Taylor Swift: ‘evermore’ Review
9.2
GENRE: Pop/Folk
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2020When Taylor Swift posted on a Thursday that she would be releasing folklore a few hours later, some fans worried about how well the surprise-released record would do commercially and critically. Her anecdotal endeavor succeeded: folklore sent fans to the woods and kept them entangled in cardigans, mirrorballs, bottles of wine, and invisible strings. With evermore, billed as folklore’s sister album, Swift once again recruits producers Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff to keep the spell going. Dropped only four months after its predecessor, the LP is telling of Swift’s bountiful creativity. The short interval between releases reveals a prolific singer-songwriter handsomely walking a fine line between being cocky and simply sharing the byproduct of an artistic epiphany.
There’s something very endearing about Swift singing “that’s my man” on “willow,” the album’s intro track, knowing that she’s most likely singing with boyfriend Joe Alwyn in mind, with whom Swift’s been in a fruitful relationship for a few years. Yet the goosebumps come from a different line; “they count me out time and time again/but I come back stronger than a ‘90s trend,” she brags with a verse so strikingly true it makes you grim. The music video for the track starts where the video for “cardigan” left off. Sonically, “willow” takes on another direction: a happier melody constructed over percussion, picked guitars, glockenspiel, flute, strings, and a witchy-like feeling foreign to the songs on folklore. Altogether, evermore is an analogous record that leads to different outcomes. The LP comes from the same creators and drinks from the same folk waters as its predecessor but steps away from the Betty-James-verse with its distinct formulas. Mostly, evermore doesn’t tell the same story throughout its tracks; each song tells its own tale, akin to an early 20th-century short-stories book.
Swift’s gravitas on evermore can be intimidating. Second track “Champagne Problems” is a soul-wrenching piano ballad with round, mellow tones that makes you feel sad on levels you didn’t know were possible. On it, the narrator comes clean right before Christmas and turns down her fianceé's marriage proposal, breaking the poor man’s heart. Swift’s voice butters the story with multiplied “ah-ah” backing vocals that build up to a wordy sing-along bridge that includes an Elvis Presley reference. This track alone carves evermore as Swift's most cinematic album to date, with her pen substantially heavier than her sounds: “but you’ll find the real thing instead, she’ll patch up your tapestry that I shred,” she warbles, knowing she’s just plunged a dagger into your chest. Then she tries to raise your spirits with “gold rush,” a Jack Antonoff-produced track where Swift lays her reveries over violins, percussions, synths, celesta, and electric pianos, but the damage is already done.
If there’s one thing Swift is going to do with her ballads is grab your hand and walk you into devastation, and she does just that with “tolerate it,” a demolishing slow song with synths, pianos, and a burning drum machine—possibly one of her best track-5 songs (track 5s are a thing in the Swiftverse). The song chronicles the life of a wife overlooked by her husband, summing it up in one of the most desolating couplets of Swift’s entire discography (I made you my temple, my mural, my sky/Now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life). At this point, Swift might as well use a hammer to smash the shattered pieces of your heart. Then, once again, she stops you from bleeding with the true-crime inspired “no body, no crime,” which features the HAIM sisters. And then there’s “happiness,” a wistful farewell song. Talk about irony. This oscillation is a recurring feature on evermore: one song crashes you, then one brings you back to life, then another one disjoints you, and so it goes.
The second half of evermore is more of a balm, even with its tackling of themes like death. Tenth track “ivy” narrates an after-life love affair that takes place in a cemetery, reviving the theme of infidelity brought by the tenth track of folklore, “illicit affairs.” On “marjorie,” Swift kicks off the song with the most quotable lines of the album, “Never be so kind, you forget to be clever/Never be so clever, you forget to be kind.” The cut is a homage to her late grandmother, directly speaking of her death and reminiscing how much she “loved the amber skies so much.” It’s hard to reconcile all these finishing lines, but Swift takes her chances with “closure,” a drum-machined production similar to those from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. But real peace of mind comes from the title track, “evermore,” on which Swift repeats her collaboration with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. “This pain wouldn’t be for evermore,” Swift croons over calming pianos in the last verse on the album.
evermore is a record about the ending of things: relationships, story arcs, chapters, and even life. It is also represents the end of the beginning of a promising career reshaping that started with folklore. How will Swift survive her own rebirth? Reinvention is a dangerous game. Spells don’t last forever, nor can witches hide in the woods perpetually. I trust she’ll find new brisk ways to sharpen her pencils and continue to tell stories over whimsical melodies. Her sound palette is expanding, and her glossary is more robust than ever. May we don’t count her out, and may she come back stronger, evermore.
Listen to evermore:
