Taylor Swift On Saturday Night Live, November 7th, 2009

So I get home from the Bruce concert around 1245am so I’m too late to catch young Taylor Swift on SNl, right? Wrong. I just hit restart and the program starts over. Wow, talk about brave new world.

So how was she? Taylor was fine for the most part. It isn’t her fault SNL isn’t funny anymore, And Snl sure aint funny at all (one killer line by Seth Meyers: New Yorkers arespending again, Blomberg bought the mayoral office, the Yanks bought a championship). The opening sketch, an extended take on FOX News coverage of the GOP wins in the Governors races in New Jersey and Virginia would have been pretty funny except nobody on SNL can do a decent impression. Fred Armistand is to Barack Obama what Chevy Chase was to Gerald Ford.

But Taylor is fun singing “The Monolgue Song” where she indiscretely tells of all the things she won’t be discussing . Then they put her in the usual mishmash of misses, complete misses, and misses so far you’ve got to wonder if the words quality control have any meaning whatsoever at 30 Rock. An unterminably stupid “Hollywood Dish” sketch is capped only by equally stupid wedding skit with that extremely annoying girl who tops whatever your saying character and that’s only beaten by another crap character,  the scared straight inmate. Three mammals of sketches A Twilight parody with Frankenstein monsters instead of vampires was funny and Swift is fabulous as Shakira singing “Bunny Hips Don’t Lie”.

Swift looks a little too thin, like, way too thin. What gives? She is a big girl and needs a figure. She looks like a pencil with a mess of blonde hair. On Steinway Street near where I live they are selling $2 Big Macs and my advise is she get there fast and bulk up.

I also suggest she get a voice coach toot sweet because her voice is reedy and weak though sweet and tempered by her disposition. The newbie “Come In With the Rain” is lovely as possible and she is so nice strumming  chord changes, but she really doesn’t have much of a voice at all and this is where the Patsy Cline fall apart. Taylor  can’t let her stage design do the live work for her. She’s not Britny and can’t get away with lipsynching either. This is the price of early success -you don’t learn your instrument as well as you need to.

Still, you hafta be careful of stepping on puppies similies when discussing Swift and I love her any way so I’ll just note it is the best episode of SNL this year and leave you to draw your own conclusions.