【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Taylor Swift 2019年专辑《Lover》（恋人）
搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）
翻译：Lynn Liu / Kerra Zhao / Ryan-Chopin
校对：Ryan-Chopin
推送：Lynn Liu
On her seventh album, Taylor Swift is a little wiser and a lot more in love. Though uneven, Lover is a bright, fun album with great emotional honesty.
在Taylor的第七张专辑中，她变得更加睿智，也更加沉浸于甜美的爱情。虽然《Lover》不够平稳，但是这也算是一张积极又不失趣味的专辑，且蕴含着动人的坦诚。
The theme of Taylor Swift’s Lover is right there in the title. These 18 songs are odes to the things she loves most and knows best: her boyfriend and her mom, the West Village and the West End, and, always and forever on a Taylor Swift album, being in love. It’s an exuberant celebration of the challenges of maintaining a relationship through seasons and across continents, of telling the truth and saying sorry. Swift has always mined her personal life for opaque fables of love and retribution; she memorializes a romance’s fleeting details, wraps them in bows, and ferries them to an audience eager to receive her gifts. She writes about a life that’s strengthened, not broken, by heartbreak. Lover is the suggestion that the right person, the right song, might lift heartbreak from your life, too. The concept is, as she claims early on, both “overdramatic and true.”
Taylor Swift新专《Lover》的主题在专辑名中就已显而易见。这18首歌是对她最喜欢、最熟悉之事的颂歌:她的男友和她的妈妈，曼哈顿西村和伦敦西区，以及Taylor Swift专辑中永远都必不可缺的元素——恋爱进行时。这是一个充满活力的庆典，它庆祝着保持一段长久跨国恋所面临的挑战，也庆祝着说出真相、说出抱歉所面临的挑战。Swift总是在她的个人生活中挖掘爱情和报复的不透明寓言;她追忆一段爱情中转瞬即逝的细节，用蝴蝶结把它们包起来，然后把它们送给渴望收到礼物的观众。她所描写的生活，是一种因心碎而变得更加坚强的生活，而不是一种心碎让你悲痛欲绝的生活。《Lover》正是这样一种暗示：对的人，对的歌，也许能让你的生活不再悲伤。正如她早些时候所宣称的那样，这个概念“既夸张又真实”。
Lover nods to 2017’s reputation, but in spirit, it’s the sequel to the synth-pop glitter of 1989. Produced mostly with ubiquitous pop whisperer Jack Antonoff, it’s full of low-lying synthesizer pulses and reverbed beats that can feel more like scaffolding than full songs. Sometimes it attempts to honor Swift’s entire artistic journey at once: The waltzing “Lover,” full of fiddle and fairytale weddings, harks back to the Old Taylor; “I Think He Knows” is a thumping electro-pop shout-out to Nashville’s Music Row. She uses the word “shade” twice, up from once on reputation. She’s 29, but she still writes metaphors about prom dresses and homecoming queens. It’s bright and fun and occasionally cloying.
《Lover》是在回应2017年发行的《Reputation》，但从本质上讲，它是合成流行乐专辑《1989》的续集。它主要由金牌流行音乐制作人Jack Antonoff制作，它充满了低沉的合成器脉冲和混响节拍，这张专辑感觉更像是个脚手架，而不是完整的歌曲。有时它急切地试图去纪念Swift的整个艺术道路:华尔兹节奏的“Lover”，充满小提琴声，满是童话般婚礼的氛围，让人想起“Old Taylor（曾经的Taylor）”;“I Think He Knows”是一首节奏感极强的电子流行乐，这首歌能与纳什维尔音乐街上的音乐相媲美。她两次使用“shade”这个词，第一次是在《Reputation》中使用。她今年29岁了，但她仍然用隐喻来描述出舞会礼服和返校舞会女王。专辑鲜明有趣，却偶尔也令人生厌。
Lover’s emotional peaks and valleys are higher and deeper than reputation, where romance played out under a long shadow of doubt. Opener “I Forgot That You Existed” is a hopscotch rhythm set to a rhyme like you’d leave in your nemesis’ yearbook if you were really being honest—which is to say, it doesn’t sound like she forgot for one second. It comes off as throat-clearing, but it opens a stretch of drama-free delights, like the magnetic pink glow of “Cruel Summer” (“I don’t want to keep secrets just to keep you!”) and the crystal-ball clarity of “The Archer,” with its elegant, Chromatics-esque synthesizer build and self-aware regret: “I cut off my nose just to spite my face/And I hate my reflection for years and years.” The exception is undercooked gender-equality anthem “The Man,” a song that hilariously, unironically points to Leonardo DiCaprio’s playboy image as the height of masculine privilege, and proves that other people shouldn’t write Kesha songs.
《Lover》蕴含情感高峰和低谷，它比《Reputation》更高、更深沉，爱情在长期的怀疑阴影下上演。开场曲“I Forgot That You Existed”中跳房子游戏的节奏贯穿始终，好比如果你够诚实的话，你就会在你的死对头的纪念册里留下印记——也就是说，听起来她一点也没有忘记。这首歌很快就结束了，就像清嗓子一样，但它呈现了一连串丝毫不戏精的愉悦感受，例如引人注目且充满粉色光芒般的“Cruel Summer”(“I don’t want to keep secrets just to keep you!（我不想为了留住你而保守秘密！）”)，还有水晶球般透明的“The Archer”,它自带优雅,充满色彩明确的合成器结构和自我意识的遗憾，“I cut off my nose just to spite my face/And I hate my reflection for years and years.（搬起石头来砸自己的脚，我痛恨着过去我一举一动的倒影，年复一年）”。“The Man” 是专辑中唯一的例外，它略欠火候，是一首关于性别平等的颂歌，这首歌幽默而不带讽刺地指出，Leonardo DiCaprio的花花公子形象是男性特权的巅峰，也证明了其他人若想模仿Kesha写歌，也不能感同身受。
Is it the prickly cotton-candy production or the lyrical detail or the vocal echo or just the event album-ness of it all that keeps Lover in the foreground, song after song? With the possible exception of the steel drums on music-box oddball “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” the album never claims any new ground; some of its best moments are unavoidably familiar. Rihanna or Robyn might intend their new music to sound entirely fresh; Swift, our most conventional pop star, builds atop what has worked already. And with Antonoff behind so much of the sound of pop music in the latter half of the decade, the bold, ’80s-inspired style isn’t inherently more interesting or varied than any other. “I Think He Knows” sounds like Carly Rae Jepsen; “The Archer” sounds like Lorde’s “Supercut”; “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince,” actually a Joel Little joint, sounds like Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die.
是黏腻的棉花糖般的制作风格，是细腻的抒情，是歌声的回响，抑或仅仅是发专辑这件事——是否是这些让《Lover》里的歌曲一首接一首地成为万众瞩目的焦点？可能除了“It’s nice to have a friend ”采用了大量音乐盒中钢鼓和音乐球的元素，这张专辑并没有开辟其他新的领域；对于《Lover》里一些最动人的时刻，听众们会感到熟悉，这是不可避免的。像Rihanna或Robyn，她们可能希望自己的新歌能给人独一无二的新鲜感；而Swift，我们最老派的流行巨星，她已经获得了绝对意义上的成功。参与《Lover》多首歌曲制作的美国男歌手、乐手Antonoff，在过去的五年间为流行音乐做出了巨大的贡献，这种大胆而受80年代音乐启发的风格本身并不比其他风格更有趣或更多样化。比如“I Think He Knows”听起来像是Carly Rae Jepsen的歌；“The Archer”又有Lorde的歌曲“Supercut”的影子；“Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince”事实上是Taylor与Joel Little共同创作的，听起来有些像Lana Del Ray的“Born to Die”。
Swift and her collaborators try some real doozies: Pop-punk marriage proposal “Paper Rings” has a key change borrowed from the Shangri-Las and more than a little acoustic guitar in the mix. It’s cute, and then exhausting. The perky, England-themed “London Boy” begins sweetly—“I saw the dimples first and then I heard the accent”—but devolves into a parade of rugby and high tea and “I fancy you”s, a love song as predictable as one of Mary-Kate and Ashley’s direct-to-video European adventures. She samples Idris Elba joking about taking James Corden on a scooter ride, apropos of nothing except that he says “London.” I can only imagine what it sounds like to a Brit.
Swift和她的合作者们也做出了一些绝妙的尝试：比如流行朋克求婚曲“Paper Rings”采样了the Shangri-Las乐队音乐的一个音调转变，并加入了一些原声吉他音，可爱之余让人听得精疲力竭。另一首以英国为主题的活泼曲目“London Boy”以一句甜蜜的——“I saw the dimples first and then I heard the accent（他的酒窝在眼前绽放，独特的腔调在耳边响起）”为主歌开头，接着视线一转，Taylor又唱到橄榄球比赛和下午茶的游行，以及“I fancy you（我的爱为你荡漾）”，这首情歌就像Mary-Kate和Ashley的音像版欧洲冒险一样，是一首可以顺着歌词往下猜想的情歌。她采样了Idris Elba的歌，开着玩笑说要带James Corden去骑摩托车，恰好还说着在“伦敦”。我能想象英国人会对此作何感想。
“London Boy” is relentlessly upbeat, but the next mood swing will knock you sideways: It’s “Soon You’ll Get Better,” a heartrending ballad about Swift’s mother’s ongoing cancer battle, with background harmonies by the Dixie Chicks. Three minutes later, her tender testimony of new faith is outshined by the terrific “False God,” a moody sophistipop meditation on transatlantic romance where worship (“Religion’s in your lips… the altar is my hips”) sounds more like a metaphor for…. oral sex? On a Taylor Swift album? Am I losing my mind? Then “You Need to Calm Down” crashes in to remind us that she also considers making nice with Katy Perry to be a form of activism.
“London Boy”是一首极其乐观的歌曲，但转换到下一首的情绪也会间接触动你的内心：这是一首关于Swift母亲正在与癌症作斗争的伤感民谣“Soon you 'll Get Better”，背景音乐是Dixie Chicks的和声。三分钟后，她对新信仰的柔情见证又被出色的“False God”所散发的光芒盖过，这是对这段跨越大西洋的浪漫两性关系的一种情绪化的诡辩式冥想，而在这首歌中(“Religion’s in your lips… the alter is my hips/信仰就在你的唇间，而我的臀部就是为你做的改变”)，所谓的崇拜听起来更像一种隐喻...是口交吗?还出现在了Taylor Swift的专辑里?我没疯吧?下一首歌“You Need to Calm Down”突然出现，提醒了我们，她也认为与Katy Perry搞好关系会是一种行动主义的作为。
Because Swift is Better when she’s learning than when she’s trying to teach us a lesson, Lover’s garish lead singles contribute to the strain. I’ve thought about “ME!” every day for four months; it still sounds like a musical number taken out of context, just unearned celebratory fanfare without plot or character development, so dead-eyed it’s spooky. But she’s Better when she gives herself real space to think, as on “Cornelia Street,” a lovely, understated tribute to memory and nostalgia with the power to make one rarefied block of Manhattan feel universal.
因为Swift在学习上要比在试图给我们上一课这方面做得更好，所以《Lover》的花哨首单更会加重这种压力。这四个月以来我每天都想着“ME!”，它听起来仍然像是一首没有前后文的充数曲，没有情节又没角色发展，一次不相称的庆典式吹擂，歌曲无神也诡异。但若是她给自己一个真正的思考空间时，她的状态会更好，就像在“Cornelia Street”中的那样，这是对过往记忆和怀旧的一种可爱而低调的致敬，一种能让曼哈顿的一个不起眼的街区变火的力量。
Like Red or Speak Now, Lover is a sprawling scrapbook of invisible personal bookmarks, an escapist fantasy about a real-life celebrity boyfriend, a shrewd self-mythology disguised as a benevolent offering. It’s probably five bad songs away from being Better than 1989. It’s also a little wiser and more emotionally honest. “I once believed love would be black and white… I once believed love would be burning red/But it’s golden,” she sings on dreamy pastel closer “Daylight,” replacing the fiery passion of Red with a gentler, more mature understanding of true love as a good idea you don’t want to stop having. Heartbreak can strengthen you; love sustains you. If only all of Lover had the same heart.
《Lover》就像《Red》或《Speak Now》一样，是一本庞大的剪贴簿，里面隐藏着私人情愫，这是关于与现实生活中的名人男友逃避现实的幻想，是一个伪装成倾情献礼的精明自我神话。但有五首烂歌让它与《1989》拉开了档次。但这专也编排更明智，内容更诚实。“I once believed love would be black and white… I once believed love would be burning red/But it’s golden,（我曾一度相信爱非黑即白...我也曾相信爱正如那炽热的红色/但实际上，爱闪着金光）”，她在梦幻的柔情结尾曲目“Daylight”中这样唱道，也是在她更深刻地明白了真爱就是一件你不想失去的物品后，她成熟而娴静地褪去了《Red》里对爱情那炽烈的激情。心碎能促使你坚强，而真爱能给予你长久的陪伴与支持。但愿天下有情人（《Lover》）都有一颗同样的真心。
