Some context: Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. One of the leading contemporary recording artists, she is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Swift moved to Nashville, Tennessee at the age of 14 to pursue a career in country music. She signed with the label Big Machine Records and became the youngest artist ever signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house.
Swift uses her life experiences as an inspiration in her work. In her songs, Swift often addresses the "anonymous crushes of her high school years" and celebrities. Swift frequently criticizes ex-boyfriends, an aspect of her songwriting downplayed by The Village Voice: "Being told What Songs Mean is like having a really pushy professor. And it imperils a true appreciation of Swift's talent, which is not confessional, but dramatic." However, New York believes the media scrutiny over her decision to "mine her personal life for music ... is sexist, inasmuch as it's not asked of her male peers". The singer herself has said that not all her songs are factual and that they are sometimes based on observations. Aside from her liner note clues, Swift tries not to talk about song subjects specifically "because these are real people. You try to give insight as to where you were coming from as a writer without completely throwing somebody under the bus". For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that's taking something that potentially should be celebrated--a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way--that's taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist. The Guardian has praised Swift for writing about teenage years "with a kind of wistful, sepia-toned nostalgia" over the course of her first two albums. New York has remarked that many singer-songwriters have made great records as teens, but "none made great records so explicitly about their teens". The magazine has also compared her work to Brian Wilson. In Fearless, Swift featured fairy tale imagery and explored the disconnect "between fairy tales and the reality of love". Her later albums address more adult relationships. In addition to romance and love, Swift's songs have discussed parent-child relationships, friendships, alienation, fame, and career ambitions. Swift frequently includes "a tossed-off phrase to suggest large and serious things that won't fit in the song, things that enhance or subvert the surface narrative". Rolling Stone describes Swift as "a songwriting savant with an intuitive gift for verse-chorus-bridge architecture". According to The Village Voice, she uses third-verse point of view reversals frequently. In terms of imagery, repetition is evident in Swift's songwriting. In The Guardian's words, "she spends so much time kissin' in the rain that it seems a miracle she hasn't developed trenchfoot". Slant Magazine adds, "to Swift's credit, she explores new lyrical motifs over the course of [her fourth] album". Although reviews of Swift's work are "almost uniformly positive", The New Yorker has said she is generally portrayed "more as a skilled technician than as a Dylanesque visionary".
What is special about her songwriting?
A: Swift uses her life experiences as an inspiration in her work.
Some context: Nobuo Uematsu (Zhi Song Shen Fu , Uematsu Nobuo, born March 21, 1959) is a Japanese video game composer, best known for scoring most of the titles in the Final Fantasy series by Square Enix. He is considered to be one of the most well known composers in the video game industry. Sometimes referred to as the "Beethoven of video games music", he appeared five times in the top 20 of the annual Classic FM Hall of Fame. Uematsu, a self-taught musician, began playing the piano at the age of twelve, with English singer-songwriter Elton John as his biggest influence.
Uematsu joined Square in 1985, and composed the soundtrack to Cruise Chaser Blassty in 1986, his first. While working at Square, he met Hironobu Sakaguchi, who asked him if he wanted to create music for some of his games, which Uematsu agreed to. For the next year, he created music for a number of games which did not achieve widespread success, including titles like Genesis and Alpha. In 1987, Uematsu and Sakaguchi collaborated on what was originally to be Sakaguchi's last contribution for Square, Final Fantasy, a game that turned out to be a huge success. Final Fantasy's popularity sparked Uematsu's career in video game music, and he would go on to compose music for over 30 titles, most prominently the subsequent games in the Final Fantasy series. He scored the first installment in the SaGa series, The Final Fantasy Legend, in 1989. For the second game in the series, Final Fantasy Legend II he was assisted by Kenji Ito. In late 1994, Uematsu signed on to finish the soundtrack for the critically acclaimed title Chrono Trigger after the game's composer, Yasunori Mitsuda, contracted peptic ulcers. In 1996, he co-composed the soundtrack to Front Mission: Gun Hazard, and created the entire score for DynamiTracer. He also created music for three of the games in the Hanjuku Hero series. Outside video games, he has composed the main theme for the 2000 animated film Ah! My Goddess: The Movie and co-composed the anime Final Fantasy: Unlimited (2001) with Final Fantasy orchestrator Shiro Hamaguchi. He also inspired the Ten Plants concept albums, and released a solo album in 1994, entitled Phantasmagoria. Feeling gradually more dissatisfied and uninspired, Uematsu requested the assistance of composers Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano for the score to Final Fantasy X in 2001. This marked the first time that Uematsu did not compose an entire main-series Final Fantasy soundtrack. For Final Fantasy XI from 2002, he was joined by Naoshi Mizuta, who composed the majority of the soundtrack, and Kumi Tanioka; Uematsu was responsible for only eleven tracks. In 2003, he assisted Hitoshi Sakimoto in scoring Final Fantasy Tactics Advance by providing the main theme. In 2002, fellow Square colleagues Kenichiro Fukui and Tsuyoshi Sekito asked Uematsu to join them in forming a rock band that focused on reinterpreting and expanding on Uematsu's compositions. He declined their offer at first because he was too busy with work; however, after agreeing to perform with Fukui and Sekito in a live performance as a keyboardist, he decided to join them in making a band. Another employee at Square, Mr. Matsushita, chose the name The Black Mages for their band. In 2003, Keiji Kawamori, Arata Hanyuda, and Michio Okamiya also joined the band. The Black Mages released three studio albums, and appeared at several concerts to promote their albums.
Did anybody else join?
A:
Another employee at Square, Mr. Matsushita, chose the name The Black Mages for their band.