The rush to exalt Swift is (I believe) a desperate attempt to infuse our allegedly apocalypse-bound country with a palatable conservative ideology in the form of a complacent, repressed feminine ideal. It’s working ’cause Swift writes good songs and America is terrified that its children have been scarred by Britney Spears’s psychotic vagina and Miley Cyrus’s obnoxious adolescence.

Rather than choosing an established/evolved talent (Beyoncé) or a revolutionary (Lady Gaga), the Grammys chose someone who, according to her lyrics, has spent her entire life waiting for phone calls and dreaming about horses and sunsets.

Though the debate over her performance skills is a well-beaten horse at this point, her unequivocal worthiness as a role model for girls has been accepted complacently; at least within my limited purview.

Listen up; if I ever get my life together enough to reproduce other life forms, they will not be joining Taylor Nation – they will be brave, creative, inventive, envelope-pushing little monsters who will find a pretty, skinny blonde girl in a white peasant shirt strolling through nature-themed screensaver-esque fantasylands singing about how “when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them” not only sappy, but also insulting to their inevitable brilliance.

— more Riese’s Pieces on Taylor Swift (BRB DYING.)

Swift’s songwriting is as thematically ambitious as a 15-year-old’s LiveJournal, which is to say, like a 15-year-old’s LiveJournal, it never strives for thematic weight or challenges ideas not already covered by Sweet Valley High or The Children’s Illustrated Bible.

If Swift’s work connects with teenage girls, it does so on the most simplistic, reductive territory of all: pining for boys, walking in the rain, kissing in the rain, crying drops of tears on her guitar, driving in trucks with cool boys, wanting boys she can’t have, more rain, more letter-writing, more stalking, more broken hearts, breathing problems as a side-effect of broken hearts, fairytale princess this, white horse that, more pining at the window, more psuedo-stalking, more incomplete hearts yearning for your touch, and one song that misinterprets Shakespeare and The Scarlet Letter so criminally I’m certain she’s never read either.

— Riese for Autostraddle…my new fav columnist? (btw I love T.Swizzle but this article is HILARIOUS)

Taylor Swift - Forever & Always (Piano Version)

Were you just kidding?
‘cause it seems to me, this thing is breaking down
We almost never speak
I don’t feel welcome anymore
…
Was I out of line?
Did I say something way too honest, made you run and hide
Like a scared little boy
I looked into your eyes
Thought I knew you for a minute, now I’m not so sure

So here’s everything coming down to nothing
Here’s to silence that cuts me to the core
Where is this going? Thought I knew for a minute, but I don’t anymore

Taylor Swift - Thug Story (Feat. T-Pain)

…just for kicks :P

anyone watch T-Sweezy live today?