Taylor Swift writes her own version of history on folklore
Image: Photo: Beth Garrabrant Music Reviews Music
Eavesdrop on any Twitter thread between creatives during the last few months, and you’ll inevitably find conversations about artistic paralysis—and self-immolation derived from artistic paralysis. After all, while stories abound about how creativity is flourishing despite the global pandemic, that’s not a comfort to those who can’t stop doomscrolling or find themselves awake at 3 a.m. with crippling anxiety. Not everyone has the capacity at the moment to come up with a great novel or hit song; sometimes a successful sourdough starter is more within reach.
Taylor Swift is one notable exception to this rule. “Most of the things I had planned this summer didn’t end up happening, but there is something I hadn’t planned on that DID happen,” she wrote on Instagram on Thursday: an entirely new 16-song album, folklore, written and recorded in isolation and unveiled to the world with less than a day’s notice before release.
That Swift would be able to create a fully realized body of work is no surprise. Her work ethic has always been admirable, largely because it’s so immune to outside distractions. As a songwriter, Swift is unflappable, her observational faculties razor-sharp and keen, even when dealing with serious stuff: harsh critics, traumatic breakups, personal anguish, family stress, and now a pandemic.
But it’s clear being forced to alter 2020 plans compelled Swift to jettison precedent. While she again worked with long-time collaborator Jack Antonoff on folklore, she also teamed up with several intriguing new creative partners. These include Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, who co-wrote and sang on “Exile,” and multiple members of The National. Aaron Dessner co-wrote or produced 11 of folklore’s 16 songs, while his twin brother Bryce contributed occasional orchestration, and drummer Bryan Devendorf and touring member Ben Lanz also took part. The album’s credits reveal even more collaborators, who contribute strings, horns, and other lush, luxurious instrumentation.
Unsurprisingly, folklore is a different album from what we’ve heard from Swift before. Although honeyed piano is prominent, gone are the brash beats and rainbow-hued textures of recent vintage. Instead, songs incorporate shivering strings, hushed synthesizers and keyboards, and subtle splotchy grooves. Songs echo other artists—the dreamy haze of Cocteau Twins (“august”) or Sarah McLachlan’s glacial piano work (“epiphany”)—and exude majestic orchestral-folk vibes. But it’s not correct (or fair) to say this is Swift fronting The National, or her releasing her own Man Of The Woods. If anything, folklore often feels like the photo negative of 1989, an album that also possessed a cohesive sound and a vision driven by texture and atmosphere.
This direction makes a lot of sense for Swift. The most striking tracks on her previous two albums—the introspective piano ballad “New Year’s Day” and the dusky, watercolor-tinted “Lover”—were relatively unadorned and lyrically vulnerable. On Lover especially, Swift refined the always-precarious line between personal confessions and universal sentiments. “Soon You’ll Get Better,” a tearjerking song about her mom’s cancer, was an emotional suckerpunch with both broad and specific appeal.
This songwriting progression paralleled her personal evolution. Both Lover-era interviews and the 2020 documentary Miss Americana found Swift becoming more comfortable finding a balance between her public and private lives. “I needed to make boundaries, to figure out what was mine and what was the public’s,” she told Rolling Stone. “That old version of me that shares unfailingly and unblinkingly with a world that is probably not fit to be shared with? I think that’s gone.” Yet as her increasingly vocal social media posts underscore, she’s choosing to speak up when it matters—and is now making it even more explicitly clear what matters to her.
Swift also brings her usual sharp-eyed specificity to “exile,” on which a protagonist eviscerates a jealous ex: “I can see you staring, honey / Like he’s just your understudy.” And she weaves in personal details as bread crumbs throughout the lyrics, referencing her Rhode Island residence, Holiday House (“the last great American dynasty”), notorious reputation (“Cold was the steel of my axe to grind / For the boys who broke my heart / Now I send their babies presents”), and carefree youth (“Before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously / Any time I wanted”).
In this way, the Dessners are the perfect foils for Swift’s ideas on folklore. For all of their ornate arrangements, the brothers’ collaborations exude the kind of sonic intimacy that centers vocalists, and gives them the space to stretch out. For example, Aaron Dessner recently collaborated with former R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe on “No Time For Love Like Now,” a brittle and gorgeous song with nuanced, delicate singing. On folklore, this approach appears on the ornate standout “invisible string”—a gorgeous folk song with stair-step acoustic riffs and heart thump-steady vocal backbeats—a variety of colors (green grass, a teal shirt, gold leaves) come together to explain a great romance.
With references to an “American singer” and a dive bar, it’s tempting to view “invisible string” as being about her long-term relationship with the British actor Joe Alwyn. However, folklore’s protagonists aren’t necessarily perfect analogs to Swift herself. “In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result, a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness,” she wrote about the songwriting. “Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory.” folklore’s songs are about widows, love triangles, the indelible imprint of young love, infidelity, Swift’s grandfather. Taken together, they resemble someone flipping through snapshots housed in a yellowing photobook.
“Before this year, I probably would’ve overthought when to release this music at the ‘perfect’ time, but the times we’re living in keep reminding me that nothing is guaranteed,” Swift wrote. “My gut is telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world.” In the end, folklore may or may not reflect a permanent musical shift for Taylor Swift. But it doesn’t necessarily need to be a grand step forward—that it’s a whimsical and intriguing album offering new insights into Swift’s work is completely enough.
105 Comments
I really appreciate this review! Though, I am a little surprised you’d rank this lower than Lover. Although I think there’s some room for disagreement here, I do think that folklore is a grand step forward, particularly in terms of the songwriting on display. Gorgeous similes topple over one another. Perspectives multiply, whereas once we were more or less confined to Taylor’s. In either case though, it is an interesting, mature, and remarkable work. Like you, I think I’d also identify “invisible string” as a clear standout, but I’d be lying if I said it was the only song in this collection that brought me to tears.
I have never heard a Taylor Swift song before this morning, when a friend recommended folklore to me based on my interest in indie folk and Americana.There were a couple of songs that nearly had me in tears.
keep that shit to yourself homie
Never? Did you just emerge from a sealed-off mineshaft? They’ve been playing her stuff non-stop in grocery stores, convenience stores, etc. for years.
i have friends who are med students that were fully moved to tears by epiphany
I have never heard a Taylor Swift song before this morning, when a friend recommended folklore to me based on my interest in indie folk and Americana.There were a couple of songs that nearly had me in tears.Not to say Taylor is even on at the same level, but that’s comparable to having Rubber Soul as your first taste of the Beatles.
Same. This might be the first Swift album that I like.
Starting listening to the album on YouTube when I woke up this morning and by the third track had ordered a vinyl copy from her webstore. It sounds modern, yet timeless. It sounds like a classic.
I really enjoyed this album. If you’re on the fence or not familiar with Swift’s work, I would recommend this album as a great example of her songwriting chops.
Sorry, I tried to like it but I just couldn’t get interested. As a songwriter, I think she’s the Ausonius of her era. Invisible String hit me with all the emotional impact of a floating dandelion seed.
I would say that there are a lot of people out there, like me, who really like the idea of Taylor Swift and have utter respect for her obvious talents yet are turned off by all the Max Martin styled poppiness of her recent work. These people are the type who know 1989 more through the Ryan Adams version of it it or feel personally let down by the singles in her last album because their obvious attempts at being hit singles felt beneath her. These people, and I would say that includes me, listen to some of her stuff but really don’t want to pronounce their love because they feel like they can’t until she becomes the Joni Mitchell styled singer/songwriter that everybody feels like she’s destined to be. A lot of this has to deal with the eternal conflict between “pop” and “authencity” as pop is usually considered inauthentic and so lacking the worth of something deemed more authentic. Nothing says more authentic than a spared-down album featuring Bon Iver and some dudes from the National. What I’ve heard from the album is really love and I love the fact she’s finally made that turn towards a more “authentic” singer/songwriter but I can’t help but feel slightly guilty that she made this turn to finally get the love of us indie music type snobs that want to love her but get too hung up “Shake it Off” to do so.(I should add here that I listen to a lot of her poppy stuff but feel kind of like it’s a guilty pleasure than anything else. Except for Blank Space. That song is sooo good)
I think the missing piece in her writing is that there’s a certain type of lyric that doesn’t quite work outside of country music, and it’s sometimes an awkward fit for pop. It’s better in this type of undue folk, where it passes as earnestness and not awkward over sharing.
Thus the reason why she has a different set of expectations on her than, say, Katy Perry. It’s obvious she has the capability to do much greater things than just pop songs
No offense but she’s never going to be Joni Mitchell. Very few songwriters have ever written anything as profound as Both Sides Now or Circle Game. Its almost unfair to compare frankly.
She doesn’t need to be; Joni Mitchell is Joni Mitchell, and no other artist will be the same. Taylor Swift is Taylor Swift and she is her own unique artist. Joni Mitchell has many illustrious years ahead of Swift, but that doesn’t mean they can’t exist in the same musical world.I’m not a diehard fan by any means, and probably couldn’t name her songs even if I’ve heard them dozens and dozens of times. But I think Swift is very very talented, methodical, an incredibly saavy manipulator (in the most benign use of the term) of media and how to make it work for her. And I think she’s also genuine and caring, especially about her throng of fans worldwide.
I couldn’t name a song she’s written and I’m definitely not a fan but I don’t think she’s a bad person either. She’ll be what she wants to be.
“Give me a pop-song, mate. Give me a fucking pop-song. Not only is it more fun, it’s pretty fuckin’ hard to write as well. You can bung in as many out-of-tune oboes as you want, but putting chords together so they sound pleasant isn’t as simple as it might appear. It mightn’t be the Sistine Chapel, but what is? Ollie fucking Olsen with his stupid feedback and cough mixture? The Jesus and Mary Chain, with their stupid feedback, and their stupid stage show with 800 powerful stupid lights and enough stupid dry ice to enhance their stupid stupidity up its own bullshit crappy teenage pretentious one dimensional dick witted puissant artistic enigma?So … what have you listened to for a good time that isn’t, after all, a ‘traditional’ song? Still playing the Mike Oldfield records, huh? Still whipping Yessongs on for a good time? Wanna count on one hand how many people have fun at a Sonic Youth gig? I’m not supporting The Choirboys, old man, I’m just saying that the day some jumped-up over-paid self-important post-modernist cocksucker puts his foot upon his Fairlight computer in the middle of his 47-minute opus “The Silent Forgiveness of the Pig-God” and belts out the chords to “Johnny B. Goode” is the day I’ll join you at the footlights of post-modernism.Besides which, pop songs sell more.”- TISM, “The TISM Guide to Little Aesthetics”
Production is just as important to an album as performance and songwriting*. Certain production styles are like saxophones or bongo drums or string quartets – you have to either enjoy them or be willing to look past them. That’s true of super lo-fi production like early Mountain Goats, and it’s true of very polished production like the small handful of Taylor Swift songs I’ve listened to. *This is a false distinction, of course, since the producer has a hand in songwriting and arranging/performing as well.
Shake It Off is a genius piece of pop music, indie music snobs be darned!
I’m pretty much a rockist, but Shake It Off is just a stupidly great song and I’ve learned to live with that opinion.
It’s a good pop song. It works much better, though, when the album came out and Taylor still kind of projected that All American underdog image and not as much as world conquering musician
If you’re a casual TS listener I’d suggest going back to Red, Lover and 1989 and listening to the non singles- they are genuinely great, authentic, and showcase her talent much more than overproduced singles like Shake it Off or Me. She always picks the worst songs to be her singles because they’re the ones most likely to gain traction as they sound preppy.These are some songs that I would place in the top of her catalogue- All Too Well, Cruel Summer, New Year’s Day, CleanI like folklore a lot but she has hidden gems in every album of hers.
I mean… I like Swift’s music, but it’s easy to become “immune to outside distractions” when you never have to work for a living. Swift’s father purchased her a music career when she was still a minor.
‘August’ really DOES sound like a Cocteau Twins song!
Look, it’s a reach, but this Gen X goth needs to try to hold onto his goth card SOMEHOW while admitting that he likes the new Taylor Swift album.
Gen-X “shoegazer” here. I’m not the only one picking up on Mazzy vibes in her output. So, yes, we can wholeheartedly and gloomily admit to liking the new Taylor Swift album.
I’m not the only one picking up on Mazzy vibes in her output. Nobody’s more morose than Hope Sandoval. She would make Mr. Rogers hate his life.
Oh, you’re right! It’s TOOOTALLY Mazzy Star!
Crap…I was so not ready to listen to any of this…and then you throw in a Cocteau Twins reference? I guess I’ll be listening to it!
Don’t sweat it. Like what you like. I’m Gen X too, with a metal head 16yo son. Today I was pleased to get both the Swift album and one by a grunge/doom metal group called Stonebird (I love my Bandcamp!).
Now, I’m excited and need to hear this!I love the Cocteau twins, and Dead Can Dance, and would be perfectly okay with the world if Taylor Swift drifted musically in that direction more.
She 100% made a sad bastard album and as a certified sad bastard I am here for it.
I long ago gave up any pretenses about not liking Swift’s music. Plus she’s adorable.
I sincerely have respect for Swift; she’s talented, in charge of her faculties, writes her own music, and just seems like a generally decent human being.SO. I mean no disrespect when I say this album is bland as Elmer’s glue. A couple good friends of mine are big Swift fans, so I gave the album a listen so we could chat about it… I don’t mean any offense toward the people who love the album, as I’m clearly in the minority, but I just found this release to be 17 incredibly one-note songs. Very decent lyrics! Can not deny her that, she does know how to write a song, I’m just finding this album to be a snoozer…… that coming from someone who likes sad songs and movie soundtracks, so… pop music is where her talents seem to be best suited, and more power and success to her for that, but I just feel the need to take a nap after giving the album a second listen.
. . . and I’ve eaten my share of Elmer’s Glue . . .
We already knew that. We’ve read a lot of your posts.
You just admitted you read a lot of my posts!
I think people who latch onto her lyrics (they’re not poetic enough for me to proclaim her brilliant, but I admire the specificity of her writerly voice) sometimes forgive her for not being the tunesmith they wish she was. “Cardigan” is a bad lead single for an album that’s supposed to be a work of genius so my hopes aren’t high, you know?That said, I understand the fun of being a fan of a prolific artist. I’m in my thirties and I still haven’t figured out how to find music these days (mostly one-off singles in the Apple/iTunes Store? And you listen to them on your phone?) so I won’t begrudge someone for loving an artist who puts out full albums every year or two. That’s where a lot of the Lana fandom comes from.
I think people who latch onto her lyrics (they’re not poetic enough for me to proclaim her brilliant, but I admire the specificity of her writerly voice)Thank you. I was starting to feel like an alien, because I don’t understand the hype. I can’t relate to any of the songs on an emotional or musical level. The lyrics are elegantly crafted, but the messages do not resonate with me.
I think she overuses prosaic detail as a proxy for genuine insight. It’s a variation on a hook, I get it, especially for someone who churns out the sheer volume of work that she does. I do think she nails it sometimes. “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter,” “it turns out freedom ain’t nothing but missing you,” and basically all of “Style” and “New Romantics” prove that she’s no slouch. But I also don’t sense that her life experiences or her manner of processing those experiences make her the best interpreter, if that makes sense.
As someone that doesn’t know anything about music, I appreciate your clear and even-handed explanations.
Exactly
True, but I feel like those details make the experience of whoever’s voice you’re hearing through her songs relatable to just about anyone. I think especially about her older songs written from the perspective of a teenaged girl, which I’ve never been but found the raw emotion underneath them quite moving.
Thank you totally agree with this. I think her lyrics can be clever, but I don’t think they’re always particularly deep or insightful. There’s a lot of pop music I really enjoy (I have been playing Chromatica almost non-stop this summer), but I think the poptimism around Taylor Swift is so insane. There are just so many better lyricists out there, like Sharon Van Etten or Phoebe Bridgers that provoke real emotion and insight for me. I think Taylor Swift is perfectly fine and there a lot of her songs I like (Blank Space, The Archer, Delicate), but I don’t think she’s some kind of lyrical genius a la Dylan or Joni.
There’s definitely a commenting bloc that emerges whenever Taylor releases new music…these winsome people who insist that Taylor is a pure WRITER. I have to admire her – she got through eight albums (the standard record deal is for seven) and maintained her popularity for the entire run. That never happens. Most major label artists never even make it past the first album or two. But yeah. There are better lyricists in country music (Jon Pardi is shockingly and consistently good) and among Taylor’s more immediate peers, Niall Horan twists the knife better. “Do you hate the weekend cause nobody’s calling?” from “Put a Little Love on Me” is a bigger gut punch than all of Taylor’s lyrics combined I guess there just aren’t a whole lot of consistently strong lyricists out there right now, and it’s telling that her melodies aren’t mentioned very often. Yeahhhhh I could go on forever. So I guess it’s just about learning to spot the teenage fans who flood the comments sections, because they skew the perception of what the public/pop culture people really think.
I mean, I don’t exactly disagree with you, but the glowing reviews for this album from generally respected publications seem to indicate that it’s not just the teenagers who love Swift.
I’m not a fan of the sort of pop culture discourse wherein fans try to force other people to love their faves. I also think we need to watch out for signs that critics are pulling their praises from a press release.
I’m not sure what it means to “force” someone to like an artist. I don’t know how that would work.I think we also need to be careful to avoid the sort of pop culture discourse which assumes that just because we don’t like something, the people who do like it must be disingenuous or “teenagers” (ie. immature and unsophisticated).
…the poptimism around Taylor Swift is so insane. There are just so many
better lyricists out there, like Sharon Van Etten or Phoebe Bridgers
that provoke real emotion and insight for me.Van Etten runs laps around Taylor.
People have a weird desire to elevate her. Call me a surly old man but I don’t see it. I think she’s fine and even good, but she’s not on the level of true pop iconoclasts like Michael Jackson or Prince, and she’s not even as good on the music side as, say, Carly Rae Jepsen, no matter what her sales figures say. She seems like a reasonably strong songwriter in her lane, and a clever-but-not-too-deep lyricist. That’s the best I can do. Other than that she seems like a beneficiary of being the right kind of star at the right time.
She grabs fans young. Van Etten is clearly more talented in general, but writes for adults. Swift establishes people (especially women) as fans while they are still developing emotionally, and speaks to their experiences very well.
I’m not a big Swift fan, but I like her stuff more often than not. That being said, “Cardigan” sounds like a warmed-over Lana Del Rey cover.
I listened to it again and I think it’s almost an aggressively bad song with an immature central metaphor.
She’s not a go-to artist for me, but have a ton of respect for what she’s achieved, and think she’s written many a banger. Appreciate her flexing in a (slightly) different space, and think she (all artists) should have the latitude to try something new. That said, nothing is hitting me between the teeth. It’s so same-y and listless and perfectly fine. Kind of, sorry(!), Starbucks-y. It’s an album that, on paper, I woulda guessed might be more successful than I’m finding it. That said (again), I think it probably fits into her body of work just fine, and is so inoffensive it’d be hard to fault someone putting on in the background.
I feel similarly. I really want to like her stuff but jesus, I don’t think I’ve managed to make it through a whole album… It’s just all very forgettable. Except for Shake It Off, which I would happily have play at my funeral.
Although I’ll someone to fast-forward through that terrible rappy bit.
Yeah. 16 songs written and recorded in less than year. That’s not enough time. It’s all the same stuff she’s been singing throughout the entirety of her career: love songs with cliche lyrics that give an air of authenticity but are likely fake. She’s 30. She needs to grow up and talk about something else. Why is she singing about the time she was throwing pennies in a pool? I laiughed when I heard that lyric.
Also, Bon Iver is isn’t that great, so having him on your album doesn’t impress me much.
Honestly, I would rather she stick to the pop stuff than try to be “authentic”. At the end of the day, this is still “authenticity” by committee, anything that might actually be real or interesting was ironed out 2 board meetings ago. When you iron out out all the wrinkles on a plastic pop song, you can still get a great melody, but when you do it in this pseudo-folk/pseudo-chamber-pop context it just makes everything bland and unmemorable. And Taylor doesn’t have a voice with enough a character to get away with a bland song like Adele or Beyonce do. She really needs that pop melody.
Jesus Christ. Can we stop judging this work – which feels thoughtful, not over-thought, and considered, not calculated – on our assumptions about its maker? I don’t believe there’s any ‘board meetings’ here, just a woman with the talent and, yes, the contacts and resources to do whatever the fuck she wants, on her own terms. And frankly, if you can’t see ‘cardigan’ and ‘invisible string’ for the great, if intimate pop songs they are, maybe set this one aside. Because your assumptions (or prejudices) are clearly clouding your judgment.
Thank Shane, but a lot of them dont get how good she actually is they try and reference her with something or someone else, Who she is, she is Taylor Swift good in her own right at what she does whether it the country she started at or the Pop music she then dabbled in or this new folkie Taylor.
If you’re assuming Taylor Swift’s the one major popstar without major calculation, then that’s you making an assumption about the maker because that’s sure as hell not how pop music works and there’s no evidence that she’s the exception to the rule. The music is certainly not evidence of that.Cardigan and Invisible String are no better or worse than every other bromidic song on the album.
She didn’t even start working on this album until May, according to a Vulture interview with Aaron Dessner. I wouldn’t call that “major calculation”. To me, this album is clearly more than just Taylor doing indie-folk cosplay. It’s a legitimate TS album with her typical massive hooks but also with more lyrical and instrumental subtlety than I realized she was capable of. It’s a TS album for grownups, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it.
Uh, ok? When recording started doesn’t address what I said. That’s like saying pizza is delicious because chocolate has cocoa powder. One doesn’t inform the other.If you think this is a TS album for grown ups then you’re likely not an adult. It’s not bad to like shiny children’s music, just like some of the best movies are Pixar films, but at least her her earlier children’s music was catchy.
Jesus Christ. Can we stop judging this work…There’s a frickin’ letter grade on this page, yo. I’m a fan of TS, but find both of the tracks you mentioned to be … fiiine. Mileage varies.
I’m wondering if Shane walks into restaurants and demands they stop serving food.
Read the rest of that sentence.“on our assumptions about its maker?“You’re taking his words out of context.
Fine.Jesus Christ. Can we stop judging this work – which feels thoughtful, not over-thought, and considered, not calculated – on our assumptions about its maker?Sentence part 1: Stop judging the album!
Sentence part 2: Here’s my personal, subjective response to the album!
Sentence part 3: Don’t judge it based on assumptions about its maker, even though I just declared it to feel considered, not calculated, which speaks directly to the intent of the maker—oh, but it just feels that way. Cool.We can make assumptions about the creator’s intent. We do it all the time. That’s part of discussing and evaluating art. This person (who went on to start another thread complaining the letter grade wasn’t high enough) just doesn’t agree with the OP, and is playing the “you’re doing it wrong, and therefore stop!” card.I didn’t need to include the full sentence, because it’s roughly as interesting / useful as saying nothing.
JFC sis, it’s a Taylor Swift album. Maybe take a walk or something.
See above:roughly as interesting / useful as saying nothing.
That’s ok, it was really boring the first time.
I feel a lot less boring after glancing at your comment history. Your whole deal is … tedious, troll-y one-liners? And shitty pixie bangs? Maybe this can help, sis.
Can we stop judging this work – which feels thoughtful, not over-thought, and considered, not calculated – on our assumptions about its maker? I don’t believe there’s any ‘board meetings’ here, just a woman with the talent and, yes, the contacts and resources to do whatever the fuck she wants, on her own terms. You’re literally just saying the same things as if they’re different, just using synonyms.
I have no idea what this means. Though I feel obliged to point out the obvious fact that those words are not, in fact, synonyms.
Of course you don’t, dear.
You realize at this stage in her career Swift IS the board meeting, right?It might be calculated, but it’s entirely her calculation, and in that sense it’s “authentic.” There is no one telling Swift what kind of music she has to make at this point.
I’m just hear to say that someone who went country because they “grew up on a farm” and it was a goddamn Christmas tree farm is actually somehow more whitebread than Toby Keith. There are few things more bourgeois.
This is an extremely popular perspective that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me in this context. Even if you ignore the fact that Aaron Dessner said multiple times that her label wasn’t even informed of the project until it was complete, we’re still talking about someone who found massive success with an entirely self-written album 10 years ago and is known to publicly feud with industry figures who fuck her over or try to interfere with her autonomy. Yes, pop music is a product first and foremost (hence why she made like 8 million store/merch bundles to go with this album instead of releasing it for PWYC on Bandcamp or whatever), but looking beyond any general bias about pop stars I see no reason to believe this album isn’t “authentic” to what she wanted to write and the kind of music she wanted to make. Of course, that doesn’t mean it has to be good – there’s plenty of “authentic” music that sucks ass. But giving this album the “created by committee” attitude just seems…false. If it feels that way it’s more likely just the result of Taylor herself being part of the industry machine for so long.(That said, Taylor’s previous work has been extremely and transparently calculated so I understand that perception of her generally…but this album has clearly been different beast for her in terms of how it was made and her attitude towards releasing it.)
“I don’t understand how people see her music as calculated. Sure, her previous work has been extremely and transparently calculated, but all that does is establish a pattern to which there’s no fact contradicting.”
“At the end of the day, this is still “authenticity” by committee, anything that might actually be real or interesting was ironed out 2 board meetings ago”
I started down this line of thinking and I realized that I just don’t like contemporary pop music and that’s okay. There’s much less difference between these songs and Swift’s previous songs that I didn’t care for than there is between this and anything I would consider genuinely authentic or organic or performance focused. It’s okay. This music isn’t for me and no one is trying to make me listen to it. I don’t need to have an opinion about a new Taylor Swift album and no one is asking for it.
I disagree somewhat. I was afraid that it would be pretentious and posing as fuck, but this album is surprisingly good. In terms of authenticity I imagine she had some “guidance” from Bon Iver, Aaron Dressner, or whomever William Bowery is. She could have exercised complete leverage and put out the self-indulgent bomb My December was for Kelly Clarkson, but she was smarter than that. This ain’t Morrison’s Astral Weeks, or Mitchell’s Blue, but it’s smart of her to go a different direction again to turn heads.
According to Aaron Dessner, her label knew about the album “hours” before it launched, so there were literally five people who were knowingly involved with making the album. No board meetings needed.
Yes, I know how myth making works. Do you really think the label paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to record an album they didn’t know existed?Taylor: Hey guys, I need a ton of money.Label: Yeah sure… wait a minute, is this to record an album?Taylor: Psh! No! It’s for, uh, shoes. Yeah. I’m buying shoes.Label: Oh, ok. Here you go.
I’m not sure it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few relatively obscure indie artists to record some instrumentation, or for Taylor to record herself playing a piano at home, and I’m assuming someone of her means is capable of covering costs.
Most of these tracks have around 13 instruments on them. There’s 21 credited musicians, 12 credited technical personnel, 21 credited recording studios, and 3 mixing locations. This is not simple, lo-fi, or cheap.
This deserves a hell of a lot better than a B+.
AV Club’s letter grades have never been a reliable guide to anything, regardless of the year, subject or reviewer. Pouring this kind of praise on an album and then giving it B+ is par for the course.
A-?
Rolling Stone gave it 4 1/2 stars, if that means anything today.
Rolling Stone gives 4+ stars every time Springsteen or U2 farts. A positive review from them means they think it’s good PR to give a positive review.
How the FUCK did Annie write a multi-paragraph review of this (terrific) album without mentioning “betty?”
BETTY!?
Nice tits. Just show them already.
Media:
2012-2015 – we love Taylor Swift
2016-2017 – we hate Taylor Swift, she’s definitely a Republican and she said she had a great year on Instagram, burn her
2019-2020 – we love Taylor Swift, her new album is a masterpiece and we’re going to pretend us dragging her relentlessly in 2016-2017 for the most innocuous nonsense never happened
was anybody else a little disappointed that she drags out “betty” for 3/4 of the song before naming the main character as a male? Like, she could have even had the name be “Jamie” or something, but to write what sounds like a queer love song and then yank the rug out when it is so clearly meant to shade that way earlier seems suspect.But then I often find Swift suspect, she seems to brag about being two-faced and other bad behavior rather often.
I loved this album. A lot of it sounded like it could’ve come from Taylor in 2008, which is exactly what I’d been looking for in her recent albums. 1989 is still my favorite album of hers, but this was great to hear.
Who even is Taylor Swift if she is not writing songs dissing her ex-boyfriends
She should throw one on at the end, titled something “Oh Yeah – and Fuck That Guy” just to make the record complete.
special bonus track: “the guy that plays Loki is a wanker”
“Taylor, can you tell us where you drew inspiration for a song so ridiculously specific?”
That honestly sounds like a banger.
I’m having difficulty commenting on this for some reason. I type out a long paragraph, take a look at it and ‘nope’, I delete the text and start typing again. I guess I’m just not meant to have a coherent opinion on Ms. Swift’s music.
We appreciate the insight into your creative process.
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Baser on what I’ve read it feels like I have to be up on the Swiftie Cinematic Universe to really get something out of this.
“Her work ethic has always been admirable, largely because it’s so immune to outside distractions.”i think means “white millionaire unaffected by pandemic or social upheaval,” which, duh.
Not a single mention of “betty.”
You should be ashamed.
I’m a fan of 1989, which, hot take, I think is her most cohesive work. It’s the one album that hit the best balance between her Country Music-Journal lyricism and pop stylings. And I like when she does the little “chk!” sound on Blank Check—that’s fun. I’m not sure if this album hits quite that synthesis or balance. Her voice is very nice, and there’s a melancholy to the songs which I’m into, but…I dunno. It doesn’t quite get there for me. Am I going to listen to it a few more times? Yeah.
How did you come to the conclusion that this was a B+ album? What’s your criteria? How did your mediocre site manage to give her the lowest grade or score of any major or indie publications? This is by far the best album of 2020.