‘Cause when you’re sixteen, and someone tells you you’ve got to kill lots of other people as part of a ritualistic affirmation of a post-apocalyptic state, you’re gonna believe them…
[Video][Website]
[5.85]
Brad Shoup: It’s hard to imagine an instance in which putting Taylor Swift on your young-adult film soundtrack is considered bold, but this is The Hunger Games. Get savage or get savaged. And as far as I can tell, Swift aced the assignment. It’s some kind of Aeolian(?) lullaby, streaked with cymbal decay and suggestions of drone. Lyrically, she’s hit on the ace parental formula: a little bit of straight talk (“don’t look at that, it’s just a bunch of shit on fire”) with some lies (“I can always keep you safe.”) She sheds her vernacular tone for something haunted, perhaps a bit over-fluttery, but a hard-to-remember lullaby is a poor totem.
[9]
Katherine St Asaph: Taylor Swift as implied Katniss and credited with something called The Civil Wars is good for four-fifths of your progressive-blog troll bingo. The other fifth, alas, is the song, and the only thing upsetting about Taylor becoming a fluting Beth Orton is that she’ll probably never sound like this again.
[6]
Zach Lyon: I know nothing of The Hunger Games or The Civil Wars (we need a country group to step up and rename themselves The Gettysburg Address to complete the trifecta started by Lady Antebellum and these folks), but this is my favorite Taylor Swift in a while. I love how the sparseness of the country-with-actual-country-instruments arrangement allows the bass drum such a bright and heavy agency, like its one note is carrying a dialogue with everything else. And I love how it fits so classically in the pantheon of sensitive megastar soundtrack cash-ins that play when the credits roll. Bryan Adams would be proud.
[8]
Pete Baran: Taylor Swift is a no-brainer to provide a tune or two for The Hunger Games, being a young, successful country girl. She even looks a bit like Jennifer Lawrence. And this song has clearly been written with a lyric that makes sense in the context of the film — which is why, unfortunately, it’s a bit of a dirge. Much has been made of the book’s resemblance to Battle Royale, but Battle Royale was a satire. The Hunger Games takes its tale of state-sponsored teens killing each other deadly serious. And so therefore must the song. And hence the military snare drum.
[3]
Edward Okulicz: Sticking a song on a soundtrack can be a good thing. It keeps the buzz going, is more interesting than releasing a sixth (sixth! That’s not even noteworthy in 2012!) single off your record, and they’re a largely commercial risk-free way of trying something different. Well, the extent to which anything Taylor Swift can do will sound different given how omnipresent she’s been over the last few years is questionable. It took me about three listens to even notice the military drums over Swift getting a bit choked up. Given how this is the most trad she’s sounded in ages, maybe her next album should go the full Shania and be released in two different mixes.
[8]
Iain Mew: I did not expect the new Taylor Swift single to remind me this much of the haunting alt-folk of Blue Roses! The harmonies, picked acoustic guitar and sweeps of pedal steel make for a gorgeous record. Admittedly it’s all feeling and not much song, but that feeling is enough to carry it.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Rather ethereal for a Swift ballad. Tentative too, unless she and her collaborators wanted a sound commensurate with the title.
[6]
Doug Robertson: It’s definitely safe, and it is a sound, so it’s hard to fault this song on accuracy grounds, but on any other scale of judgment, it’s more full of faults than a drunken tennis player. It’s so banal that I can only assume its role in The Hunger Games is to soundtrack the end credits, ensuring a swift — arf — departure from the audience so that the cinema can get the next lot of punters in with minimum turnaround.
[2]
John Seroff: Taylor’s interest in wearing a chameleon’s coat is long documented, but it’s something of a surprise that she can so effectively ape quiet Hayley. Shame that she doesn’t take a shot at loud Hayley; “Safe and Sound” needs a bit more backbone to really wow. It’s more a feint in the direction of the inevitable folk-pop crossover album. When she’s more serious about this, she’ll mine Station Inn for Nashville’s best instead of The Civil Wars’ middle-of-the-road, somnambulent instrumental fare.
[6]
Anthony Easton: Like being wrapped in cotton batting, it at first seems comforting but as the track progresses, becomes suffocating.
[5]
Michaela Drapes: Two things. First, I’d complain about the Bon Iver-ization of pop, but Eisley’s been flogging this horse for over a decade. I mean, least that song went somewhere instead of wandering in circles for four minutes. They’re probably pretty pissed off right now. Second, this probably isn’t the best place for me to vent about the continued infantilization of the youth of America, but is this some sort of allegory for being in your twenties? Just, you know, crawl under a blanket and hope everything’s better in the morning? If so, I weep for the future.
[0]
Jonathan Bogart: I didn’t expect to like this — I’m hot and cold on T-Swift, I’m almost entirely cold on authenticitygaze like The Civil Wars, and I’m old and grumpy enough to make a claim like “there hasn’t been a great soundtrack pop song since ‘Kiss from a Rose'” and almost believe I mean it. But the lack of bombast here took me by surprise, and Swift’s difficulty hitting the high notes in a hushed voice is just about tailored to my tastes. Pun, regrettably, intended.
[7]
Jonathan Bradley: Taylor has always approached her songs as if they were parts to be acted, but her characters have almost all been young women with rural or suburban backgrounds grappling with new emotional experiences. Here, she dives into a storybook world, her fluttering voice picking its way through thickets of brush like the Pevensies returning to Narnia in Prince Caspian, or, more appropriately, like Katniss Everdeen prowling uneasily through an unnaturally calm forest. Burying her most recognizable qualities has allowed Swift to explore her less-celebrated attributes, like a knack for melody and an ear for emotional tenor. “Safe and Sound” could be a mere dalliance, but if this is a hint at a new direction, it’s one that has thus far proved as fruitful as what came before it.
[9]