Taylor Swift: Rewriting (and re-recording) her narrative

By Iris Archer
Tweet

Acclaimed musician and songwriter Taylor Swift announced on June 18, 2021, that she would re-record her fourth studio album Red, including 10 never-released songs in addition to the 20 original tracks. She releases the album Friday, Nov. 12.

Swift, 31, is one of the most influential female artists of the twenty-first century. She continues to reinvent herself and her music to this day.

On a personal note, Taylor Swift is my favorite musical artist, and Red is an album that I loved as a kid. I sang my heart out to “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” at the age of 12, as if I’d been hurt in a relationship myself. I also remember dying of laughter to “I Knew You Were Trouble” goat remixes with my mom in our living room.

And a few years ago, my mom and I actually performed “Red” together at my guitar recital. That was a real full-circle moment. Obviously, there’s a lot of sentiment attached to this album for me, so I’m super excited for Red (Taylor’s Version).

A lot of excitement surrounds Red (Taylor’s Version) for “Swifties” and the general public alike. First, it includes 10 never-released songs that Swift wrote during the time of the original release of Red. One of these songs, “Nothing New”, features breakout indie artist Phoebe Bridgers, and another, “Run”, features original Red contributor and singer-songwriter, Ed Sheeran.

Second, one of the most iconic and heartbreaking songs from the original album (“All Too Well”) gets transformed into a 10 minute (yes, you heard me right) extended version on Red (Taylor’s Version). And if that wasn’t enough, a short film starring Stranger Thing’s Sadie Sink and Teen Wolf’s Dylan O’Brien accompanies the 10-minute masterpiece. The actors share the same age difference as Swift and actor Jake Gyllenhaal, about whom the song is written.

Third, the album is known for its fall aesthetic, so its release in the midst of the season must be no coincidence.

This isn’t Swift’s first dabble in re-recording her albums. On Feb. 11, Swift announced she would re-record her second studio album, releasing it as Fearless (Taylor’s Version). This being one of her most iconic albums, the project was well received by both fans and musicians worldwide. The new record included the 20 originals as well as six never-released songs deemed “from the vault”. Fans were delighted by Swift’s mature vocals as well as her ability to bring old feelings and emotions to life; Swift wrote the original Fearless album at 18. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) was released on April 9.

After the re-release of Fearless, fans wondered which of Swift’s albums she re-recorded next. After weeks of fan theories and speculation, Taylor announced the release of Red (Taylor’s Version) on June 18, 2021. Red (Taylor’s Version) had an initial release date of Nov. 19, but the anticipation was so extreme that Swift moved the release up a week to this Friday.

Before discussing how important this re-recording is, we first must deluge in a Taylor Swift career retrospective; what brought her to re-record her previous work?

Taylor Swift began her career as a country singer, attracting listeners with a heart of gold and words that resonated with all ages. Her early music touched on motifs such as first love, first heartbreak, and the importance of family. Songs like “Teardrops on My Guitar” and “Our Song” catapulted her into the spotlight at 16. Following the success of her eponymous debut album, Swift released Fearless, her first true country-pop album, in 2008. It included some of her biggest hits to date, like “Love Story”, “White Horse”, and “You Belong with Me”.

Following the success of Fearless, Taylor shocked the world with Speak Now in 2010, an album furthering her pop leanings, with heartfelt tracks like “Mine”, “Dear John”, and “Enchanted”.

Whereas Speak Now was still reminiscent of her earlier work, enter Red. Swift fully embraced pop-star status on this totally innovative album featuring some of Swift’s most popular songs, including the title track, “Red”, and radio hits like “22”, “I Knew You Were Trouble”, and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”. The album also included beautiful melodies (listen to “All Too Well”) with lyrics to match.

In 2014 Swift released 1989, which may be Swift’s best album lyrically, melodically, and conceptually (and it’s my personal favorite). 1989 continued Taylor’s work rewriting the rules of pop, with smash hits like “Welcome to New York”, “Blank Space”, and “Shake it Off”, among several others.

After the extremely successful release of 1989 and its equally successful stadium tour, the media began alleging “snake” behavior by Swift following a leaked audio clip of her apparently giving consent to Kanye West to use her name in his song, “Famous”. The two have had a rocky relationship since West’s infamous “I’mma let you finish, but…” in the middle of Taylor’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Music Awards. But in 2016, when “Famous” was released, Taylor denied ever approving of having her name in Kanye’s lyrics. Six months after the release, West’s wife Kim Kardashian tweeted out a video, later revealed to be edited, of Taylor on a phone call with the couple approving of Kanye’s vulgar lyrics about her in his song.

After a year of hiding from the media, Swift turned the harmful words into the smash hit reputation, with visuals and lyrics referencing snakes and betrayal. She used the negativity that once brought her down to build herself up again.

This edgy era received mixed reviews from the media as well, and even from loyal “Swifties”— her fanbase—which motivated Taylor to write a better and more cohesive record that she could be proud of, and soon she revealed Lover to the world. As the title implies, Lover explores themes of love, commitment and loyalty and honors Swift’s boyfriend of over 3 years at the time of the album’s release, actor, Joe Alwyn.

Less than a year after the release of Lover, the COVID-19 pandemic struck Taylor Swift with inspiration. In mid-July, Swift shocked the world by surprise-releasing her eighth studio album, folklore, a hauntingly beautiful work of fictional stories about heartbreak, loss and self-reflection. Swift then dropped evermore, a self-proclaimed sister record to folklore, less than six months later, expanding on the themes from the previous album. These albums were a shift of pace for Swift and caused her to regain some of the Swifties who have not listened to her music since her release of reputation, as well as garner a new fanbase comprising indie/alternative listeners. Swift gained respect from the music industry for not only releasing folklore and evermore in such a close timeframe and during a global pandemic, but also for completely shifting genres once again while still keeping her same fanbase despite doing so. folklore was so successful that it won Album of the Year at the 2020 Grammys.

You might be wondering: what’s the big deal with these rerecordings? Many might believe it is a quick cash-grab, but the choice to re-record means so much more than profit; it symbolizes ownership and taking back what is rightfully yours. In 2019, Republic Records sold her master tapes to Scooter Braun, a popular music producer, without her consent. Taylor does not legally own any of her music or have any licensing rights despite writing and singing practically everything that she has ever released.

Thus, re-recording her music is a way for Swift to regain control over what is rightfully hers. This sends a message not only to fans but to everyone in the music industry to fight for what is right and claim what is yours. This message comes across clearly in “Change (Taylor’s Version)”, from Fearless (Taylor’s Version), which is an anthem to standing up against those who bring you down.

“Because these things will change / Can you feel it now? / These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down / It's a revolution, the time will come / For us to finally win”.

It is also a way for Taylor to prove her strength and her willingness to stand up against adversity. I am beyond excited for this record, first for the nostalgia and second for the amazing symbolism and deeper meaning behind Swift’s time-consuming and monumental career choice.

So grab your favorite scarf and a box of tissues and get ready to settle down for the almost two-and-a-half-hour masterpiece that is Red (Taylor’s Version) on this Friday, Nov. 12. Can you feel my excitement?

And– even if you’re not a “Swiftie”, I hope you have a musician or a band that makes you smile and brings you undeniable joy and comfort. Listen to that artist today. Take a walk and breathe in the fall air, which is feeling more like a pre-winter chill.

Iris

(Iris Archer is a feature contributor for The Intrepid and is also a Taylor Swift superfan.)

The genius of MF DOOM: An ode to the king of underground hip-hop

Part of The Intrepid’s “The Genius Of…” series.

By Akim Hudson
Tweet

“Your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper” is the utmost praise an emcee can earn in their career. MF DOOM, or DOOM for short, garnered this acclaim before his untimely passing last year. Yet, I bet many of you have no idea who DOOM was. That was part of his genius.

Just remember, it’s all caps when you spell the man’s name.

1. The Mask

The very first feature of DOOM you noticed was his mask. I thought at first, why the hell is he wearing a mask? According to DOOM, he rarely revealed his face to the public. He wanted his audiences to revere his emceeing abilities over any of his other extraneous features.

You can see that DOOM wasn’t your prototypical celebrity or entertainer. His luminescent, silver Doctor Doom mask enthralled any eyes that glanced upon it, and, ultimately, the mask further enhanced DOOM’s mystique.

2. Covertness

MF DOOM is arguably the most inconspicuous hip-hop legend ever. No sources could detect or verify any of DOOM’s personal information besides him and maybe his wife and his closest friends. For the longest time, the general public didn’t even know his birthday.

And peep this—you could attend an MF DOOM show, and not have even seen DOOM. Yes! DOOM had doubles he used to substitute for himself!

Who else does absurd things like that?

MF DOOM also had many self-proclaimed monikers that contributed to the shield around his actual identity. Each of his aliases had distinct personalities and styles of rapping, along with their own albums and projects. MF DOOM also featured his own personas in songs to make an even greater distinction between his true self and his aliases.

3. Eccentricity

DOOM’s hip-hop career, and everything that surrounded it, was rather abstract. He spelled his name using all capital letters, even though DOOM doesn’t stand for a damn thing. No one else in hip-hop had DOOM’s distinct cadence, flow, lyricism and voice.

His rhyme scheme, specifically, was quite eccentric because of his elite ability to deceive the listener. DOOM would take words and phrases from everyday prose and leave them hanging on a cliff or replace the word we expect with an unexpected word or phrase.

Take his song ‘Great Day’, off his classic album Madvillainy, featuring Madlib. MF DOOM had a classic example of this when he rapped:

Last wish/I wish I had two more wishes/And I wish they fix the door to the matrix’s mad fridges/spit so many verses my sometimes my jaw twitches/one thing this party could use is more…booze.

We all know what word rhymes with ‘twitches’ that would be more ideal for a sentence pertaining to a party. We’ll leave it at that.

So you may never have seen or heard of MF DOOM. In some ways, it seemed like he wanted it that way. The inconspicuous emcee, the metal-faced villain, became a legend of the hip-hop zeitgeist. In my opinion, there will never be another DOOM.

(Akim Hudson is a feature contributor for The Intrepid.)

COLUMN: Uveino says goodbye to Intrepid, SBU

By Jeff Uveino

The weather matched the collective mood of the campus community.

As clouds leaked rain across the Southern Tier of Western New York, St. Bonaventure University sat in disbelief over the previous day’s decision.

It was a Monday, and the calendar read March 14, 2016. My first visit to SBU.

The day before, an NCAA selection committee decided to leave the Bona men’s basketball team out of its championship tournament field. Despite a 22-8 record and a share of the Atlantic 10 regular-season title, the committee excluded the Bonnies from March Madness.

“The snub,” as Bona fans now commonly refer to the incident.

To my parents and I, however, the disservice done to this private, Franciscan university of about 2,000 undergraduates located 75 miles south of Buffalo didn’t matter much.

We were there to learn about the university’s journalism school. Not its basketball sob story.

Each person we met mentioned the snub. It was as if a hammer had been dropped on the head of the school’s soul. The pain radiated from each passer-by, a campus community dumbfounded over the exclusion of its beloved Bonnies.

It’s not that we didn’t care. We just didn’t understand.

Five years later, I spent March 14 sitting court-side at University of Dayton Arena.

There, the Bonnies played VCU for the 2021 A-10 men’s basketball championship and the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

The six-hour drive to Dayton to watch the game? A small ask for myself and the dozens of Bona students that will become lifelong friends.

After all, that dreary post-snub visit to campus had all but convinced me to attend the university’s Jandoli School of Communication. With that decision came an abundance of professional opportunities, including covering that A-10 final for student media.

The Bonnies beat VCU handily.

On the outside, objectivity fueled my stoic demeanor from the media section. My heart, however, filled with a sense of pride that could only be matched by the hundreds of Bonnies fans that scrambled toward the court to join the celebration.

Five years prior, those moments would have meant nothing. Now, the image of the confetti-laden, on-court celebration will stay with me forever.

That’s the impact that St. Bonaventure University has on its family members.

It’s hard to find the words to describe the school’s dynamic to those who haven’t attended. SBU alumni refer to the community as a family, while outsiders often prefer the term “cult.”

I still remember the guide that led my parents and I through that rainy, downtrodden tour over five years ago. He and I shared a drink over the matter a few years later.

I could write dozens of cliches to convey my love for SBU, but have been taught better than to do so.

All I can say is that the best four years of my life have been spent in the Enchanted Mountains. Thank you to every single person who has made that statement possible.

COLUMN: Know Your Power. Vote.

photo: Getty Images

By Akim Hudson

Election Day is today. For first time voters, anxiety and bewilderment is at its optimum. 

To provide some advice so one doesn’t feel as if they have a vacuous mind, I advise one to make their own decision on Election Day. 

Regardless of what the news and media outlet’s opinion is, regardless of what your parent(s) and peers may believe, your vote is of your own volition. 

If you agree with Trump’s policies, and believe that he may be beneficial to the well-being of the nation, vote for him. 

If you advocate what Biden stands for and believes that he has something beneficial to offer that Trump does not, vote for him. 

Do not allow external factors attribute to the bedeviling politics could cause. 

Do not fall victim to the pathology of United States politics.

 For those who do not plan on voting for whatever their reasons are, you are not wrong to not partake, but you are potentially committing a disservice to yourself. Ask yourself if you are satisfied with how your country is being governed, and if one says any other answer than “yes,” they must vote. 

Peace. Vote. 

NFL WEEK 2 COLUMN: Allen leads Bills, Chargers can’t finish, league fines coaches for mask violations

photo: Eric Espada/Getty Images

By Nic Gelyon

Josh Allen now has two plays that Bills fans may never forget.

T-shirt worthy plays, if you will.

First, the game: Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who completed 65% of his passes only three times in 2019, now has a 70.37 completion percentage through two games in 2020.

Allen threw for 417 yards and four touchdowns in Buffalo’s 31-28 win over the Miami Dolphins on Sunday, a game in which the Bills were missing Tremaine Edmunds and Matt Milano: two of their key defensive players.

Now, the play.

It was not an incredibly important time in the game. The Bills were up 17-7 with a minute and two seconds left in the first half.

Facing a third down from their own 33-yard line, Allen dropped back to throw and proceeded to escape from the Miami defensive front to his left.

Anyone who has ever seen Josh Allen run knows the Dolphins were now in trouble. Allen still looked to pass, though, and pump-faked before realizing he was out of options.

Linebacker Kyle Van Noy barreled ahead at Allen, and after colliding head-on, they were both headed for the ground. Allen’s hands met Van Noy’s chest while Van Noy’s arms surrounded his shoulders. A perfect tackle in the making.

Allen’s down… But he’s not.

Van Noy loses his grip on Allen, who is still standing but almost on the ground himself. The perfect combination of flash and might, Allen proceeds to run right through Emmanuel Ogbah, and into the arms of several other Dolphins defenders.

We don’t need to talk about the fact that Allen could have destroyed his throwing arm on this play, or that he almost fumbled the ball toward the end.

Allen, if he continues to be a combination of physical dominance and passion for his team, showed Sunday afternoon that he may just be unstoppable. And he never showed it more than with one minute to play in the half, deep in his own zone, up by ten against a mediocre Dolphins team.

That speaks volumes.

TO THE WEST, the Los Angeles Chargers – for the umpteenth year in a row – continue to suffer massive collapses at the end of games.

They did it again on Sunday. The Chargers, up 17-0 against the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, let KC score 17 unanswered points before allowing a last-minute Harrison Butker field goal to win it for the Chiefs in overtime.

This was always an issue that fell on the lap of former Chargers quarterback Phillip Rivers, or Mike McCoy, or Marty Schottenheimer. Any one of the Chargers’ old guard.

But they aren’t in Los Angeles – or San Diego – anymore.

So, who is to blame for the Chargers’ misfortune? I personally tend to believe that teams have a personality. The Patriots are smarter than you. The Seahawks are tougher than you. The Rams are flashier than you.

The Chargers cannot finish a close game.

I RETWEETED ESPN’s Adam Schefter Sunday night, after he jokingly said that Seattle and New England were winning awards for ‘best drama’.

He’s not lying though.

“Sunday Night Football’ gets it right, it seems, every single weekend. And I understand that it’s the NFL who decides which primetime games go to which network, and that they seem to give the best games to NBC.

But the NFL puts those games on Sunday night because of the effort NBC puts in to making their broadcast better than everyone else’s.

By the way, Sunday Night Football has won 10 “Outstanding Live Sports Series” Emmys over the past 12 years. And, per Deadline, they beat the Emmys in the ratings by about 7 million viewers Sunday night.

SUNDAY afternoon, the NFL, guns a-blazing, up and fined Kyle Shanahan, Vic Fangio, and Pete Carroll for not wearing masks during their respective games.

All three wore neck gaiters, well, around their neck. All while continuing to prowl the sidelines.

This raises a few questions: one, should the NFL ban the neck gaiter? Because it’s obviously become more of a scarf than a protection device for NFL coaches.

Two: what’s the issue with the neck gaiter and the headset? Can you not communicate through a gaiter for some reason? I ask because I find I can hear and talk just fine through a gaiter. And you know, I can do the same through a regular mask, as well.

A point I saw all over NFL Twitter on Sunday night was, that shouldn’t the NFL have called to teams during these games to get coaches to put their masks on?

The answer, for me at least, is no. Because the NFL is allowing fans into stadiums, and lots of them. Because the NFL doesn’t – and never will – care about the optics of anything they do. Because the NFL is consistently late to the party on the issues that matter most, to their players and their fanbase.

Because no matter how long we had to watch Pete Carroll’s gum-chewing, mask-less face parading the sidelines Sunday night, nothing was going to take the wider, general focus off the football game. And that is what makes the NFL indestructible.

GELYON: Return of SBU athletics will be result of a team effort

photo courtesy of gobonnies.sbu.edu

By Nic Gelyon

ST. BONAVENTURE, NY — As I spoke to student-athletes, coaches and representatives from the St. Bonaventure University athletic department about their effort to curb COVID-19 and return to action, I found that I wasn’t finding what I expected.

I was looking for the moral dilemma. The internecine fight.

Everybody felt too optimistic when I was talking to them. It was all too happy.

But then I realized that St. Bonaventure has only had three positive coronavirus cases. The whole semester. All positive cases have since recovered.

There is nothing to criticize. There is nothing to pick apart. There are no battles between coaches and presidents – ahem, Big 10 conference. There is absolutely nothing to be mad at. Nothing to punch the wall about.

The fact of the matter is that it worked. The communication, the mindset, the plan. It all worked.

And so, I leave you with this: we cannot become complacent, as a school community and as a society. Vigilance is the only way that the plan will continue to work.

It will take an effort from all.

The NCAA has made November 25 the date when men’s and women’s college basketball will be allowed to begin. As of Friday, no schedule had been released for either season. Teams will not be allowed to play exhibitions or hold scrimmages prior to their first game.

SBU’s COVID-19 return to action plan is, again, currently in its third and final phase. The plan was last updated on Sept. 14. The athletic department has treated athletes as if they had been “sedentary” throughout quarantine, attempting to prevent nagging injuries by getting athletes in the best condition possible. SBU athletic director Tim Kenney, in a statement to The Intrepid, said that the strength and conditioning department plans to ramp up activity in two-week increments, culminating in, hopefully, the playing of games.

Speaking of which- it does not appear that fall sports are going to happen- not with any sort of normalcy anyway. As Oduro told me, teams are more likely to play against teams in the same region, as to avoid the COVID-19 restrictions and risks involved in cross-regional travel. Oduro mentioned the possibility of weekend tournaments involving four or so teams, with all teams – as he emphasized several times – staying in similar environments.

It seems the athletic department is making fan engagement a priority during a time when not only are no sports happening, but college basketball is delayed. “We have stayed in constant communication with our fan base the past several months… to keep Bona Nation updated and entertained,” said Seth Johnson, assistant athletic director for marketing, licensing and fan engagement at SBU. He went on to say that the university is working on plans to keep the fans involved throughout the season, though there likely will be no fans in the stands.

VIDEO: Hogan and Uveino reflect on busy summer, look ahead to unique school year

By Jeff Uveino and Mike Hogan

ALLEGANY, NY — St. Bonaventure University began its fall semester this week, welcoming students to campus for the first time since March.

As they begin their senior year of undergraduate coursework in SBU’s Jandoli School of Communication, Jeff Uveino and Mike Hogan sat down to reflect on recent experiences as student journalists.

The duo discusses covering the Coronavirus pandemic, summer internships and fellowships across various media outlets, and how they envision student journalism will be different in the upcoming school year.

A link to Uveino and Hogan’s discussion can be found on The Intrepid’s Youtube channel here.

COLUMN: Equity isn’t a competition — A rebuttal to “All Lives Matter”

photo: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

By Akim Hudson

Imagine attempting to equate the struggles of a populous that has been oppressed for generations.

All because you feel left out.

All because you are concerned about preserving your privilege, that you are ultimately myopic of. All because you would rather feel like your plight is so agonizing, than understanding that the black struggle is much more than hashtags and slogans.

Yes, everyone’s life matters, obviously. But when you attempt to use “all lives matter” as an antithesis to “black lives matter,” what you are doing is contributing to this everlasting problem.

You are basically saying, “blacks have a rough life, but I do too,” or attempt to compare your petty struggles to systemic oppression. The black struggle isn’t a trend on social media. It isn’t a concept that one should tag along with due to feeling left out.

Until you dwell amongst your own home with an innate target on your back.

Until your people are constantly being slain and senselessly murdered. Until your community suffers from perpetual oppression.

I don’t want to hear this “all lives matter” malarkey that you spew out of your mouth. Stop being more upset about the results of injustice than the injustice itself.

Stop treating equity as if it is a competition.