Sunday, November 11, 2012

Genre Analysis: The Secret Genius of Taylor Swift


After reading and listening to several audio essays posted on NPR, I came across a very interesting piece.  The NPR story “The Secret Genius of TaylorSwift” is a very informative review containing a strain of several short interviews, and in my perspective, somewhat of and advertisement for the popular Taylor Swift.  This report tells of Taylor Swift’s new album Red and uses many detailed examples and arguments that tell why and how Taylor sold so many copies of her new album without the use Spotify.  The reporter states “Taylor Swift’s new album, Red, sold more than 1.2 million albums in its first week.”  The audio essay uses specific factual data with numbers, names, and illustrates a photo.  This reporter also interviews several people in the audio portion of the story “Taylor already has so many fans, that she doesn’t need to have that, like, incentive.”  At this point in the story it seems as if the reporter is trying to help sell Taylor Swift by praising her work and intelligence of the music industry and interviewing several young fans of Taylor’s music. 

Differing from the academic essay and the annotated map, the audio essay contains an audio message along with a written portion.  This story has also incorporated interviews from several different people that the other projects never accounted for.  This audio essay must use specific detail and have a point to get across.  The biggest difference which I saw between this audio essay and the other two projects, other than the audio input, were the arguments that played a major role in projects one and two.  “The Secret Genius of Taylor Swift” contained almost no argument whatsoever and seemed more like a story, in my eyes.

Although the audio essay has some strong differences from the other two projects, it also has some resemblances with the academic essay and the annotated map as well.  In the story I read and listened to from NPR, the reporter analyzed the way in which Taylor bypassed the Spotify.  The reporter then began to evaluate the reasons why Taylor bypassed Spotify and was so successful even after bypassing an important thing such as Spotify.  I feel that the audio essay is a combination of the academic essay and annotated map with the addition of an audio portion, but is much more in depth than the previous projects.  This being the biggest project of the semester for this class, it will take a lot of time and effort to complete a well written and recorded paper.

I am not sure at what I will be doing in my third project for English as I have not put any effort into researching my interests towards this subject.

4 comments:

  1. Well you and I my friend are in a similar boat. I am very uncertain of what should or should not be researched for this project. The idea behind it is simple enough, but the actual description seems very ambiguous, along with what Prof. L. said in class, I am slightly taken aback. However I’m sure with whatever you chose it will be a great idea and you will do a good job. Though I would highly recommend a quick start, as I foresee this being a very odd and possibly difficult task; a task full of confusion and riddled with hardship. The audio aspect adds a new twist, just like project 2 and the map, which could prove to be problematic, without the right know how. All in all the concept of interviewing people and making a podcast about a place or group or whatever it might be should hold precedence in your thoughts over the next little while. Good luck my friend and may this turn out well for you.

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  2. Well let's see how do I work in the quote "This is a great idea and you will do a good job!" Since you have no great ideas let me offer a suggestion. If I were in your shoes I would seek the advice from Professor L. himself. I find workshops as a good time to do this as its a small class environment and he is a good source to help you think of ideas. Workshop last week we started brainstorming ideas which I think helped me. Good luck I am sure you will think of something that will end up a strong project three.

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  3. "This is a great idea and you will do a good job", but personally I'm not sure what can be put into place to help you on this project. As the other students who commented on this I would try and get an early jump start on the project and for sure attend the work shops and seek help from Prof.L and take any advice he can give you and run with it. Taylor swift is a popular topic so the best I could give you is seek someone with musical backgrounds who can give you advice on this. Good luck with your project though.

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  4. This has a great outline of what the audio post was about and I liked the detail that you used to talk about how the reviewer used names, numbers and other such things to get the attention of the listener and give the post some ethos in why this is such an amazing thing for Taylor Swift.
    Like anything about the music industry, of course this audio story would seem more like an advertisement, but I like how you didn't rant about that and you stayed close to the facts about the story. I didn't really see how she's a genius but to each his own.
    Good luck with the project.

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