Soon after things started shutting down in March, a lot of artists were doing stay-at-home live streams. That was one of my favorite parts of a pretty dark and uncertain time. The world seemed to be falling apart in a lot of ways, and I seemed to be losing a lot personally. But some of my favorite artists were setting up cameras in their homes, pulling out their guitars, and singing some songs that had been an integral part of my life for years. Josh Ritter, Dave Matthews, Evan Stephens Hall (of Pinegrove), Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie)…they all kept me grounded when I really needed it.
One of the songs I remember most during that time was Taylor Swift’s performance of “Soon You’ll Get Better,” which she played for the Global Citizen’s One World: Together at Home benefit special. Stripped down and full of empathy, it was an incredibly moving performance that made me remember how talented Taylor is and how much her voice has been a part of the last ten years of my life. I’m not a super-fan or anything. I rarely put on full albums of hers. But Taylor has been there in my periphery for over a decade now, writing some of the best pop albums of this century. I’d put Red, 1989, and Lover up against pretty much any other album made in the 2010s when it comes to pop appeal and emotional impact. She’s a true master of the form.
But the surprise new album she dropped Friday, folklore, is something altogether new. It’s not power pop. It’s not even pop. It’s Taylor Swift carving out new territory and occupying that space with striking ease and confidence. It’s an indie album in the vein of Phoebe Bridgers, Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, Mitski, Jay Som, Lucy Dacus, Jenny Lewis, Lana del Rey, Clairo, and so many other phenomenal female performers who have been creating their own power genre over the last few years. I honestly don’t know if this is a turning-point album for Taylor or if it’s just a one-off experiment, but it’s an incredibly comforting and refreshing voice in a year that needed this sound.
Much has been made of the collaborators Taylor has surrounded herself with on this album. Most notably, she called in the help of Aaron Dessner (of The National), Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver), and Jack Antonoff (who co-wrote Lover with her). It’s a phenomenal team. One of the problems with pointing out her supporting cast up front is that it takes too much attention away from what Taylor has accomplished here. She is the heart of these songs, after all. The lyrics and melodies are unmistakably her. But the production influence of Dessner is unmistakable, too. The sonic atmosphere of this album—the strings, piano, crescendos—recalls a lot of The National’s last few albums. Taylor’s vision is clearly the guiding force of this album. But she’s surrounded herself with incredibly talented people here, and it shows.
The core of these songs is strong, and it makes for a coherent, cohesive whole. This is especially impressive given the album’s length. folklore is 16 songs long and clocks in at just over an hour. It’s long by today’s album standards. When that’s the case, there’s always going to be some material that could have been left out or fleshed out a bit more. And that’s the case here. For me, the songs that hit strongest and hardest are “the 1,” “exile,” “cardigan,” “august,” and “betty.” A couple of the other songs, especially near the end of the album, feel like fillers. But honestly, who am I to say what should have been cut? They’re probably somebody else’s favorite songs.
Taylor’s lyrics on this album are the best of her career, but what really becomes clear a few songs in is just how vivid and resonant the overall soundscape of folklore is. The instrumentation as a whole is better than anything I’ve ever heard from Taylor on any her albums (including 1989, which I didn’t think could be topped). It’s rich and full, but it also comes across as reserved and intimate. It feels like an album of quiet reflections, but it also feels like a full expression of pain and loss that welcomes every single sound it takes to flesh out that expression.
Most of all, this is an album about the impossibility of endings. We hear a lot about “closure” in our lives—how it’s necessary for making peace with loss and hurt. But real life tells us something different about endings. They’re never simple, they’re always emotionally confusing and devastating, and closure is an absolute fabrication. As Taylor says in “my tears ricochet” (an eye-rolling title, granted, but a great song), “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace.”
We can walk away from friends and lovers, but there’s always lingering doubt…a sense that things are unfinished. There's hardly ever a clean break, and the ghosts of what could have been haunt us long after things are supposedly over. “the 1” makes that clear from the start of the album. Taylor sings “You know the greatest loves of all time are over now,” but we don’t ever really believe that because we’re all busy trying to build our own and make them work. Yes, they all end. But they keep us alive when we’re in the middle of them. And there’s just such a profound sense of joy and sadness packed into that tension and that realization.
It's an idea that permeates all of folklore. From “the 1” to “exile” to “this is me trying”, this is an album that cuts deep and makes us think about the times when we felt most alive. I don’t think there’s a song that exemplifies that more than “exile,” which is exactly the song I wanted it to be. When I read that Justin Vernon had guested on a song, I hoped they’d find a way to merge their voices instead of just trading verses. By the end of the song, when they’re in an overlapping dialogue with each other, I instinctively and audibly blurted out “good god…” I’ve heard the song probably ten times this weekend, and I feel that swell every time. It’s a masterpiece of a song—one of the absolute best I’ve heard this year.
If I had a bit of advice to anyone approaching this album, it would be to not piece it out into chunks or singles. You need to commit an hour to it after the sun has set and the kids are asleep. Put your day away. Put the remote down. Pour a gin or a bourbon, set a chair out on the porch, put the album on, look up at the sky, and just take it in from start to finish. The only other albums that have made me feel that way this year are Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher and Waxahatchee’s St. Cloud, so it’s in fine company. I guess the only real problem I've found with folklore is that it was released in the wrong season. This is an autumn album, and it'll take on new meaning when the air turns cool and the jackets come out. I'm glad we have it now, but I look forward to revisiting it when the outdoors look like the album cover.
I’ve made an end-of-year playlist every year for nearly 10 years now. I keep adding to the list all year, and then I edit it down around Christmastime. And every time Taylor Swift has released an album (with the exception of 2017’s Reputation), I’ve featured her songs pretty heavily in that year’s list. This is undoubtedly going to be true again this year. I have friends who still give me shit about this, but I’ve reached the point where I give zero fucks about that anymore. Taylor Swift is one of the best songwriters of her generation, and she’s at the top of her art right now. folklore might be the start of a new evolution, or it might just be something she needed to get out of her system during a really fucked-up year. Either way, she’s making incredible music and this is probably her finest creation. And when it comes down to it, we’re all just incredibly lucky that she recorded it and put it out there for us to experience. Our world and our shitty, shitty year is better with this music in it.
Comentarios