First Frost Josh

It’s hard to believe that its been over a month since Red (Taylor’s Version) changed my life irreversibly. Hyperbole aside, the release of Taylor Swift’s re-recorded masterpiece provided the perfect foil for a wet November rife with gloomy forest hikes. While my preferred Taylor Swift autumn tastes lie elsewhere, its impossible to deny the association Red has with the season. And rightfully so. The range of emotions the album covers is tremendous. It may well be the perfect breakup album, covering not only painful heartbreak but ecstatic forgetting, yearning relapses, and tremulous renewal. As such, you can imagine the excitement of fans upon learning that the new album would include nine songs “from the vault”. Nine songs that didn’t make the album in its initial release would be included on this iteration. After talking a month to reflect and listen to the album on repeat, I have come to the definitive tiered ranking of the vault songs from Red (Taylor’s Version) . Enjoy!

Bite-Size is a new feature I'm adding to the blog. Bite-Size posts will be shorter and more informal than regular posts. They'll allow me to talk more about my interests and random things that pass through my head without having to stretch it into a 1000+ word bloviation. Enjoy! § As the first full week of November wraps up, reality is slowly sinking in. In Canada, daylight savings time has turned the clocks back an hour and night descends like a premature Grim Reaper. Carol of the Bells and Canon in D are slowly replacing the soundtracks of Halloween (1978) and Tonight She Comes , and the weather is on the precipice of taking that next big plunge towards freezing.

During the Halloween season, atmosphere is everything. Every mundane activity must be transformed into a dark undertaking befitting the season. Taking out the garbage at dusk transforms into a perilous journey spent dodging shadowy corners and imagining escaped lunatics lying in wait behind every tree. Washing the dishes becomes an exercise in inescapability as you watch bleak clouds of grey slowly overcome the bone-white sun. Interlocking scattered puzzle pieces turns into solving a ghostly mystery concealing deeply buried secrets of yore. In my opinion, there is no better way to evoke atmosphere in otherwise ordinary situations than by listening to music. And what music is better to elicit a spooky mood than a good horror movie soundtrack? 

Who can resist the sounds of autumn? Leaves crunching underfoot, whispering winds gusting through half-naked trees, the sharp cracks and hisses of an evening bonfire, and the dulcet tones of Taylor Swift. It’s undeniable that certain songs resonate deeper with us during specific times of the year, and, for whatever reason, large parts of Taylor’s discography tend to cut deeper (in a good way) during the fall season. I know that not all of Taylor’s music is “autumn music”—don't worry, I’m not trying to convince you that Cruel Summer or 22 are fall songs. I also understand that associating songs with seasons is very subjective. Honestly, 99% of it can probably be attributed to where and when we heard the song first. However, I maintain that there are specific criteria for classifying "autumn songs" and that large parts of Taylor's discography fit within that criterion.