【搬运】【译】滚石Rolling Stone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：Ming Kwok

审译：Ryan-Chopin

排版：Ryan-Chopin

Taylor Swift在《Lover》中达到了个人和音乐自由的新高峰

By the time “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” arrives on Lover, her seventh and most epic album, Taylor Swift has entered uncharted territory. For one thing, it’s the 17th song here, and none of her previous albums have run more than 16 tracks. (Lover actually contains 18.) More importantly, it’s not about being 16 or 22 or even her not-insignificant current age, 29. It’s about being six or seven, and walking home from school in the snow: “Lost my gloves / You give me one / Wanna hang out? / Sounds like fun.” There’s no beat, no banjo, no metaphors or coded messages. There is, instead, deconstructed steel drum, horn and cooing voices — Animal Collective as interpreted by hip-hop-savvy pop-producers-of-the-moment Louis Bell and Frank Dukes, the song’s co-writers. It’s like the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where a long turbulent journey through outer (and, naturally, inner) space culminates in the sudden appearance of a planet-sized fetus. For two and a half minutes, Swift regresses past all the drama and heartache she’s cataloged since her teen years to curl up in a weird little pocket of beauty.

随着“It’s Nice to Have a Friend”加入了Taylor史诗级的七专《Lover》，Taylor Swift进入了一个全新的领域。一方面，这是这张专辑的第十七首歌，而之前她没有任何一张专辑有超过16首歌（Lover实际上有18首）。更重要的是，这不是像16岁或是22岁的作品，更不是关于Taylor现在（随口一提）的实际年龄---29岁，而更像是6、7岁的Taylor在雪中从学校回家：“把我的手套弄丢了/你借了我一只/要一起出去玩吗/听起来不错耶。”没有明快的节奏，没有班卓琴声，没有暗喻或是任何隐含的信息，取而代之的是散架的钢桶声、号角的咕咕声，还融合了各种动物的声音，这都出自嘻哈乐代表人物以及时下杰出的流行乐制作人Louis Bell和Frank Dukes，他们都是歌曲的合作创作者。这就像电影《2001太空漫游》的结尾，经历了漫长的外太空混乱之旅后星孩突然出现了。在这两分半钟里，Taylor后悔从她青少年时代到之后的所有抓马和心碎时刻的所有过去，她小心翼翼地将这些过往编织成一个奇特而美丽的小袋子。

Swift has always been vulnerable, of course. And just as obviously, that vulnerability has been her strength. Female pop stars since Madonna have been expected to constantly reinvent themselves, lest it seem like they’re aging — an impossible standard that vexed Swift contemporaries like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. In sharing her actual feelings about relationships chronicled by the tabloids — and parrying the entire internet’s judgements of those feelings — Swift helped open up a space for Ariana Grande to directly address Sean, Pete, and Malcolm on “Thank U, Next” (to name one glorious example). When Swift went pop, that wasn’t so much a transformation as an annexation of new territory. Grande might’ve picked up something here, too, with her triumphant embrace of hip-hop-style surprise drops. If Ariana, Billie, Halsey and others seem so effortlessly themselves, it’s in part because Swift worked so hard at speaking her truth and smiting her enemies.

Taylor确实拥有一颗脆弱敏感的心，但这份脆弱同时也是她的铠甲。几乎从Madonna开始，很多流行女歌手就一直被期待着要不断地改造自己，唯恐他人发现她们在变老——这种不现实的标准激怒了与Taylor同期的其他歌手，例如Lady Gaga和Katy Perry。她先是道出关于各种媒体报道自身恋情的真实感受，然后回避网络上所有对这些感受的批评——Taylor实际上为Ariana Grande在“Thank U, Next”当中直接点名Sean, Pete, and Malcolm等前男友铺了路（这只是其中一个突出的例子）。当初Taylor选择了流行乐，与其说是一种转型，还不如说是她对新领域的一种吸纳融合。Ariana也做了同样的选择，毕竟她的新专辑也成功地融合了惊艳的嘻哈乐节奏。如果Ariana, Billie, Halsey还有其他歌手都看起来毫不费力地成功了，只能说有一部分要归功于Taylor在打造吐露真心以及有仇必报的形象上下了苦工。

Lover is, fittingly, evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But nevertheless it feels like an epiphany: free and unhurried, governed by no one concept or outlook, it represents Swift at her most liberated, enjoying a bit of the freedom she won for her cohort. Made mainly in collaboration with Jack Antonoff, female songwriting ally nonpareil, the album’s dominant sound is sleekly updated Eighties pop-rock. In a bonus making-of track destined for a Target edition of the album, Swift tells Antonoff she wants a “dreamy guitar-y throwback, but not camp throwback” sound for the title track, and that’s pretty much the vibe. (Think recent Carly Rae Jepsen, if she made actual hits.) Swift loads “Paper Rings” up with a “1-2-3-4,” a “hey! ho!” and a key change for a jittery bit of Cars-meets-Eddie Money-meets-Go-Go’s delight. On the terrific “Cruel Summer,” written with Antonoff and Annie Clark (a.k.a. St. Vincent), she tells a simple tale of tortured love in under three minutes of pure pleasure, with what sounds like a smattering of talk box. When she sings “Out the window / I’m always waiting for you to be waiting below,” there’s no question you’re supposed to picture John Cusack in Say Anything.

说到《Lover》这张专辑，称其具有进化性会比说其具有革命性更加合适。但无论如何，它给人的感觉更像是一种顿悟:自由而从容，不受任何概念或观点的支配，它代表着Swift最自由的一面，她正享受着她为音乐军团赢得的一点自由。专辑主要是与才华横溢的音乐界妇女之友Jack Antonoff合作完成的，其基调听起来像是80年代的流行摇滚乐。在制作Target豪华版专辑的时候，Taylor跟Antonoff说她希望同名曲要有“梦幻复古吉他声，而非坎普风格，”而歌曲确实如此。（如果Carly Rae Jepsen最近真有热单的话，留意下她最近的作品）。Taylor在“Paper Rings”中加入了“1-2-3-4”、“hey! ho!”，还加入了一些像动画片音乐融合Eddie Money曲风后的欢快紧凑的节奏。在与Antonoff 和 Annie Clark (也叫St. Vincent)合作谱写的“Cruel Summer”中，她用三分钟讲述了一段简单的虐恋，听起来就像截取于一段对话框的只言片语。当她唱到：“望着窗外/我在等着你在楼下等我。”毫无疑问地，你的脑海中会浮现出电影《情到深处》的John Cusack。

Swift adjusts her frame of reference as needed. She claims to be “In my feelings more than Drake” in “I Forgot That You Existed,” a pro forma, post-trop-house declaration of her “indifference” to the haters. Thankfully, that’s mainly it for the sassy, winking Swift. Instead, she mostly goes for the big moods. “False God” is as minor-key and seductive as anything by the Weeknd, with a chorus, well — I’ll just leave this here: “Religion’s on your lips / Even if it’s a false god / We’d still worship / We must just get away with it / The altar is my hips.” She zags into oblique political commentary with “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince,” a high school parable where she sees “high fives Between bad guys” and delivers “O! K!” interjections in her best cheerleader voice. Like Euphoria, the HBO teensploitation extravaganza, it’s dark, melodramatic and, against all odds, perfect.

Taylor也根据自己的需要调整了曲风。在“I Forgot That You Existed”当中，她唱道：“你比公鸭的歌还洗脑”——直接道出她对黑粉的“冷漠”。不过万幸的是，这只是不羁而又婊婊的一面。相反地，Taylor将大部分精力放进了对一些情绪波动的描述。“False God”中采用了跟the Weekend歌曲中类似的撩人小调，这首歌的副歌——我直接放这儿吧：“你总是把宗教挂在嘴边/就算明知这是一个假的神/我们还要继续朝拜/还不如赶紧逃离这一切/我的美腿就是圣坛。”她用歌曲“Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince”开始涉足阴暗的政界，讲述了一个高中生的寓言故事，她看到了“坏男孩之间的击掌”，也用拉拉队长的声音唱出了“O!K!”。这首歌就像HBO的青春性剥削剧《亢奋》一般，黑暗而充满戏剧性，又反对所有的不平等，堪称完美。

There’s plenty more fodder for the Swifties, haters, and bloggers here. Leo takes a proverbial volleyball to the face on “The Man,” a usefully blunt indictment of double standards, and the dub-inflected “London Boy” counts all the ways she “fancies” her boyfriend Joe Alwyn. “Soon You’ll Get Better” was recorded with Dixie Chicks, but giving the country-radio exiles a feature isn’t the point — the song is note-perfect ballad for Swift’s mother, whose cancer returned earlier this year. Whatever there is to be read into these songs, they are for one person and one person alone: Taylor Swift. Finally.

接下来还有更多的料供霉粉、霉黑以及各种博主食用。Taylor在“The Man”中说如果她是一个男人，其他人就会像对Leonardo DiCaprio一样对她了，这首歌是一个对于双重标准最典型的控诉；在“London Boy”中又唱出了她对男朋友Joe Alwyn那无可救药的喜欢。“Soon You’ll Get Better”是一首跟Dixie Chicks合唱的合作曲，但是其带有一点乡村电台的曲风并不是重点——重点是这首歌是献给今年癌症复发了的Taylor妈妈的歌。无论我们对这些歌曲做再多的解读，这些歌曲都只属于一个人，仅仅是她一个人——Taylor Swift，这毋庸置疑。