jack antonoff – Fancy Boys Club

Analog podcasting: Matt answers Brandon’s questions about the Grammys

The Grammys are upon us! The third most popular music awards show every year, behind only the I Heart Radio Music Awards and every single person revealing their Spotify Wrapped and pretending that their taste in music is kooky and eccentric and that listening to Taylor Swift for the time equivalent of 33 days over the course of a calendar year is normal.

With that in mind, we have enlisted our resident pop culture gadfly Matt Drufke to come and answer questions for people who don’t pay attention to music that gets selected for these awards, or me, who is too old to care and still carries a chip on his shoulder for Johnny Cash not winning music video of the year in 2003 at the MTV Music Awards.

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A Woman In-Between Eras: Examining The Tortured Poets Department

To open The Tortured Poets Department, her twelfth album (and fourth in five years), Taylor Swift gives us “Fortnight”. Swift and longtime producer Jack Antonoff give us a song that sonically feels in place with the catalog of Lana Del Rey (unsurprising, considering Antonoff also produces some of her music) as the thirty-four year old singer gives us the story of a woman dealing with a relationship gone way too wrong and delving into alcohol and thoughts of violence to her man’s new wife. “I loved you, it’s ruining my life,” Swift sings in a track that feels like something her and Antonoff could do in their sleep. It’s a good track, and Swiftboats (my term for Swift fans, many of whom have long since forgotten about John Kerry) will love it because it’s the kind of song they’ve heard and loved and sung along to before. It’s a very solid Taylor Swift song.

And that’s why it’s a little underwhelming.

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