Ranking Every Song on Taylor Swift’s Evermore
“What must it be like to grow up that beautiful?”
Taylor Swift’s announcement that Folklore had a sister album that would be dropping in mere hours back in December rocketed through my brain at the same time I was realizing Folklore was my favorite album ever made. So, it may have taken me a while, but after tons and tons of listens, I finally feel confident running through each song from TS9 one by one. And boy, does Evermore have some truly underrated peaches of songs.
On Folklore, I loved every song with some matching the extreme end of my love and others falling on the “I just barely love this” end. Evermore, on the other hand, has fewer songs on the latter end of the spectrum, as well as fewer songs on the former end. (There are still exceptional tracks, though, mind you.) What it has, instead, is more songs directly in the middle. It’s an incredibly consistent album with a solid thirteen of seventeen tracks occupying the status of “re-listenable gems,” at a minimum. And just as I did with Folklore (and because my brain is broken because seriously, this changes every day or every hour), it’s time to rank them all!
17. Cowboy Like Me
I get what “Cowboy Like Me” is supposed to be. I know that it’s all about that vibe of trotting through a saloon in the old west and striking a poker face/shoot-em-up romance. It just does nothing for me. Taylor Swift is an undeniable all-timer, but this song is bizarrely lifeless and built on cliches with no wordplay. (“I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve / Takes one to know one / You’re a cowboy like me” is the chorus. There’s not really anything there.) It could’ve been dropped from Evermore and it wouldn’t have been missed. It’s my least favorite TS track since “End Game.” Sorry, stans.
Best Lyrics: “Now I’m waiting by the phone / Like I’m sitting in an airport bar.”
16. It’s Time to Go
“It’s Time to Go” is better than “Cowboy Like Me,” but only marginally so. As one of the bonus tracks on Evermore, it’s for the best that it’s not a part of the main album, but does it need to be in the mix at all? There’s nothing to really hold onto in this song. No real hook, no graspable melody. It has a few decent moments, but it’s just a strangely low-energy, low-passion track on which to end the album. Not my thing!
Best Lyrics: “Fifteen years, fifteen million tears / Begging ’til my knees bled.”
15. Closure
From “Closure” on, the rest of the songs on this list, in my estimation, range from “good” to “first ballot hall of famers.” “Closure” is the first one I’d feel comfortable labeling as truly “good,” even if I definitely didn’t feel that way on the first listen. The music was jarring at first with a heavy percussion element that felt wildly out of place (and, as some speculated, a hint towards her genre-centric future). The liner notes and lyrical write-outs, however, really helped the story of “Closure” connect with me. (Putting “closure” in quotations helps the oozing sarcasm come across more strongly.) I found it quite relatable when considering letters I’d received in the past. Plus, the piano makes for a sweet counterbalance to the aggressive drums at the jump. “Closure” gets the thumbs up!
Best Lyrics: “Yes, I got your letter / Yes, I’m doing better / I know that it’s over, I don’t need your / ‘Closure.’”
14. Long Story Short
My take on “Long Story Short” is that it is incredibly rewarding for the die-hard Swifties to embark on an Avengers: Endgame-esque trot through Swift lore and history by unpacking the entirety of the 1989 era (with a clever “Wildest Dreams” allusion) through to the Lover era in just one song. The shift into “Now I’m all about you” can feel like a victorious one for those who labored and stayed loyal to Swift for all these years now. I’m just sorry I didn’t jump aboard the ship of her fan community until I heard “Paper Rings” on Lover. But it’s a fun time all the same! Through Nora Princiotti’s (I’m a Princi-hottie) and Nathan Hubbard’s new Ringer podcast Every Single Album: Taylor Swift, I hope to connect more with this song soon.
Best Lyrics: “Pushed from the precipice / Clung to the nearest lips / Long story short, it was the wrong guy / Now I’m all about you.”
13. Evermore
I do agree with the teens that “Evermore,” despite being the title track, is not actually the best choice to end the album. I believe that “Happiness” is more of a resolution to the thematic feelings Swift is working through on these pandemic albums and “Evermore” seems to leave a few dangling threads in its wake. Still, though, it’s an excellent track when considered in a vacuum! It’s a demonstration of the Justin Vernon singing I expected to hear on “Exile” (he goes much higher on “Evermore”) and has a really interested identity re-forming halfway through. The entirety of Evermore, in addition to being an underrated collection in Swift’s discography (even still, with its high-quality reviews), ranks in the upper echelon of Taylor and her experimentation. “Evermore” shows there’s still room to play around with the conventions she’s already mastered, instead of venturing to new genre forays.
Best Lyrics: “I replay my footsteps on each stepping stone / Trying to find the one where I went wrong / Writing letters / Addressed to the fire.”
12. Marjorie
I know the direct comparison between the sister albums is to see “Marjorie” as Evermore’s version of “Epiphany.” They occupy the same listing on the albums and the former is named for Taylor Swift’s grandmother with the latter paying homage to her grandfather’s time in war. However, for me, “Marjorie” is Evermore’s “Seven.” That is, I tend to listen for music over lyrics upon first album visits, but when I doubled back to both “Marjorie” and “Seven” and really focused on the lyrics, I was overwhelmed with chills throughout my body. “Marjorie” is lyrically brilliant and contains an all-time TS-goosebumps-inducing moment when her own grandmother’s operatic singer chimes in to bring the anthem to a close. May we all see such beautiful tributes to our most cherished loved ones and our fleeting lives.
Best Lyrics: “The autumn chill that wakes me up / You loved the amber skies so much / Long limbs and frozen swims / You’d always go past where our feet could touch / And I complained the whole way there / The car ride back and up the stairs / I should’ve asked you questions / I should’ve asked you how to be.”
11. No Body, No Crime
One of my favorite YouTube channels, Chats and Reacts, really provided an inadvertent crash course on HAIM for me when it was revealed that they’d be collaborating with Taylor on “No Body, No Crime.” Em and Bonny love HAIM almost as much as they love TS, so their enthusiasm was infectious for this story-centric, country-adjacent jam. It’s a rip-rollicking tear through the theme of infidelity (a popular one among the genres Swift continues to dance among) with plenty of fun Easter eggs for both the Swifties and the Este, Danielle, and Alana stans. Not to mention, it might have the catchiest hook on the entire album? And contains the classic T-Swift wordplay where she changes the contractions and tenses of words around? Just great shit all around from everyone.
Best Lyrics: “Este wasn’t there / Tuesday night at Olive Gardеn / At her job or anywhere.”
10. Tolerate It
Track fives are obviously famous in the TS realm for being the songs that make cold cuts out of the hearts of listeners. “Tolerate It,” like many other non-stolen masters/non-Joe Alwyn anthems on Folklore and Evermore, plays with more impersonal storytelling tropes to beautiful effect by demonstrating that Taylor Swift in a third-person perspective is arguably even more remarkable than the first-person narratives that defined much of her early rise to global superstardom. (Shoutout to the second-person ones, too: “You Are in Love.”) “Tolerate It” takes its cues from Rebecca and portrays the vulnerability of a one-sided relationship with heartbreaking aplomb. It’s a worthy entry into the world-wrecking fifth tracks.
Best Lyrics: “Took this dagger in me and removed it / Gain the weight of you, then lose it / Believe me, I could do it.”
9. Happiness
As aforementioned, I feel like “Happiness” really brings Taylor to the closest possible place to peace with the entire betrayal/disaster surrounding her masters. Now, she’s in the middle of re-releasing her re-recordings, so it might be time to moving on, even if she’s (rightfully) not quite ready to forgive, necessarily. “Happiness” is a moving ballad of acceptance and remorse, nostalgia and hope. It’s a story of someone moving on after a tumultuous end to a relationship (interpreter’s choice in terms of how personal/romantic you find the song’s lyrical elements to be), while also reforming themselves and accepting the hurt as a part of their future because the love was always a part of their past. The song hardly sounds happy on the surface, but just as Evermore, as a whole, covers a hidden sadness under more euphoric soundscapes (in contrast to Folklore, which wrung joy from the melancholy), “Happiness” parallels its interiority with the knowledge that the most positive feelings must come from within. Learning all the time. Even as evidenced by the fact that this song wasn’t even finished a week prior to the album’s release on December 10.
Best Lyrics*: “Past the curses and cries / Beyond the terror in the nightfall / Haunted by the look in my eyes / That would’ve loved you for a lifetime / Leave it all behind / And there is happiness.”
(*Though, the lyrics, “I hope she’ll be a beautiful fool / Who takes my spot next to you / No, I didn’t mean that / Sorry, I can’t see facts through all of my fury,” always remind me of this scene on The Office.)
8. Right Where You Left Me
Not too many of the songs on Folklore or Evermore are classically “bops” or “jams” or “bangers” in the traditional concept of Taylor Swift. (That being said, a “Folk-lover-more” concert tour would be worth selling any body part to attend. The Grammys performance proved how amazing that would be.) “Right Where You Left Me,” the best of the two bonus tracks, could definitely be classified as a “bop,” though. But it’s an Evermore bop so it’s just, like, that much better. Anyway, on my first listen, it sounded like a song that could’ve been plucked straight from the Speak Now era, but as I’ve developed a deeper relationship with it, I appreciate it more as a standalone track. Her voice has undoubtedly become a full-blown instrument on its own by this point, but it strikes me as so melodic and full of flow here. The thematic territory of a grand romance left forever — impossibly out of reach — is a beautiful one to explore, always. Taylor is uniquely equipped to dabble in it, too. Not to mention, considering how plagued by the idea of change I currently am, it bowled me over from the minute I heard her briefly skirt by the word, “Help.” It says everything in just one word. She’s always been a maestro of an entire story in a single lyric. How about a single word? Great shit. Should’ve been on the original album.
Best Lyrics: “Help, I’m still at the restaurant / Still sitting in a corner I haunt.”
7. Dorothea
The context surrounding “Dorothea” is unlike any in the entire oeuvre of Taylor Swift. After all, the melody comes directly from “Give It to Teddy,” a cover of a Bob’s Burgers song conducted by The National in 2017. While Swift may have been inspired by Someone Great for “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” it seems like “Dorothea” is the first time the Belcher family made their way into her catalog. Regardless, it’s a beautiful track and I’m more than happy to see it repurposed as a follow-up to “‘Tis the Damn Season,” from the perspective of the spurned. (More on that later.) There is a lot of simplicity in “Dorothea” and I can see how it’s not everyone’s bag. But the melody deeply moves me and I’m touched by just the first key I hear every time. I also like the idea of lilting up onto tip-toes whenever she hits the “ah” of “Dorotheeeeee-ah!” It’s sweet and it makes me feel sweet!
Best Lyrics: “Hey, Dorothea, do you ever stop and think about me? / When it was calmer, skipping the prom just to piss off your mom and her pageant schemes / And damn, Dorothea, they all wanna be ya / But are you still the same soul I met under the bleachers?”
6. Champagne Problems
Currently the song I’m learning to play on piano, “Champagne Problems” is just gorgeous. It’s far from the most complex, intricate, or even insightful Taylor Swift song. But it works so well, for me, from a musical standpoint. The melody of the chorus is just such a stunner. It’s a simple progression that uses the same four or five notes, but it really is just one of the most gorgeous melodies I’ve ever heard. Plus, I’m always a sucker for a T-Swift runner. Will she ever top the breathless bridge of “Cardigan”? Perhaps not. But “Champagne Problems” builds similarly and climaxes with the line, “She would have made such a lovely bride / What a shame she’s fucked in the head.” Like, oof. Imagine showing that lyric to Fearless Taylor. I love her earnestness.
Best Lyrics: “How evergreen, our group of friends / Don’t think we’ll say that word again / And soon they’ll have the nerve to deck the halls / That we once walked through.”
5. Willow
So far, three songs have been released as singles from Evermore: “No Body, No Crime,” “Coney Island,” and, of course, the lead single, “Willow.” In a matter of days, “Willow” received a witchy remix, which is a fun, Stevie Nicks-adjacent territory for Swift to glide her hand over. Clearly, the accessible, catchy nature of “Willow” makes it prime for Swift single territory. And while we may never get over the loss of “Cruel Summer” as a single (forever leaving me skeptical about which tracks she does choose to receive maximum play), “Willow” is easily one of the best lead singles she’s ever crafted. Again, the story is not too complex in “Willow.” She’s using naturalistic imagery to demonstrate how much she loves a man (her poetic phrase ascribed to him is “That’s my man,” so it’s really not a reach). It also lends credence to her statement that Folklore is for spring and summer and Evermore is for fall and winter. I think it’s all blended, but songs like this make me understand what she means. But “Willow” succeeds for its proof that so many melodies are well-suited to her voice and for the fact that it’s a perfect place to pick up the invisible string of Folklore and keep the era rolling with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner and a whole slew of indie collaborators. When I made a playlist to combine these two albums together, a la R U Talkin’ R.E.M. Re: Me?, I slotted in “The Lakes” to kick it off, when viewing them in a vacuum. In reality, “The 1” is the perfect bridge between Lover and Folklore and she was right to start the album with it, just as she was right to begin Evermore with “Willow.” Plus, that aforementioned Grammys performance is a shimmering example of what this song is capable with an even more pounding percussion and TS chest voice. Breathtaking!
Best Lyrics: “Wait for the signal, and I’ll meet you after dark / Show me the places where the others gave you scars.” (I chose this one because it gives me major Othello vibes. We know she loves to dabble in Shakespeare.)
4. Gold Rush
There is no denying that Evermore was closer to a Swift-Dessner creation than a Swift-Antonoff. But one of the industry’s most prolific producers still managed to help curate two of the top four tracks on Evermore. Beginning here, “Gold Rush” is Jack Antonoff’s top contribution to the album. There are tinges of Lana Del Rey’s wistful lyricism in “Gold Rush,” as well as a melodic progression similar to that of Lorde’s. (Perhaps “Green Light”?) But it still comes across wholly Swiftian. “Gold Rush” is fully a dreamscape, even down to the fantasy-land embodiment provided by the slowed opening verse leading to Swift “jumping” into the pool of choral color commentary and 1849 allusions. The one knock against “Gold Rush,” the story of the deep end of thoughts that come from a youthful crush? It’s too short! There’s so much brilliance packed into three minutes; it could have easily gone on much longer. But Swift is always at her best when she leaves us wanting more. Well, that, and when she pens lyrics like, “What must it be like to grow up that beautiful?” Because that just might be the best one in the whole bunch of poetry poured into Evermore like liquid gold.
Best Lyrics: “What must it be like / To grow up that beautiful? / With your hair falling into place like dominoes / My mind turns your life into folklore.”
(Fun little name drop there at the end!)
3. Coney Island
When the titles of the songs on the album first dropped (still a euphoric surprise), “Coney Island” was the one for which I was most excited. Don’t get me wrong, I saw one of the Christmassy titles on there. I just didn’t want to get my hopes up too high, after I’d practically worshiped “Christmas Tree Farm.” As such, I gravitated towards “Coney Island,” which is evocative of theme parks, fun, friendships, and summer to me. (All playgrounds TS thrives within.) Obviously, there is the major Coney Island in New York that most people are aware of, but it’s also one of those monikers that seems to be found around the world, too, in many different locations. I trusted the song to be an ethereal experience, while still being accessible. She always manages to do this and she always manages to articulate a feeling I didn’t even know I had or nostalgia for a memory that isn’t mine. “Coney Island” encapsulates all of those notions, at a minimum. It’s an almost haunting melody, presented against the story of a long-term commitment crumbling on the sands of a pier. She drops “delicate” in an offensive manner and her voice just sounds like honey against The National’s Matt Berninger, who blends with her like no one since Gary Lightbody. The imagery used is the kind that feels like it belongs to a daily vernacular, but also isn’t that common in popular music. Merry-go-rounds, birthdays, arcade rings. It all feels so specific, but so enchanting. “Coney Island,” to me, feels like her poetic storytelling abilities are still finding new zeniths to reach. Gorgeous song and one I’m going to treasure for the rest of my life. It just delights me whenever I hear those opening beats, distant and scantily produced. I also genuinely feel that the way she sings, “And I’m sitting on a bench in Coney Island / Wondering where did my baby go?” might be my all-time favorite lyric that I’ve heard sung. I get goosebumps every time I hear it; it’s so fun to sing along to; the first time I heard it, I started welling up and had to pause Spotify to regroup. I wasn’t even entirely sure what she had said, I just knew it rocked me deeply and emotionally. “Coney Island” forever; I’ll happily make it my centerfold.
Best Lyrics: “I’m on a bench in Coney Island / Wondering where did my baby go? / The fast times, the bright lights, the merry go / Sorry for not making you my centerfold.”
2. Ivy
Considering “Betty” was easily one of Folklore’s best tracks both on the first and the four hundredth listen, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Evermore’s Swift-Antonoff-Dessner collab is also one of the aces. “Ivy” has to be one of the strongest contenders for the “Yeah, sure, male perspective” crowd, but no matter who is the agent of infidelity in the song, it’s an all-time TS banger because it is equal parts idyllic and simple. There’s no otherworldly bridge or “How did no one come up with this yet?” melody. It’s just a pleasant song with pleasant vibes and some gorgeous natural imagery that makes good on some of her wishes from “The Lakes.” The vocal runs are also understated throughout “Ivy,” but they’re exactly the type of vocal dalliances that make sing-along fans think, I could sing along to that. Before we all realized how tricky those maneuvers actually are, of course. That’s the beauty of “Ivy”; it’s deceptive. It contains simple songwriting samples on the surface, but has so much more percolating beneath to infer, like a Hemingway short story. This is where the idea of Little Women-esque imagery perhaps becomes its most pronounced, too. I’m endlessly awed by her songwriting abilities and “Ivy” makes it all seem so effortless. As if one would think, Of course she wrote this song. This has always been within her. What an artist.
Best Lyrics: “I’d live and die for moments that we stole / On begged and borrowed time / So tell me to run / Or dare to sit and watch what we’ll become.”
1. ’Tis the Damn Season
I’m going to love this song for the rest of my life. Granted, that’s true for all of them, but “‘Tis the Damn Season” is so special and so specific and so fully realized. Evermore was such an unparalleled experience on the first listen that I had no idea what my top track was, but in a matter of mere days, I found myself returning to “‘Tis the Damn Season” over and over again. Yes, that’s partly because the album dropped in the thick blanket of December and I am always a sucker for new holiday tunes (or, in this case, alternative holiday tunes). But it’s also because the song is so clearly one of the most glorious ever written. The concept may seem shallow at first glance: a woman (“Dorothea,” most likely) returns to her hometown and hooks up with an ex (read: “choosing violence”). But then there’s so many different ways to interpret the emotional motivation of the song’s speaker. It can seem partially empowering and like a step forward into moving past something tragic or heartbreaking. Or it can seem like an elegy and regret for the disintegration of what was once cherished. All of these elements are underscored by melancholic (but still charged with rawness) percussion and strings sections in the song’s orchestration, leading it to become a truly unconventional holiday song, but one that is still capable of shredding a person’s heart if they feel as deeply as Dorothea seems to. It’s a long way from Judy Garland tearfully singing a ballad in Meet Me in St. Louis, but there’s a direct lineage to be traced there. Even just reflecting on this song is enough to demolish me with goosebumps and there’s just some unspoken element about it that makes the track so, so special to me. Maybe it’s the way it can be seen as a “Back to December” re-up. Maybe it’s the way that it’ll be forever reserved for the best time of year. Maybe it’s the way it addresses change I’m all too terrified to face. No matter what the magic is behind “‘Tis the Damn Season,” it clearly stems from the mind of Taylor Swift. That’s all one needs to know.
Best Lyrics: “So I’ll go back to L.A. and the so-called friends / Who’ll write books about me if I ever make it / And wonder about the only soul / Who can tell which smiles I’m fakin’ / And the heart I know I’m breakin’ is my own / To leave the warmest bed I’ve ever known.”
Even just by writing this, I’ve realized Evermore is vastly better than I gave it credit for in the intro. God save us all for these re-records.
