Taylor Swift Just Transcended
“Just like a folk song our love will be passed on.”
Culture same to a standstill during the pandemic. Movies starring James Bond, Natasha Romanoff, and Christopher Nolan as a cinema savior were pushed back indefinitely; Colin Jost was just one of many authors to push back the release of his book to accommodate a promotional tour; Fargo’s fourth season was pulled from FX’s slate while production suspended on many other series. And of course, concerts were canceled (and continue to be, for what could turn into years), including Taylor Swift’s Lover Fests, which were meant to be celebrations of the Lover era, a two-year album cycle that wasn’t expected to wrap until summer 2021.
But when the pandemic came and halted everything, Swift rebuked the idea of dormancy during the quarantine. Lover Fest was off, yes, but she diverged from the slew of musicians holding off their album releases to accommodate tour dates in the future. She even diverged from her two-year cycle model, which had served her successfully in the past. With no alerting to the media, to the fans, or even to her own label, Swift announced on July 23 that Folklore, her eighth studio album, would debut that night. There would still be a single (“Cardigan”), but we wouldn’t hear it for months ahead of the album drop. Instead, it’d join the rest of the songs at launch and would only be accompanied by a music video (shot by Rodrigo Prieto), courtesy of a creative explosion that Swift pulled off in roughly three months of isolation, if not fewer.
Folklore’s rollout and marketing is markedly different from Swift’s tactics in the past. After all, it’s hard to dominate the airwaves during a pandemic. Instead, Swift shot the moon at the end of July and captured the attention of the world to unprecedented records. (She became the first musician ever to debut a song at #1 and an album at #1, among other myriad milestones.) At first, it might be tempting to say that Swift pulled this off by fully embracing streaming for the first time and putting an emphasis on the songwriting and storytelling over the production and marketing. While this is undeniably true, it’s missing the point that Swift has always been a gifted songwriter and Folklore is unquestionably the next step for her artistically, rather than a momentary detour before returning to the pop anthems.
Will she return to these at some point? Almost definitely. But anyone who heard songs like “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince,” “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” and “The Archer” on Lover would know that Folklore has long been coming for Swift.
Folklore has a number of distinct elements that differ from the Swift of yore. There’s still songs with personal sentiments percolating underneath (“Mad Woman,” “This Is Me Trying,” “Invisible String,” by my own estimation), but the vast majority of Folklore is comprised of third-person storytelling, like she is passing down the stories of generations who preceded her and helped to put her in a position to craft what will go down as the stunner in her discography. (Already imagining “August” on the Swift Greatest Hits album.) In this sense, the atmospheric and dreamy sound (brought to you by Swift, frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, and newcomers Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon) of the aforementioned Lover trio is certainly an influence on Folklore, but “Death by a Thousand Cuts” might be the most apt in the Swiftian lineage.
Swift remarked that “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” despite being a ripper of a breakup song, is not actually about her own life. She’s happy with Joe Alwyn now, after all, so instead, she found inspiration in the Netflix rom-com, Someone Great. Taylor has always been a gifted storyteller, but now she is honing in on her ability to tell the stories of others. On Lover, this took the form of a rom-com retelling. On Folklore, it takes the form of Rebekah Harkness, her war veteran grandfather, and, of course, the love triangle trilogy that is the multi-perspective “Cardigan,” “August,” and “Betty.”
Cardigan: “A friend to all is a friend to none / Chase two girls, lose the one.”
August: “Will you call when you’re back at school? / I remember thinkin’ I had you.”
Betty: “Betty, I won’t make assumptions / About why you switched your homeroom, but / I think it’s ’cause of me.”
Some saw “Betty” as a distinct return to Taylor’s earlier styles of music, but it also works as a full circle banger (complete with radical key change) for the entire album. Recalling the cobblestone and cardigan imagery of “Cardigan,” “Betty” brings the final perspective of the love triangle of infidelity into view while also progressing the story as far as it can go while still being ambiguous. Does Betty take James back? Are the rumors from Inez to be believed? Don’t worry about getting bogged down in the plot. Just enjoy the story Taylor Swift is telling us. She’s in such command of the music that it makes for an impeccable listen in the dead of summer (even though it demands an autumn drive). That’s what’s most vital in “Betty.” Not the resolution of the story that anchors the entire album like tent poles — the sense that Taylor has now become the orator of stories deeply resonant to her, even beyond “White Horse.”
These stories clearly connected with her aforementioned collaborators, new and old. Antonoff has produced many songs for Swift over the years (from the 1989 bonus track, “You Are in Love,” to one of the all-time pop songs, “Cruel Summer”) and his contributions to Folklore are well-within his lineage. But the Bon Iver and Dessner aura gave Taylor a new sound, somewhere in between pop, country, indie, and Americana. It’s not a sonically revolutionary album, but it exhibits mastery of her craft and over music, in general.
I do believe that part of the experimentation on Folklore was Taylor prepping for the next stage of her career. Despite the ripper success of the album, Swift is no longer in the trend-setting generation. Her fans are still in music’s target demo, but the most popular artists are trending younger all the time. Now, she’s one era removed. She’s still a hit-maker (I didn’t expect “Cardigan” to chart and yet, it might sweep its way to the Grammys) and a cultural touchstone for millions, but eventually, that’ll fade. Artists like Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney still put out new music and it barely registers in the culture at all. (The only one to subvert this tradition was David Bowie, whose Blackstar album was impeccable, but might have only resonated at large because of his death at the time of its release.) Unless Taylor Swift has it within her to buck the history of music before her (and honestly, she might), one day, her new music won’t be as resonant with those beyond her fanbase and on the radio airwaves. To dabble with a different sound is to understand that and to begin thinking about what comes next — even if it’s not something she needs to think too much about yet.
I do believe that, with Folklore, Taylor has more than proven herself worthy of being named alongside artists like Bowie, Dylan, and McCartney. (Emily VanDerWerff wrote an excellent piece for Vox about why Swift is the Bruce Springsteen of her generation.) She was probably already there, but Folklore cemented what longtime Swifties and music critics have long known: Taylor Swift is an all-time great. With the album, she vaulted directly into the pantheon of music history and artistry and earned a spot for herself at the table discussion of “greatest of all-time.” And she only just turned thirty! There’s so much Taylor Swift left to experience! Considering the clip at which she writes now, we might get more of it very soon. For now, let’s bask in Folklore as the August days turn to autumn and we spend the whole year with the world’s greatest young songwriter.
“Our coming-of-age has come and gone
Suddenly this summer, it’s clear
I never had the courage of my convictions
As long as danger is near
And it’s just around the corner, darlin’
’Cause it lives in me
No, I could never give you peace.”
