30 minutes up close and personal acoustic concert with Taylor Swift is a joy.
Many artists start their careers by playing NPR’s “Tiny Desk” concert but 300 NPR employees and guests had the opportunity to hear what it would be like if Taylor Swift stepped behind the “Tiny Desk” for an amazing acoustic set.
“I just decided to take this as an opportunity to show you guys how the songs sounded when I first wrote them.” Taylor performed songs from her “Lover” album including, “The Man,” “Lover,” “Death By A Thousand Cuts,” and from 2012’s RED album, “All Too Well.”
From NPR.org
It should come as no surprise that someone who commands stadium stages could hold court in NPR Music’s corner of our Washington, D.C. office — specifically, behind Bob Boilen’s desk — but Taylor Swift was truly at home in stripped-down, solo session mode. (“It’s just me. There’s no dancers, unfortunately,” she quipped.)
Opening with an acoustic rendition of “The Man,” from her 2019 album Lover, Swift delivered a critique of gender double-standards with a sense of humor (and a perfectly deployed hair toss), Leonardo DiCaprio name-check and all. Turning to the piano for Lover‘s title track, with a smile, she explained the guitar-string scars of the song’s bridge. Picking up the guitar again for “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” Swift confronted a question that she says has haunted her career: What will you ever do if you get happy? Across the song’s run-on thoughts and relentless searching, Swift offered an answer: She’ll continue to excel at crafting superb story-songs.
Susan Saunders 10/16/19
