【搬运】【译】Pitchfork评Taylor Swift 2010年专辑《Speak Now》

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：Alice Gu/Wendy Lee

审译：Lynn Liu

排版：Ryan-Chopin

After two hit records, Taylor Swift decided that her third would be longer and more personal, and she would write it entirely by herself, no co-writers. The songs would concern major events in her life, many of which occurred in the public eye. The lyrics would take the form of letters, direct addresses, one-on-one conversations where she always got the last word. She wanted to use her newfound wisdom to reflect on her parents, her dreams, and how it felt to stand on stage and notice a bigger crowd every night, shouting the words back at her. The working title was Enchanted, though she didn’t always feel that way. After 2008’s massively successful Fearless, Swift wrestled with her outsider persona and sudden celebrity, and the dissonance weighed heavily on her relationships. But she was learning fast.

前两张专辑大卖后，Taylor Swift决定把她的第三张专辑做成内容更多，也更富有个人特色的一张专辑。她决心要独立创作这张专辑，不需要任何人的协助。专辑中歌曲的内容将与她的个人经历息息相关，其中有不少故事是众所周知的。歌词的形式也有所变化，有的是书信；有的是对某人的直接宣告；有的是一段两人间的对话，最终以她的话结尾。她希望自己的新智慧能够帮助自己冷静地思考，回想父母亲人，审视自己的初心，并且学会自如地站在台上演唱，面对越来越多疯狂互动的粉丝。这张专辑最初被命名为《Enchanted（着迷）》，但这并不是她的真实感受。2008年发行的《Fearless》大获成功后，Swift与一直笼罩她的“不被看好”的阴影与突如其来的名气做了一番缠斗。她的感情生活也不太顺利。不过，她在迅速地成长。

Swift was 20 when the album, eventually titled Speak Now, came out and sold over a million copies in its first week—a record high in 2010. She had, and would continue to have, bigger hits, but these songs were breakthroughs in their own right. Co-produced by Nathan Chapman, the album is patiently sequenced; the average song length is just under five minutes, giving Swift enough time to pace her hooks—which had never been bigger—and her lyrics, which had never sounded more careful or wise. It’s an album focused on growing up, something she was learning would often be confusing, sad, and uncomfortable. It’s her most unabashedly transitional work: between adolescence and adulthood, innocence and understanding, country and pop. She was at a crossroads, and she was feeling lucky.

2010年，当这张最终被命名为《Speak Now（爱的告白）》发行并创下在第一个星期就卖出上百万张的纪录时，Swift刚满20岁。彼时，她已经取得了一些成绩，并将在未来再创辉煌。但这张专辑中的歌曲也以极高的质量造就了她创作中的大突破。这张专辑由Nathan Chapman参与制作，歌曲顺序经过仔细调整。每首歌的平均长度刚好接近5分钟，让Swift有充足的时间调整节奏，使她的音乐比以往更加摄人心魄；她的歌词也经过仔细打磨，听起来比以往更加充满哲理智慧。这张专辑的主题是成长——她渐渐发现这是一段充满迷茫，悲伤和不安的旅程。这是她最为大胆的过渡期作品——从少年到成年，从纯真到复杂，从乡村到流行。她正站在人生的十字路口，感到自己还是很幸运。

Swift had already become known for her intimate and intense relationship with fans. On these songs, she took a more authoritative role. There’s “Sparks Fly,” an early song that developed a big reputation after a live acoustic version circulated online. It appears here with all its fireworks and rain-soaked drama, a call to arms for people who’d been following since the beginning. There’s also “Never Grow Up,” a quiet acoustic ballad that draws the clearest line to her old material. Only now, Swift is wistful and sentimental, sounding far older than her years as she urges girls younger than her to savor every moment: “I just realized everything I have is someday gonna be gone,” she sings softly. It’s a heavy thought for a young songwriter, and the key word is just. As in, this is all happening right now, and if I don’t document it, it may disappear.

Swift与粉丝亲密热情的关系已经广为人知。在演唱这张专辑的歌曲时，她采取了更权威的一种做法。专辑中包括“Sparks Fly（火花飞溅）”——这是一首她的早期经典，演唱会原声版本在网上流传后大受追捧。这首歌在演唱会上再次响起时，舞台被绚丽的焰火照亮，并上演了一场暴雨中的约会戏，完全引爆了已然沉浸其中的观众们的激情。还有一首歌是“Never Grow Up（不要长大）”，这是一首安静自然的原声民谣，与她之前的作品最为相似。不过现在的她显得更加伤感而深沉，用与她年龄不符的长者口吻催促那些比她年轻的女孩儿珍惜生活中的每一个时刻：“我才意识到，我拥有的一切总有一天都要溜走。”（歌词来源于网易云）她柔声唱道。这句歌词对于一位年轻歌曲作者来说略显沉重，特别是“才”这个字，好像是在说：如果我不及时铭记当下的一切，它们就会化为乌有。

Here is where Taylor Swift found a lasting source of inspiration: the inevitable rise and fall of life and love, recast as emotional emergency. In the past, she had written sweet, airtight story-songs by turning the characters in her life into archetypes—nice guys, popular girls. Now she was dealing with a more complicated set of characters, so she adjusted her scale accordingly. “Dear John” and “The Story of Us” are likely about the same older musician. One is a crushing six-minute ballad about a famous guitarist emotionally manipulating a teenage songwriter. The other is a comic send-up of the night they ran into each other backstage at an awards show after the romance ended. The magic is how she wrings their hyperspecificity for universal truths—the older musician could be the sophomore jerk from the football team; the CMA Awards could be an after-school assembly. The message was clear: Swift was moving on, but she wasn’t leaving you behind.

在这张专辑的创作过程中，Taylor Swift发现了一个永不枯竭的灵感之源——生活和爱情不可避免的起起落落，一次又一次感情危机的洗礼。过去，她写的歌曲风格甜腻，故事线封闭，把她生活中的人物描写成了扁平的模型——体贴的男孩和受欢迎的女孩。现在，她创作了一系列更加复杂的角色，也相应对曲子中的音阶进行了调整。“Dear John（分手信）”和“The Story of Us（我们的故事）”的内容可能都与一位年长的音乐人有关。前者是一段令人心碎的歌谣，内容是一位已成名的吉他手玩弄了一位少年歌手的感情。后者描写了一幕滑稽的讽刺剧，展现了两人分手后，一次颁奖演出时在后台偶遇的场景。这首歌曲的魅力在于，它巧妙地将他们之间发生的这段特殊的故事推及到了普遍存在的现象——这位年长的音乐人也可以是一个足球队的大二渣男；美国乡村音乐协会奖的颁奖现场也可以是一次课后集会。歌曲传达的信息清晰无比：Swift已经翻开了新的一页，但她却没有完全忘记你。

And while it’s no great revelation that the mechanics of high school don’t end after graduation, Swift was not content to simply reapply old morals to new stories. So many of these songs rely on the tension of hindsight—a perspective she always longed for but never wielded quite so artfully. Hear how regretful and apologetic she sounds in “Back to December,” the increasing desperation in each chorus of “Last Kiss.” Even “Innocent,” her much-anticipated response to Kanye West stealing her mic at the 2009 VMAs, takes a nurturing approach as she guides her tormentor through his old ambitions and career highs, asking how close he is to the man he dreamed of becoming. (After all, she acknowledges, public adoration can be a fickle thing, and one day, it might be her wondering what went wrong.) She affirms in the chorus, “You’re still an innocent.” It’s a strange, writerly phrase that she must realize sounds phonetically identical to “You’re stealing innocence”—a particularly Swiftian way to accuse and forgive in the same breath.

虽然歌手们的新专辑常常陷入“换汤不换药”的死循环，Swift却不愿受到自己过去风格的影响。专辑中很多歌曲都表达了一种事后顿悟的苍凉感——这是一个她一直希望尝试，却从未如此成功地使用过的角度。“Back to December（重返十二月）”中的歌声充满了后悔和歉意；“Last Kiss（最后一吻）”中的副歌将绝望的气氛推向高潮。即使是在2009年MTV音乐录像带大奖颁奖典礼上，Kanye West在众目睽睽之下抢走了她的麦克，所有人都在期待看到她的反应，她却在在“Innocent（无辜者）”中以一种语重心长的教育口吻，引导这个给她带来痛苦的人回顾了他自己过去的雄心壮志和事业巅峰，追问他离自己的梦想还有多远。（毕竟她也明白，观众的喜好是变幻无常的，可能有一天她也会站在台下，不甘心地问着“为什么”。）她在副歌中唱道“你尚还是无辜者”——这个句子写出来有点怪怪的，她也一定意识到这句话听起来很像“你伤害了无辜者”——把控诉和原谅一起表达，典型的Swift派作风。

On Speak Now, the way things sounded became just as important as what they meant. Swift was honing her skills as a pop songwriter, imagining a future where “country” was a biographical detail as opposed to an accurate descriptor of her music. Her arrangements were louder—an anxious string section tugging its collar through “Haunted,” a harmony-layered coda unfolding at the end of “Enchanted.” “better Than Revenge” is a pop-punk bloodletting that owes its existence to Paramore, and it foreshadows the work to come: “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “Bad Blood.” Taking aim at a budding actress now dating her ex, it’s fascinating for how wildly Swift changes her perspective while maintaining focus: burning holes in her enemy’s eyes during the verses, pleading to her ex that “she’s not what you think” during each chorus, acknowledging the power and futility of her own response (“She thinks I’m psycho ’cuz I like to rhyme her name with things”). You imagine her singing it, barging into a crowded room while everyone covers their mouth and avoids eye contact.

《Speak Now》整个专辑听起来的感觉和它要传达的意义变得一样重要。因为Swift正不断磨砺自己作词作曲的技巧，想象未来“乡村”只是一个记录的细节，完全不能准确描述她的音乐。她的词曲编排就证明了一切——“Haunted（迷惑）”中不安的弦乐贯穿整首歌，引领着歌曲的走向；“Enchanted（着迷）”的尾声，层次分明，非常和谐动听。“better Than Revenge（好过报复）”用流行朋克描写了一个血拼事件，它也预示着后面作品的到来：“I Knew You Were Trouble（我知道你是大麻烦）”，“Bad Blood(敌对)”。将矛头指向一个和自己前任约会的新演员，Swift 极致变换角度，却都围绕一个中心展开：在主歌里让对手的眼中燃烧怒火，在每个副歌中向前任宣告：“她不是你想的这样。”彰显了本人“回怼”的力量和无谓。（“她说我有精神病，因为我喜欢把她的名字和其他东西押韵”）你可以想象，她唱着歌闯进拥挤的房间，每个人都捂着嘴躲过她的眼睛的画面。

It’s the cathartic freakout during an otherwise elegant party, full of personal revelation. She has a moment of ecstasy in “Mine,” where she and a new love vow to “never make my parents’ mistakes,” which is precisely what you do at your first hint of independence and stability. In “Mean,” she puts her personal life on the backburner to deal with the people antagonizing her professionally. Its lyrics are proud and snappy, as banjos pluck around her like sarcastic bluebirds on her shoulders. “One day I’ll be living in a big ol’ city,” she promises a man who tore her down in reviews. Does it actually hurt a critic to know that the artist will always be more powerful and rich? Probably not, but it’s not really for him anyway—Swift already got what she wanted. In “Ours,” a bonus track as good as any song she’s ever written, she sums it up with a smile that you can hear in her voice: “Don’t you worry your pretty little mind/People throw rocks at things that shine.” She knew she was approaching her supernova phase.

在另一个金曲中，又是一次兴奋的情感宣泄，创作灵感源于自己一段已经分手的恋情。在“Mine(我的)”中，她度过一段极其快乐的时光，她和新恋人发誓 “永远不会犯我父母犯过的错”，就像在我们刚刚萌生独立意识之时，也会这样承诺。在歌里，她把个人生活看得不那么重要，重点是回击那些专门针对她的人。“Mine”歌词高傲直爽，旋律朗朗上口，当班卓琴弹起之时，有如讽刺的蓝知更鸟（注：bluebird是代表幸福的意象）盘绕于肩。“总有一天，我会住进豪华的都市！”针对一个在评论中撕她的人，她如是回击。知道艺术家总是那么有权有钱，真的会伤害评论者吗？不一定吧，又没有针对他一个人——Swift 已经得到了她想要的。在特别收录“Ours(我们的)”里，我们似乎可以从她的声音中看到，她面带微笑，做出精辟总结：“别担心你那颗美丽的心，有些人就是看不惯别人比他好。” 她知道自己越来越接近超级新星。

The ensuing tour was a blockbuster moment she had been preparing for. The intricate, explosive set design involved a full band, dancers, actors portraying the characters in her songs. There were fireworks, a massive bell she hurled herself at during “Haunted,” and a Shakespearean veranda that soared over the audience during “Love Story.” It was a little ridiculous. But for all the fans in attendance, this was how they always saw her: a superhero borne from their subconscious, someone larger than life and unafraid to look absurd. For the rest of the world, it was Swift’s reintroduction: Drop everything now—I have arrived. It’s the character she’d play for the rest of her career.

接下来让我们走进一个她筹备很久的演唱会。演唱会可谓轰动一时。舞台设计极为复杂也极其新颖，包括完整的乐队、伴舞和演员，刻画着歌曲中的人物。还有烟花，大钟，她伴着“Haunted”的伴奏音乐，亲自敲这个大钟。在唱“Love Story(爱情故事)”时，一个莎士比亚时代风格的游廊舞台升过观众头顶，Swift就在舞台的顶端弹着琴演唱，看着有些不可思议。所有粉丝悉数到场。这是粉丝眼中的她：是他们潜意识中的英雄，掌控自己的生活，不惧别人眼中的自己。对于整个世界而言，这是Swift的重新定位：抛下一切吧——我来了！这也是在她余下的生涯中，她要扮演的角色。

The concerts would begin with a recitation over the loudspeakers, a piece that also appears in the album’s liner notes. “Real life is a funny thing, you know,” it began. “There is a time for silence. There is a time for waiting your turn. But if you know how you feel, and you so clearly know what you need to say, you’ll know it.” It reads as inspirational but, in retrospect, it was also a warning: Things won’t stay the same forever. Life can be jarring, full of little interruptions. You won’t be prepared for everything. Near the end of the show, Swift introduced a heartland anthem called “Long Live,” tearfully confiding that it was written for all her fans, her whole band, and the team behind her. “It was the end of a decade,” she sings, “But the start of an age.” The young crowd roars, as if in anticipation.

This was all ahead of Swift as the album was nearing completion. Late in the process, she was out to lunch with mentor Scott Borchetta—among the first industry people to take notice of her in Nashville, offering a deal with his fledgling label Big Machine. By the end of the decade, he’d be just another on her long list of friends-turned-enemies. But for now, he was a confidant. She played him songs from the new record and discussed her plans for the rollout. She was excited. Borchetta was, too. But the working title didn’t seem right. Enchanted? He thought of princesses, fairytales, childhood. The old Taylor. This seemed different. Maybe she felt miffed by someone second-guessing her vision; maybe she was grateful to be challenged. After all, this music was precisely about these moments when your fantasies no longer apply to reality, when you have to grow up and make a choice and live with it on your own. She excused herself for a moment, and when she returned, she had a better idea.

演唱会伊始，扬声器播放出一段朗诵，和专辑封套的说明文字一样。它开始了：“真实的生活是很有趣的，总有一段时间要沉默下来，总有一段时间要等待你的回归，如果你知道自己感受如何，也清楚地知道该说些什么，那么，你就懂得了生活的含义。”这一段话启人心智似又追忆过往，的确也是也是警示：万物并非一成不变。生活也会起起伏伏，总会有各样的小障碍。也并非一切都会是万事俱备。演唱会接近尾声，Swift最受瞩目的金曲“Long Live(不朽)”压轴登场，她含泪吐露这首歌写给她的粉丝、她的乐队和背后支持她的团队。“这是一个时代的结束，”她唱着，“却是一个世纪的开端。”全场的年轻观众沸腾了，好似期许着未来。

这是专辑接近完成时发生的花絮：后期制作中，她和唱片公司总裁Scott Borchetta 出去吃饭，他是在Nashville最早被注意到的业内人士之一，从前邀Swift 和他的新唱片公司Big Machine签约。十年唱片合约即将到期，到时他也会变成Swift友转敌清单中的一个。但现在他们还是密友。Swift给他播放新唱片中的歌，和他讨论新专辑发行的计划。她和Borchetta都异常兴奋。但他对这个暂定名称似乎不太满意，“着迷”？他想到了公主、童话、童年和之前的同名专辑《Taylor Swift(泰勒·斯威夫特) 》，不过这些和新唱片都不太一样。可能她有些生气，因为别人事后反对她的构想，也可能她欣然接受了质疑。总之，音乐准确描绘了当幻想屈服于现实之时，当我们必须成长，为自己的选择负责之时，我们要经历的各种时刻。她离席了一会，回来时已经有了更好的想法。