Taylor Swift Drops Another Surprise Album
By Maria Tedesco ('21)
Wait, didn’t Taylor Swift just release an album?
Indeed, she released surprise album folklore only six months ago, but she did it again last December. Ms. Swift announced her ninth studio album evermore on December 10th and promptly released the album at midnight. Described by her as folklore’s sister album,” Ms. Swift continues to step outside her comfort zone of pop and experiment with a variety of musical mediums.
Like folklore, evermore dances through complex storylines. The stories on this album present themselves as romantically mature in contrast to folklore’s young love triangle, evermore centers around marriage, divorce and murder.
To describe the album in one word: sad. It’s more sad than folklore, and the tears pour during almost every song. Why?
The album embodies the feeling of healing, while folklore embodied deep loss. In this case, the impact makes your throat tighten more compared to what happened in the past. Here are some healing highlights:
willow
The album begins with it’s lead single, a perfectly poetic beginning to the story. Soft guitar strums accompany the sweet lyrics. The line “I come back stronger than a 90’s trend” captures the unexpectedness of the album.
champagne problems
This song radiates class while enrapturing somberness with its heavy piano chords. The simple lyrics contradict the complexity of the story; it walks through engagement, marriage and touches on mental health.
gold rush
Explained by Ms. Swift as the moment when thoughts wander into la la land during a daydream and then, suddenly, that moment ends. The light orchestra, guitar, and percussion created by Jack Antonoff, a producer who also worked on folklore, fit well into this narrative.
no body, no crime (featuring Haim)
Inspired by Ms. Swift’s newfound love of true crime, she tells a fictional story about her friend Este Haim. After Este’s husband is suspected of killing Este, Ms. Swift decides to avenge her friend’s death by killing Este’s husband. The faint sound of sirens and the harmonica riffs give the song a Western feel.
coney island (featuring The National)
Ms. Swift previously collaborated with Aaron Dessener on folklore, but he is now featured on a track. Their voices mix perfectly, as the song tells the story of reflecting on loss from a bench in Coney Island. The lyrics radiate the power of a forgotten romance, “we were like the mall before the internet, it was the one place to be.”
marjorie
The emotional side of this song stems from the connectedness between Ms. Swift and Marjorie, her deceased grandmother. The song works through grief, simple at first by singing in absolutes, but the complexity of the lyrics grows as the bridge of the song approaches.
What stands out about this track is that Ms. Swift included her grandmother’s voice in the background. Under the words, “if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were singing to me now,” she included an old recording of her singing opera.
closure
The instrumentals on this track are out of the ordinary for Ms. Swift. The heavy percussion intro resembles pots and pans and repeats throughout the track. But, how is there “closure” with chaos in the background?
evermore (featuring Bon Iver)
Unlike a usual duet, with back and forth melodies, this duet sounds like a mashup of two songs; Ms. Swift sings the first half. Then, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver joins the song with a completely different piano melody. To finish, the song circles back to the original melody. Encapsulating the theme of healing, the two come to the conclusion, “this pain wouldn’t be forevermore.”
