Here’s the thing about being a swiftie: You tire of the hype, the teaser video promos, the hidden messages in the pre-release singles, and between 11 and 15 tracks of hype and unbridled pop magic. You can have too much of a good thing, as it turns out.
Which is why Madame Swift’s 8th album shines in its complete unwillingness to shine. After years of mining the internet for stripped back performances, unplugged shows of just this 10 time Grammy winner and a guitar or a piano, this Swiftie found a home in Folklore, as, apparently did Taylor Swift. She’s thrown out big synth-y hooks and massive pop production, embittered by an industry and audience that defines a multimillionaire by the relationships she’s been in. She paints a landscape as diverse as that of her home state of Pennsylvania, showing every colour of world-weariness that 30 years on this planet opens the eyes to.
Bon Iver is the only featured artist on the album and that is emblematic of exactly what you think: She embodies the whole indie ‘cabin in the woods’ aesthetic unabashedly, reaching the lower registers of her voice that hit the sweet spot like the umami of the aural palate that maturity brings. Drinking in Justin Vernon’s sexy baritone on ‘exile’, you’re caught off guard by a breathy, soulful murmur that couldn’t be the Taylor Swift that every indie rock boy says represents the death of ‘good music’.
When you are cornered by one of these purists, these patrons of ‘real’ music at a party, you might point them the way of track 15, ‘peace’. When they inevitably decry any merit to this music’s originality, you might suggest a cursory glance at the writing credits of this and a staggering eleven other songs on the album. This will reveal to the (I presume) mansplainer that a good three quarters of this album has been co-written by the guitarist from indie bastion, The National, Aaron Dessner. Dessner also, by the way, says he has “rarely been so inspired by someone”.
My spite for the close-minded aside, you hear the characteristic production and writing that you would hear on a The National album in every crevice of Folklore. In this tapestry of stories from a youth in the spotlight, she discards the glamour of her twenties to mellow down and impart wisdom from a decade and a half of fame (See “When you are young they assume you know nothing” from ‘cardigan’). Tales of love and loss are the staple of any Taylor Swift album, but even here, they come as an elder’s advice, like how she talks infidelity on ‘illicit affairs’, painting a complex picture of an irresistible paramour who brings pain and condescension, but who she’d gladly ruin herself ‘a million little times’ for.
Depth of character comes in waves with this album, owning up to her mistakes in ‘this is me trying’ (“So I got wasted like all my potential; And my words shoot to kill when I’m mad”), but also protesting how any woman standing up for herself is usually labelled crazy in ‘mad woman’. She echoes the Fearless album on ‘betty’ with an adult undertone this time, both in the usage of the word f*ck in the chorus, and in the harmonica under the chorus, lending a country edge to this chirpy lament for a high school friend.
So, what is this album? A product of lockdown boredom? A rebranding as she enters the next decade of her life? A new sound for the 20s as she hits her 30s? I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t care, because I’ve taken one thing from this album: Taylor Swift is going to do exactly what she wants and there’s nothing you can do about it, especially if your name is Kanye West or Scooter Braun. A pitfall of womanhood when it mixes with fame is that who you fuck, who you sit next to, who you wear, tends to take precedence over your craft. Taylor Swift is a songwriter, a musician, a producer and wayyy more than her blonde hair, blue eyes, and boyfriends. In an age where Thom Yorke would happily praise Billie Eilish, where Alanis Morisette would sing about being bi on a Halsey album, I think putting masculinity and misogyny aside might actually show some of us who Taylor Swift really is: A musician’s musician who will write every story she can, tell hers unabashedly and not be subservient to any man or corporation. Listen to folklore and take a page from her book: Grow up. Learn.
