Hacker Cinema
Miss Americana
2020 · Film · documentary · 85 min
Directed by Lana Wilson
A raw and emotionally revealing look at one of the most iconic artists of our time during a transformational period in her life as she learns to embrace her role not only as a songwriter and performer, but as a woman harnessing the full power of her voice.
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1 comment on Hacker News
Swift writes her own music. She works with collaborators and producers but she writes her own music. Dessner sent her instrumental tracks that she turned into folklore (writing to track), it was similar with Antonof. This isn’t a marketing charade, she’s literally a songwriter first.
She has included song-writing voice memos that show the progression of how she wrote certain songs on 1989 and the documentary “Miss Americana” clearly shows her songwriting process (as does this collection of clips from an AT&T promo she did for Reputation https://youtu.be/I4WlSnWtkt8).
Liz Rose, who co-wrote some of Swift's earlier songs (including the much-loved, “All Too Well”), described the process of working with her as editing [1], something all of her other collaborators have said too.
There are a lot of pop stars who get a writing credit for doing very little on a track but Taylor Swift isn’t one of them. If anything, she’s been quite clear that her success is directly tied to her songwriting. Her voice alone (especially as a teenager) wouldn’t have made her a star. It was her songs, paired with her voice and her personality that made everything work.
[1]: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bp/swift-collaboration--liz-rose-talks-about-taylor-making-the-star-s-early-hits-220935530.html