Crackerjack
Taylor Swift thread over on the Jukebox, with pretty much everybody finding at least one thing to disagree with in what anyone else says, but all having a good congenial time of it. The song under review is "Back To December," but the thread goes for the album as a whole, "Mean" getting a good work-up from all angles. E.g., Mat and Theon:
Mat, on November 3rd, 2010 at 5:43 pm Said:
Taylor stacking 'mean' and 'pathetic' and 'liar' like that is her being willfully childish, as a joke, but also suggesting this phantom menace's level of sophistication. He was a brutish jerk, so why shouldn't she just lash out at him in the crassest, simplest way, now that she can, now that she's in a big old city (skyscraper) and he's down in the bar, drunk and bitter. I think it's a funny line.
theon, on November 3rd, 2010 at 6:13 pm Said:
the "liar/pathetic/alone in life" bit in "mean" is the most overwhelming part, guys. all the stuff about how the narrator's gonna escape and be happy is in the future tense and thus implicitly the subjunctive. so the song is being written from a trapped place, but she's being bouncy and certain about her escape, the way you do when you're cheering yourself up; the word "mean" is both a juvenile joke-word and this big-deal cosmic judgement (mean of spirit, etc.). then at the end when she starts shouting and gets a little wobbly on "a LIAR! and PATHETIC!" - those are also juvenile words, because this is the only point in the song where the narrator loses her composure. then she repeats "mean" four times with an intensifying drumbeat behind her, and it's like something's gonna break. then she gets ahold of herself and returns to the peppy fantasy chorus. but that wobble of desperation is still part of the song.
Also,
good convo at the Jukebox on Carrie Underwood's "Mama's Song."