minimalist up until then. Well, the artist
I think about original wizes prints, you know, and something
like when doves Cry, maybe kiss a little bit less,
but when doves cry, you know, just that where the
kind of the main instrument is a very carefully chosen
(15:51):
drum machine and a very carefully chosen reverb on the snare,
and then sure there's other things like a buzzing low
synth and some synth chords, but the main idea is
like basically like Tailor in this perfect drum machine, which
is why for me, Taylor's version is one case where
I can't quite hang yet with Taylor's version because the
(16:11):
slight differences that they had to make in the snare sound,
in the reverb like throw it off for me, because
it's it's for me. It's all about that exact thing.
I knew that she was gonna have a tough kind
of rote a ho with with that, with that one,
and yeah, that's one Tailor's version that doesn't like kill
it for me, although it's a valiant effort, it's as
close as you could get.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
It had to be slightly different.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
And this is a song where if you make it
even slightly different, it's not right. And that that's sonically right.
So then it's also the other thing is she always
was self aware. It's a new kind of self awareness
and a new level of irony and a new level
of sort of like postmodern self reflexifity where she's taking
in the media perception of her and twisting it and
(16:53):
reacting to it and making art out of it. Is
kind of a it's it's very pre reputation. In that way,
it anticipates what she do with the reputation, and you know,
of course she does it unshake it off as well,
but this is kind of a more sophisticated way of
doing it.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
And you know, it's another thing where you could just
her mind.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
You can see a mind at work and everything in
the sonics of it and in the you know, and
like I said, in the lyrics, in the way that
she's exaggerating this persona. And I think a lot of
people didn't quite or at least some people didn't quite
get what she was doing there. They took it way
too literally, and they didn't understand that she's she's playing
a character. She's mocking the character, she's exaggerating the character.
(17:30):
The character is a version of her. She's pretending like
she is the version of her from the tabloids.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
And then you know, and it's.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Just so much going on there. It's just you know,
it's a brilliant song, and it's one of the songs
where it's as much as you expected from the artist. Again,
it kind of wipes the table and you're like, oh,
I have to expect much more. It's just a you know,
an amazing, ridiculously great song.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, it always shocks me the people who thought that
it was genuinely her like being very serious about it
and being like, yes, I'm crazy. Like it's like it's
very clearly like a funny, satirical song, and it's so
wild to me that so many people didn't immediately read
it as like this is very funny, very wacky to
me that people took that too seriously.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Her careers is that people fail to notice her sense
of humor and when it's clobbering you over the head,
it's a really funny. But with this song especially, it's like,
how exactly do you watch the video of your ass off?
It's like, absolutely brilliant. I always it's funny. The video
I always associate with when your.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Pinned tweet was like that still from the.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Video where she's got the knife and she's slashing through
the curtains. Loved her eyes. I love that you found
that frame as like the like absolute peak of that video. Esthetic. Yeah,
it's really one of the greatest videos of all time.
It's definitely her greatest video. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I mean I've had a mixed relationship with her videos
over the years, but that video definitely her best in
my opinion, I think number one video for her because
she just is having a lot of fun. Obviously lyrically,
we just talked about like there's so much humor that
she's finding in it. I mean, it's her funniest song,
and it's like a song where she's able to really
let loose and try something new for herself and have
(19:10):
sort of like real anger towards the way that she's
viewed and the kind of the scrutiny that her dating
life has faced, as you know, that is frankly unfair.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
The music, I mean, you could argue that the music
is sort of more youthful.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Yeah, yeah, and then you know that her previous you know,
on read she had all she had songs that kind
of sound like you too, Like you know, it's like
it's sort of like I was so much older.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Than kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
So, yeah, like the themes are more adult, but the
music is very light and youthful by the way that
the other stuff wasn't always.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
It's such an inverse of like what a lot of
others exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, all proven formulas for how you graduate from being
a teenaged pop star to a full fledged adult is
you go away from the bouncy pop stuff and you
start doing you know, serious stuff. Towards Michael going into
his double era, it's like, I'm going to do a
video where it's just me and an acoustic guitar, because
that's how you prove your serious artist. We can see
(20:03):
that pattern, you know, that's traditionally how artists they start
out doing dancy pop stuff as teens, and then they
prove their adults by let's say, dressing in flannel and
growing a beard and putting out an album literally called
Man of the Woods. But like that's traditionally the trajectory, Yeah,
like marking your evolution as an artist. And it says
(20:26):
so much about her confidence but also about her extremely
widescreen sense of pop history that she knew all the
tricks of how this has been done in the past,
and she was going to do it the opposite way
that she had this blockbuster formula with you know that
was like very much focused around her acoustic guitar, and
(20:47):
that she was going to cross over to dance pop
from the more adult pop style. That's not how you
do it. It seemed like absolute commercial self sabotage at
the time. It's weird how this being so successful in
retrospect nineteen eighty nine, but also the song blank Space.
In retrospect it looks like a total non brainer move,
(21:09):
where at the time it seemed like the absolute craziest
thing she could do.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
When Jewel did it with three oh four, it was
not as much of a success, you know, and then
and that was it was the exactly good.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
It was the it was the exact move. I can't
a perfect example.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Also, that should have been huge.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
It had some songs I really liked on it. I
gave it.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Its always a band.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Yeah, you know, it just shows that people had tried
it and it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
I mean, again, great album I would love. I know
she's doing she's doing the Exilent Guy Bill tour, but
where's the anniversary tour for lis Fair self titled?
Speaker 4 (21:43):
But right that the two artists who come to mind,
who tried it, at least commercially, did not succeed, So,
you know, and.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
I also were so reviled for us.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
There was so much anger towards both those artists for
moving away from what was seen as much more kind
of authentic music, kind of more authentic ways of doing
their songwriting. I mean for Taylor to move into this
mode to make a pop album as her kind of
adult shifting album, but also to work with someone like
Max Martin, who's, you know, such a big name in
(22:14):
pop music, to kind of have that not only be
someone who's kind of almost like a teacher, like her
kind of own sort of makeshift college lessons of songwriting,
where she has talked about kind of working with him
on Red as a way to sort of learn a
new way of writing and to learn more about being
a pop songwriter, and then to bring him into that,
and to bring also someone who was not known for
(22:36):
working on pop music before, Jack Antonov, who had was
this was his first big album as a songwriter and
producer outside of Fun that he was working with someone
else and kind of behind the scenes. But I mean
to even have that balance of like someone like Jack
who's a big part of the album and hadn't done
this before, and.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
With Max Martin, he's got like some brilliant production yes
on nineteen eighty nine, and then he's got a there's
where it's like, oh, he's still learning how to do this.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
It's really interesting the way that Taylor was allowed to
sort of quiet quit country.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
It's really interesting. It's sort of uh.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
I actually do remember asking her about that during I
guess read and and she was just sort of like
like more or less she was like, I'll be fun
like like she just was like she had absolutely no
concern about it. What you know as to whether you know,
country fans will be mad about it at her.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Or or anything. She was like, she's like not worried
about it. And she was totally right. It never really
became a thing. Yeah, Nashville never got really mad at her.
Nothing ever really happened.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
It just sort of it's almost like she she she
hypnotized people into forgetting that the country thing had ever
been a thing, and it's just slowly it's like.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Oh wait, weren't you a country or just some points
he's like, don't worry about it, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
It was like, yeah, I think it was a mixture
of two. Like I mean, even with like love Story,
she was already becoming such like a pop artist, yeah,
and like it was a very gradual yeah, and like
I mean, yeah, she had her first number one hit
with we Are Never Getting Back Together and that kind
of being it. But I also do think blank Space
is such a country song and it's writing like that's
the hook is like very Miranda Lambert, and it feels
(24:08):
very like revenge country vibe to it, and I think,
I mean, I feel that way about a lot of
nineteen eighty nine, where I feel like a lot of
the lyrics, not every song, but I feel like songs
like style and blank Space and like all you had
to do is stay is like they feel very country
lyrically in terms of that, because she's always been so
(24:28):
good at bridging what makes country songs so catchy and
so fun and so sing alongable with a really excellent
earwormy hook. Because I remember my the first time I
heard the song was because I went to a I
was writing about the videos. Is one of my very
first like Rolling Stone articles was to write about the videos.
I had to go to like a secret room to
hear about the app that they were doing, the interactive
(24:50):
app that they were getting launched with blank Space so
so twenty fourteen, and that there was an interactive app
that they that they were doing with it, and I
remember just being so like genuinely blown away by how
different it was, I mean, just in terms of the
combination of the visuals and what she was singing, because
I think that now she sort of she's done this
sort of playfulness repeatedly in her music in her videos,
(25:11):
but I mean, just to kind of fully see that
on such a level from her from blank Space, like
shake it Off almost got there, but like it was
a little like that video was a little like disjointed
in how it kind of tried to get there, and
Blank Space her kind of going all the way through,
like the running mascara and like the bloodcake and like
all this stuff combined with those lyrics like you know,
I'm a nightmare dressed as a day dream and the
(25:33):
long list of X lovers and all that stuff. Like,
I mean, just the fact that it's so completely over
the top was such a major moment.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
I love that, Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
She does it in Aerostour, Yeah, her and the dancers
with their golf clubs like beating up the car. I
was wow, Like it's very much still celebrating that spirit.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
And there was a resurgence over the summer with the
song too. I mean, all the I mean every song
that was an Aerostor had like a chart moment. But
of course, like this crack top fifty where people we
were getting back into blank space again.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
It's kind of funny. Also, it's a song where every
time I hear it anyway, I'm shocked at how short
it is. Yeah, because there's so many brilliant details packed
into it, and it's like wow, like classic Max Martin
trick for sure, but like getting them in so so
many of those in such a short period of time.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, I mean a lot has changed in how people
even are listening to her music. We have the re
records out now, and we have you know, even more
albums and the tour and all that. I feel like
we could talk about this for much longer we have before.
But I appreciate, appreciate you Brian for coming by and
chatting today.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Thank you so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five
hundred Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by
Rolling Stone and iHeartMedia. Written and hosted by me, Rob
Sheffield and Britney Spanos and with our genius guest today,
mister Brian HyET. Executive produced by Jason alex Dale and
Christian Horde and produced by Jesse Cannon with music supervision
(27:05):
by Eric Seiler. Thanks
Welcome to Rolling Stones five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast
based on Rolling stones hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversial list.
I'm Britney Spanos and.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the
greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
So we have a song that a song bite artist
that Rob and I have many many hours of recorded
conversations on, even more hours of unrecorded conversations on. And
that is Taylor Swift and her song blank Space, which
made the twenty twenty one list at number three hundred
and fifty seven. It is one of two Taylor songs
(00:38):
are on the list, the others All Too Well, which
made it at number sixty nine. Robin, I figure that
we've talked about all too Well more than any two
people have spoken about All too Well. You can listen
to Rolling Stone Music now if you want to hear
more of us talking about All tu Well. We haven't
talked enough about Blank Space, though. I feel like we've
talked about it a bunch, but not.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Enough, never enough.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, this song is just totally inexhaustible.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, And I mean even like just to wrap up
All Too Well, quickly. Is the fact that it came out,
that the list came out before the ten minute version
even came out is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Absolutely, the list really needs an asterisk on it specifying
that this is all pretty the ten minute all too well.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So. Flank Space is on Taylor Swift's twenty fourteen album
nineteen eighty nine. This is Taylor's full pop moment. This
is the album where she completely shakes off any of
the country sound of her past. She started to do
it a little bit with the Right. Of course, that
was the first time that she worked with Max Martin
and Shellback, and she had her first number one hit
with we Rt Never Getting Back Together, So it was
(01:40):
very promising already that people really loved pop Taylor, And
of course with nineteenighty nine she brings in Max Martin
and Shellback even more. She worked on nine of the
sixteen songs. If you think about the deluxe editions of
nineteeny nine, nine of the sixteen songs that she released
during that era with Max Martin and Shellback, and of
(02:00):
course blank Space is one of them. It's the second
single from the album, and I mean, I think everyone
was shocked when they first heard it. I think every
Taylor fan. It's hard to shock a Taylor fan nowadays,
but like we've just always that base level shocked. Yes,
But like Blank Space, I think was the first time
where people were really like, oh, this is like a
(02:20):
brand new tailor.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
You could ask, is this one of the two big
shocks of in terms of Taylor's long history of shocking
people folklore obviously like such a huge shock, But nineteen
eighty nine it was the complete opposite of what she
should have been doing. It made no career since no
commercial sense for her to be taking the red formula,
(02:46):
which she could have milked forever and just throwing it
out the window and doing something new.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah. I mean even with Redd the album, I mean,
we both love that album so much, and so much
of the joy of listening to it is that it
is kind of all over the place. She's talked about
it as her her Jackson Pollock album, where it's like
meant to be a little bit of a mess and
meant to be something that captures the messiness of breakup,
captures the messiness of being in your early twenties, captures
(03:11):
the messiness of her kind of figuring out the next
step of who Taylor Swift is, just because there are
so many of these country songs, but they also are
kind of a little bit like heartland rock ish, where
you know, kind of kind of moving a little bit
away from the country that she was making before and
those big pop songs of course, but nineteen nine it
is like such a cohesive album, especially in comparison to
(03:34):
to Red having a little bit of those multiple sides
and multitudes to them. But nineteen nine is so cohesive.
It's such a great sound. I mean, it's just like
it's just a really perfect album. I've only grown to
love more and more over the years.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Absolutely, it's funny because now it's such a classic album,
one of her most beloved, and yet because it's so
beloved and canonical, it's easy to forget that at the
time it seemed like total self sabotage. There's so much
of the trademark Taylor sound she just totally ignores. There's
no twanging on the album, the whole steel guitar thing
(04:10):
she did. There's very little guitar at all in the
first half of the album, especially Yeah, and what people
thought of as the Tailor sound is a complete departure.
The first single, shake It Off. Yeah, that was one
of the songs that sort of cemented the tradition of
the Taylor lead single, which is usually a total departure
(04:31):
from the album. But blank Space, I think that's the
one that we think of when we think of nineteen
eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Right, Yeah, I mean that song is so specific about
how it responds to a lot of criticism that Taylor
had been getting, and I think a lot of unjust
criticism that a lot of women, a lot of famous
women tend to get, which is her dating seemingly a
lot or the idea that she was dating for the
content for the songs, that she was a man eater,
(04:59):
that she she was playing the victim, whatever criticism people
would throw and you know, again, thinking about it just
in realistic terms, she is turning twenty five of the
year that she really she's twenty three or twenty four
when she's recording these songs. It's kind of insane to
think about all of those things being wielded at someone
who's in their early twenties and is famous and happens
(05:21):
to just also be dating famous men, and that's just
how life works. But this song sort of is her
directly responding to the haters in a way that is
even more kind of pointed than shaken office. Shake it
Off's more of kind of a general kind of like
this doesn't bother me, and playing space is her being
very satirical about a lot of those comments that people
(05:42):
have been wielding at her for years at that point.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yes, absolutely, And it's mind blowing to go back and
read the kind of stuff that was written about her
in the speak Now era, in the Red era, so
many interviews with her where it's all about her boyfriends
and nothing else. There's a really shocking Vanity Fair cover
story around this time where it's almost entirely about her boyfriends,
(06:07):
and at one point Taylor says, can we talk about
something besides my boyfriends? Maybe talk about my songs? Like
lots of young women have boyfriends, lots of young women
do a lot of dating, only one of them is
writing all these songs, making all these albums. She was
the biggest star in music at the time, but to
so much of the music world in the public at large,
(06:28):
she was just seen as this boy crazy young girl
who who wrote all her songs about her boyfriends. And
for a lot of people, they would explain away her
success by saying, oh, well, people just they like the
celebrity aspect of what she does. I know it was
exasperating for you at the time as a Taylor fan,
definitely exasperating for me at the time as a Taylor fan,
(06:50):
And yet this was her responding to it in a really,
like you said, brilliantly satirical way.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah, I mean, and also kind of all the flack
that she got for right now, so many breakup songs,
I mean, it's not unusual thing in pop music. As
we've talked about extensively, it's not an unusual thing for
a songwriter to want to explore a breakup in their
music and kind of the emotions because a breakup is can.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Be very inspirational.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
There's a lot of things that come, a lot of
emotions that are unexpected that come from a breakup, and
Taylor is very good at pinpointing those and finding those
and really good at sort of finding like kind of
weird nuanced threads and scenes that she's able to pull
out of it.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And I think within a lot of.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Nineteen y nine, so much of it is so fascinating
lyrically and blank space in particular, where there's this kind
of give and take in the relationship where she's not, oh,
she's not acting perfectly, her partners are not acting perfectly.
A little bit of playing with that and a lot
of her songs, which I think is such a it's
an almost subtle move that if you're not listening I
(07:49):
guess closely to a lot of Taylor's music, it's kind
of you're still going to assume it's a lot of
breakup songs and all this stuff, but there's a lot
of kind of fun ways that she twists what the
idea of a breakup song can be, especially what the
idea of Taylor swept breakup song can be.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Totally. I love that she's always had that great sense
of humor about herself from the very beginning. It's like
at the time, people did not hear her clearly enough
to hear that she was in on like those sorts
of jokes, and she was the first one making them,
and it's wild that also, just the people for a
long time I think missed the pain in this song
(08:23):
and the anger that now like people have come to
sort of more appreciate those aspects of her songwriting, but
a lot of pain a lot of anger in the vocal, especially.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, Yeah, I think with Taylor and sort of the
arc of her songwriting too is you are very much
in real time witnessing a young woman sort of kind
of shed a lot of the fantasy and illusion of
what love is thinking about. Even just like her first
three albums, self titled, Fearless and To Speak Now, all
(08:56):
of those songs are so baked into the idea of
a fairy tale romance, Like she's using fairy tale kind
of lyrics and illusions in all of her songs through
those three albums. Of course, we have like the Shakespeare
reference and love story and a song like Enchanted where
she turns this crush into this like big kind of
(09:17):
you know, castle kind of meet and greet that she
has with this like this guy for like five seconds,
you know, And that's so much a big part of
the way that she views love in the first three albums,
and then by Ride it's completely that's you know, when
she starts to get to real kind of very realist
lyrics that she's doing and these like scenes and these
kind of very like sort of like tortured kind of
(09:37):
feelings and moments that she has in exchange like both
with the person after the person's gone, and with nineteen
eighty nine, it's kind of fun to see her take
that to another level where she's able to kind of,
you know, she has a song like Wow This Dreams,
which kind of has that sort of almost larger than
life kind of fairy tale essence to it, but still
like the lyrics themselves have this very kind of directness
(09:58):
and this very like you know, like I am now
the fantasy for you, like you'll be dreaming of me.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I love that. I love that, and that that wit
really starting to take off at this phase of her songwriting.
One of my all time favorite Taylor punchlines is in
Holy Ground Yeah song I know you love as much
as I do, And I never hear that song without
laughing hysterically at the part where she's talking about how
she's met this guy there. They're soulmates, they get each other,
(10:28):
They've all these private jokes. They're so absolutely and sinc
it's meant to be. And that was the first day.
I just yep, that's the first day. She just goes
from zero to sixty, and she definitely does that in
Blank Space.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, I mean, I love the bridge on it where
she says boys only want love of its torture. Don't
say I didn't warn yet. It's very very much like
the kind of like she's been through it and she's like,
I told you, Yeah, did you listen to my previous
four albums? Like have I not told you enough of
out how this works? Like how this goes. It's such
(11:02):
like a great great line. Also just I mean the
way that that light is. It's so funny and it's
so kind of like direct with a lot of that,
but I mean just the vocal layering on it. I mean,
there's so much newness to how Taylor's thinking about herself
as an artist, thinking of how a song of hers
can be produced, thinking about how her vocals can be
on a song. That is such a big part of
what makes nineteen nine work so well and sounds so great. Yeah,
(11:25):
and still sounds so I mean, just like I mean,
just ahead of its time and what we've heard from
pop music since then.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, totally. She talked a lot about being inspired by
eighties pomp, and it was very much in that mode,
you know, she she didn't go halfway. The whole album
sounds so much like the first pet chop Boys album, Yeah,
and first Erasure album. For much of hearing the album
for the first time, I was I kept wondering, where
(11:51):
are the ballads? Where are the guitar ballads? And I
kept thinking of girls like my niece, who is like
very young and who, like so many millions of girls,
learned to play guitar because she loved Taylor so much.
And I was thinking, what are all these fans going
to think when they hear her completely throw that overboard
and start over. And I guess I got my answer
(12:13):
when my niece was texting me the morning that nineteen
and I came out, and she said, this is the
best album of all time. It's not just Taylor's best album.
I think this was the first time that Taylor made
a big challenge like that to her audience, and the
rest of the world was shocked to find out that
the Taylor audience really liked that challenge. Yeah, and they
(12:35):
liked that she was always doing something different and they
loved going along with it. Yeah. And I think for
a lot of people who must have been wondering how
this crazy move was going to go over, it was
a shock that people loved hearing her do this. People
loved hearing her have fun like this.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, I mean it was. I mean, just the amount
of success and how successful it was, and how much
of a cultural phenomenon this album in particular was at
that moment is kind of surreal. And also it's so
funny to think about in comparison to the moment that's
happening right now, because that felt so big and all consuming,
And we had spoken before before we started recording this
(13:12):
episode of just like the fact that I found my
year in Taylor Swift from twenty fifteen, and it literally
is just about how massive and omnipresent she was in
over the course of that year. And so it's so
fascinating because this was the one of the last times
that any artist was able. It was like her and
Adele where sort of the final two artists to do
the thing where they dropped the album but didn't have
(13:33):
it on streaming, and like, obviously no one does that anymore.
There are very few artists who were able to do
that then anyway, But I mean, that was such a
big moment because Taylor was sort of fighting against how
little streaming pays and had taken all her music off
of Spotify, and kept it off of Spotify for the
first I think maybe month or a couple of weeks
or something, and Adele did the same.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
With twenty one twenty one.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, so that's the last time that artists had been
able to do that, and of course this was for
someone like Taylor to be able to do that. This
says a lot of fully note her fandom and the
fact that the album is still able to be as
big as it was and still is, but the fact
that it was just the beginning of even more kind
of wacky career decisions that like only Taylor Swift can
(14:15):
get away with, and that leading up to a moment
where you know, Blank Space can chart again because she's
playing it on tour. But I mean even before she
re released the re recorded version, people just were excited
to hear it on tour and it brought back all
those memories and made the song another big kind of
chart moment for her. And next up we will be
(14:36):
joined by Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hyatt to talk
even more about Taylor Swift Blank Space. Welcome back to
five hundred Gray Songs, and we were talking with Rolling
Stone senior writer Brian Hyatt and Brian, I know that
you love Taylor as much as we do. What did
you think of blank Space the first time you heard it?
Is before we heard All of nineteen eighty nine? Of course,
it was the second single from the album. What was
(14:58):
your immediate reaction to it?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
All of nineteen eighty nine is obviously kind of a
huge leap for Tailor. She had hinted a little bit
at some of this, maybe unread, but this was it
was a blank slate that she started from that included
Blank Space.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
She wiped the board and was starting over.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Sonically, Blank Space is probably the ultimate expression of that
at the time because of how stripped down and radical.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
And minimalist and electronic it was.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
For an artist who's pretty much everything had been pretty
organic and non minimalist up until then. Well, the artist
I think about original wizes prints, you know, and something
like when doves Cry, maybe kiss a little bit less,
but when doves cry, you know, just that where the
kind of the main instrument is a very carefully chosen
(15:51):
drum machine and a very carefully chosen reverb on the snare,
and then sure there's other things like a buzzing low
synth and some synth chords, but the main idea is
like basically like Tailor in this perfect drum machine, which
is why for me, Taylor's version is one case where
I can't quite hang yet with Taylor's version because the
(16:11):
slight differences that they had to make in the snare sound,
in the reverb like throw it off for me, because
it's it's for me. It's all about that exact thing.
I knew that she was gonna have a tough kind
of rote a ho with with that, with that one,
and yeah, that's one Tailor's version that doesn't like kill
it for me, although it's a valiant effort, it's as
close as you could get.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
It had to be slightly different.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
And this is a song where if you make it
even slightly different, it's not right. And that that's sonically right.
So then it's also the other thing is she always
was self aware. It's a new kind of self awareness
and a new level of irony and a new level
of sort of like postmodern self reflexifity where she's taking
in the media perception of her and twisting it and
(16:53):
reacting to it and making art out of it. Is
kind of a it's it's very pre reputation. In that way,
it anticipates what she do with the reputation, and you know,
of course she does it unshake it off as well,
but this is kind of a more sophisticated way of
doing it.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
And you know, it's another thing where you could just
her mind.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
You can see a mind at work and everything in
the sonics of it and in the you know, and
like I said, in the lyrics, in the way that
she's exaggerating this persona. And I think a lot of
people didn't quite or at least some people didn't quite
get what she was doing there. They took it way
too literally, and they didn't understand that she's she's playing
a character. She's mocking the character, she's exaggerating the character.
(17:30):
The character is a version of her. She's pretending like
she is the version of her from the tabloids.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
And then you know, and it's.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Just so much going on there. It's just you know,
it's a brilliant song, and it's one of the songs
where it's as much as you expected from the artist. Again,
it kind of wipes the table and you're like, oh,
I have to expect much more. It's just a you know,
an amazing, ridiculously great song.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, it always shocks me the people who thought that
it was genuinely her like being very serious about it
and being like, yes, I'm crazy. Like it's like it's
very clearly like a funny, satirical song, and it's so
wild to me that so many people didn't immediately read
it as like this is very funny, very wacky to
me that people took that too seriously.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Her careers is that people fail to notice her sense
of humor and when it's clobbering you over the head,
it's a really funny. But with this song especially, it's like,
how exactly do you watch the video of your ass off?
It's like, absolutely brilliant. I always it's funny. The video
I always associate with when your.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Pinned tweet was like that still from the.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Video where she's got the knife and she's slashing through
the curtains. Loved her eyes. I love that you found
that frame as like the like absolute peak of that video. Esthetic. Yeah,
it's really one of the greatest videos of all time.
It's definitely her greatest video. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I mean I've had a mixed relationship with her videos
over the years, but that video definitely her best in
my opinion, I think number one video for her because
she just is having a lot of fun. Obviously lyrically,
we just talked about like there's so much humor that
she's finding in it. I mean, it's her funniest song,
and it's like a song where she's able to really
let loose and try something new for herself and have
(19:10):
sort of like real anger towards the way that she's
viewed and the kind of the scrutiny that her dating
life has faced, as you know, that is frankly unfair.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
The music, I mean, you could argue that the music
is sort of more youthful.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Yeah, yeah, and then you know that her previous you know,
on read she had all she had songs that kind
of sound like you too, Like you know, it's like
it's sort of like I was so much older.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Than kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
So, yeah, like the themes are more adult, but the
music is very light and youthful by the way that
the other stuff wasn't always.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
It's such an inverse of like what a lot of
others exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, all proven formulas for how you graduate from being
a teenaged pop star to a full fledged adult is
you go away from the bouncy pop stuff and you
start doing you know, serious stuff. Towards Michael going into
his double era, it's like, I'm going to do a
video where it's just me and an acoustic guitar, because
that's how you prove your serious artist. We can see
(20:03):
that pattern, you know, that's traditionally how artists they start
out doing dancy pop stuff as teens, and then they
prove their adults by let's say, dressing in flannel and
growing a beard and putting out an album literally called
Man of the Woods. But like that's traditionally the trajectory, Yeah,
like marking your evolution as an artist. And it says
(20:26):
so much about her confidence but also about her extremely
widescreen sense of pop history that she knew all the
tricks of how this has been done in the past,
and she was going to do it the opposite way
that she had this blockbuster formula with you know that
was like very much focused around her acoustic guitar, and
(20:47):
that she was going to cross over to dance pop
from the more adult pop style. That's not how you
do it. It seemed like absolute commercial self sabotage at
the time. It's weird how this being so successful in
retrospect nineteen eighty nine, but also the song blank Space.
In retrospect it looks like a total non brainer move,
(21:09):
where at the time it seemed like the absolute craziest
thing she could do.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
When Jewel did it with three oh four, it was
not as much of a success, you know, and then
and that was it was the exactly good.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
It was the it was the exact move. I can't
a perfect example.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Also, that should have been huge.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
It had some songs I really liked on it. I
gave it.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Its always a band.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Yeah, you know, it just shows that people had tried
it and it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
I mean, again, great album I would love. I know
she's doing she's doing the Exilent Guy Bill tour, but
where's the anniversary tour for lis Fair self titled?
Speaker 4 (21:43):
But right that the two artists who come to mind,
who tried it, at least commercially, did not succeed, So,
you know, and.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
I also were so reviled for us.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
There was so much anger towards both those artists for
moving away from what was seen as much more kind
of authentic music, kind of more authentic ways of doing
their songwriting. I mean for Taylor to move into this
mode to make a pop album as her kind of
adult shifting album, but also to work with someone like
Max Martin, who's, you know, such a big name in
(22:14):
pop music, to kind of have that not only be
someone who's kind of almost like a teacher, like her
kind of own sort of makeshift college lessons of songwriting,
where she has talked about kind of working with him
on Red as a way to sort of learn a
new way of writing and to learn more about being
a pop songwriter, and then to bring him into that,
and to bring also someone who was not known for
(22:36):
working on pop music before, Jack Antonov, who had was
this was his first big album as a songwriter and
producer outside of Fun that he was working with someone
else and kind of behind the scenes. But I mean
to even have that balance of like someone like Jack
who's a big part of the album and hadn't done
this before, and.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
With Max Martin, he's got like some brilliant production yes
on nineteen eighty nine, and then he's got a there's
where it's like, oh, he's still learning how to do this.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
It's really interesting the way that Taylor was allowed to
sort of quiet quit country.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
It's really interesting. It's sort of uh.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
I actually do remember asking her about that during I
guess read and and she was just sort of like
like more or less she was like, I'll be fun
like like she just was like she had absolutely no
concern about it. What you know as to whether you know,
country fans will be mad about it at her.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Or or anything. She was like, she's like not worried
about it. And she was totally right. It never really
became a thing. Yeah, Nashville never got really mad at her.
Nothing ever really happened.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
It just sort of it's almost like she she she
hypnotized people into forgetting that the country thing had ever
been a thing, and it's just slowly it's like.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Oh wait, weren't you a country or just some points
he's like, don't worry about it, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
It was like, yeah, I think it was a mixture
of two. Like I mean, even with like love Story,
she was already becoming such like a pop artist, yeah,
and like it was a very gradual yeah, and like
I mean, yeah, she had her first number one hit
with we Are Never Getting Back Together and that kind
of being it. But I also do think blank Space
is such a country song and it's writing like that's
the hook is like very Miranda Lambert, and it feels
(24:08):
very like revenge country vibe to it, and I think,
I mean, I feel that way about a lot of
nineteen eighty nine, where I feel like a lot of
the lyrics, not every song, but I feel like songs
like style and blank Space and like all you had
to do is stay is like they feel very country
lyrically in terms of that, because she's always been so
(24:28):
good at bridging what makes country songs so catchy and
so fun and so sing alongable with a really excellent
earwormy hook. Because I remember my the first time I
heard the song was because I went to a I
was writing about the videos. Is one of my very
first like Rolling Stone articles was to write about the videos.
I had to go to like a secret room to
hear about the app that they were doing, the interactive
(24:50):
app that they were getting launched with blank Space so
so twenty fourteen, and that there was an interactive app
that they that they were doing with it, and I
remember just being so like genuinely blown away by how
different it was, I mean, just in terms of the
combination of the visuals and what she was singing, because
I think that now she sort of she's done this
sort of playfulness repeatedly in her music in her videos,
(25:11):
but I mean, just to kind of fully see that
on such a level from her from blank Space, like
shake it Off almost got there, but like it was
a little like that video was a little like disjointed
in how it kind of tried to get there, and
Blank Space her kind of going all the way through,
like the running mascara and like the bloodcake and like
all this stuff combined with those lyrics like you know,
I'm a nightmare dressed as a day dream and the
(25:33):
long list of X lovers and all that stuff. Like,
I mean, just the fact that it's so completely over
the top was such a major moment.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
I love that, Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
She does it in Aerostour, Yeah, her and the dancers
with their golf clubs like beating up the car. I
was wow, Like it's very much still celebrating that spirit.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
And there was a resurgence over the summer with the
song too. I mean, all the I mean every song
that was an Aerostor had like a chart moment. But
of course, like this crack top fifty where people we
were getting back into blank space again.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
It's kind of funny. Also, it's a song where every
time I hear it anyway, I'm shocked at how short
it is. Yeah, because there's so many brilliant details packed
into it, and it's like wow, like classic Max Martin
trick for sure, but like getting them in so so
many of those in such a short period of time.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, I mean a lot has changed in how people
even are listening to her music. We have the re
records out now, and we have you know, even more
albums and the tour and all that. I feel like
we could talk about this for much longer we have before.
But I appreciate, appreciate you Brian for coming by and
chatting today.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Thank you so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five
hundred Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by
Rolling Stone and iHeartMedia. Written and hosted by me, Rob
Sheffield and Britney Spanos and with our genius guest today,
mister Brian HyET. Executive produced by Jason alex Dale and
Christian Horde and produced by Jesse Cannon with music supervision
(27:05):
by Eric Seiler. Thanks
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