Just when her devoted public was vaguely getting over digesting the surprise release (as pioneered by Beyoncé) of her eighth record, folklore, Taylor Swift goes and reveals that she had been calculatedly planning to release the “runoff” compositions as a companion piece called evermore. Also produced largely by The National’s Aaron Dessner, Swift sustains the laid-back, “indie” tone of the former, as established by an album cover on which she’s, yet again, sporting flannel. This time, however, we get a close-up shot, even if it is only of her back–the better to see her French braid with. In point of fact, there are very specifically thirty-one turns in said braid to demarcate turning thirty-one on the mirror image date of December 13th this year. Yes, it all sounds a little psychopathic in detail-orientedness, but that is the brilliance of Taylor Swift, no?
Commencing with the lush “willow,” Swift pulls us in slowly, as was her wont on folklore, lulling us with narrative songwriting prowess (that will quickly escalate on “no body, no crime”). As the video for the song suggests, this is a track about being forever tied to someone–specifically, a soul mate. It thusly emphasizes the John Lennon aphorism, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (and since The Beatles are among the only other musicians to have ever released two albums in a year, it seems important to mention them now–plus, Swift just appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with Paul McCartney).
“champagne problems,” pointedly, the title of a Katy Perry song from her recent album, Smile, further slows down the pace with the sweeping notes of its piano introduction that leads into Swift’s mellifluous voice as she opens the tale of woe with, “You booked the night train for a reason/So you could sit there in this hurt/Bustling crowds or silent sleepers/You’re not sure which is worse.” Funnily, this is the first of three songs Swift co-wrote with “William Bowery,” a.k.a. her boo, Joe Alwyn.
Echoing the themes of “the last great american dynasty” and “mad woman,” here Swift also explores the scandalous nature of a “mentally ill” woman who causes an uproar among her boyfriend’s well-to-do family after rejecting his proposal. Like Lana Del Rey (Swift’s admitted favorite songwriter) on “Million Dollar Man,” she finds a reason to throw out the old chestnut, “One for the money, two for the show,” adding, “I never was ready so I watch you go/Sometimes you just don’t know the answer/’Til someone’s on their knees and asks you.” Not exactly what one would expect of a song co-written by these two lovers, and yet, it’s in keeping with Swift’s folklore fetish for writing about fallen women and small town disgrace.
“What a shame she’s fucked in the head,” Swift also notes somewhat shockingly, because, well, it’s Swift–and she’s always been so closely tied to the wholesomeness of a largely swear word-free canon. Guess it just goes to show the state of her jadedness after dealing with Scooter Braun.
The more palpably upbeat (at least sonically) “gold rush” explores an old favorite theme of Swift’s: jealousy. As was the case on 2017’s “Gorgeous,” she hates that the one she’s attracted to attracts so many others as well (hence, the metaphor of the Gold Rush, an illustrious period in Golden State history during which everyone flocked to California to pursue the same target). It was on this track that she threw out such “greedy girl” sentiments as, “If you’ve got a girlfriend, I’m jealous of her,” “You should think about the consequence of your magnetic field being a little too strong” and “There’s nothing I hate more than what I can’t have.” In this case, the jealousy is elucidated with such resentments as, “But I don’t like a gold rush, gold rush/I don’t like anticipatin’ my face in a red flush/I don’t like that anyone would die to feel your touch/Everybody wants you/Everybody wonders what it would be like to love you.” It’s also a motif that very closely resembles Tove Lo’s narrative on “Mateo” from Sunshine Kitty.
The Lana Del Rey tendency to call out 60s or 70s era bands also shines through when Swift name checks, “With my Eagles t-shirt hanging from the door/At dinner parties, I call you out on your contrarian shit.” Oh, and there she is swearing again. A trend she continues right in the title of “‘tis the damn season.” Arguably the realest song on the record to any millennial currently living with their parents, at least in terms of the line, “I’m stayin’ at my parents’ house/And the road not taken looks real good now.” Of course, the narrator in the song (likely “dorothea”) is only visiting for the holidays–for this is a story plucked out of the twentieth century as she sings of the high school sweetheart she’s returned to, even if only “for the weekend.” In many ways, it’s rather like an inverse version of Clay and Blair in Less Than Zero as she describes, “I won’t ask you to wait if you don’t ask me to stay/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’.” Oh, the tragedian flair of hometown romance. It holds an especial nostalgic cachet now that it feels particularly quaint during a year when no one is allowed to go home.
And yet, we’re all forced to “tolerate it.” While not a song about lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, it does pertain in many ways to the downward spiral quite a few relationships have been on ever since quarantine conditions came to roost. So it is that the song discusses being unappreciated and ignored, being the giver in the dynamic rather than the taker. And here again, Swift’s predilection for “cursing” starts to become fodder for a drinking game when she notes, “Lay the table with the fancy shit/And watch you tolerate it.” While the man she loves (or at least tells herself she does) regards her enthusiasm as an annoyance rather than something to be grateful for, Swift begins to awaken to the psychological effects of his callousness, declaring, “I know my love should be celebrated/But you tolerate it/I greet you with a battle hero’s welcome/I take your indiscretions all in good fun/I sit and listеn, I polish plates until they gleam and glistеn.” It sounds very Shelly and Leo Johnson.
The increasingly bitter feelings of “tolerate it” lead in perfectly to the next track. Doing her Dixie Chicks, er, The Chicks homage yet again (think “Goodbye Earl”), Swift returns to her country roots once more on “no body, no crime” featuring HAIM. It is also at this juncture that we can’t ignore how much of the, speaking of Shelly and Leo, Twin Peaks flavor Swift has extrapolated for her “concept album” (shit, even the visual up before the premiere of “willow” was the image of a variety of donuts). A passion for true crime is perhaps an untapped common bond between her and David Lynch (again, someone whose oeuvre has been traced to LDR’s as well). And no, not since Beyoncé calling out Red Lobster in “Formation” has a low-brow chain restaurant been so fortunate as to get the generous, immortalized publicity of Swift describing, “Este wasn’t there Tuesday night at Olive Gardеn/At her job or anywhere/Hе reports his missing wife.” Of course, as a close friend of Este’s, Swift isn’t buying it. Knows he’s been cheating on her, and that he and the mistress were likely in on the murder plot together (how very Double Indemnity, complete with life insurance policy mention).
Joining Goldfrapp in having a song called “happiness” (and once more closely emulating Del Rey, who has a song called “Is This Happiness”), Swift continues to stay on “indie” brand by showcasing a certain literary flair. That is to say, painting a portrait modeled after the titular character of The Great Gatsby and his ill-advised devotion to Daisy Buchanan–at least in lyrics like, “Honey, when I’m above the trees/I see this for what it is/But now I’m right down in it, all the years I’ve given.” It’s a very un-Gatsby sentiment, however, to believe, “There’ll be happiness after you/But there was happiness because of you/Both of these things can be true/There is happiness.” In both cases, any sustaining of happiness is likely helped by massive quantities of money and the agency it gives. She also borders on the dendrophiliac spectrum with this persistent “tree-hugging” (“above the trees”) enthusiasm that began with “willow” (or really with the trees featured on the album cover of folklore). Because everything is “companionable” in this woodsy world created by Swift, “happiness” continues the motif of “tolerate it,” in which Swift’s rose-colored glasses about the one she “loves” come off long enough to see that he’s a bit of a prick. What’s more, he’s also kind of like the woodsman to her Snow White as she describes a scene that makes her sound like a stalked deer: “Past the blood and bruise/Past the curses and cries/Beyond the terror in the nightfall/Haunted by the look in my eyes.”
Because there are technically three “name songs” on the record (just like folklore), we have “dorothea”–track eight, the same number as “august” evermore’s sister album. Again, Swift is speaking from a male perspective as she did on “betty,” but there’s no doubt listeners will still try to insist it should be added to the “queer canon.” And as Dorothea’s ex basically reiterates what Rihanna once said–“we found love in a hopeless place”–Swift instead phrases it, “When we were younger down in the park/Honey, making a lark of the misery.” Since then, Dorothea’s moved to L.A., but she’s back for the holidays (a narrative that also punctuates “‘tis the damn season.”). And clearly, the one who loves her can’t fully let go as he wonders, “Are you still the same soul I met under the bleachers?” Probably not, since it’s widely known you must sell your soul to make it in Hollywood. Hence, the insult/compliment, “Ooh, you’rе a queen sellin’ dreams, sellin’ makeup and magazines/Ooh, from you I’d buy anything.”
Adding to her New York-titled output, “coney island” featuring The National is slightly less affronting than 1989’s “Welcome to New York”–but then, that isn’t too difficult to achieve considering the latter is what you might hear upon entering hell. This time around, Swift tries her best to not imbue a song about a more specific part of New York with so much genericness, but she can’t help it–after all, New York has become generic enough for her to feel at home in. And there’s nothing more cliche than Coney (though it was having a semi-campy moment when LDR was shooting homemade videos on it pre-fame, and then featuring it as a backdrop on Born to Die songs like “Carmen”). Thus, it wouldn’t be a song by Taylor about Coney without more than a touch of the overdramatically maudlin as she bemoans, “And I’m sitting 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.” Um, does she know what a centerfold is? Any who, considering that Coney bears the symbolism of a once great outpost that, no matter how many “coats of paint” they slap onto it, still can’t quite be revived to its former glory, it’s all too fitting that Swift would use it as a relationship gone sour metaphor. She’s also into analogies that further establish her clout as a millennial heavyweight, namely, “’Cause we were like the mall before the internet/It was the one place to be/The mischief, the gift-wrapped suburban dreams” (in the spirit of, “I come back stronger than a 90s trend”).
Playing up the “sisterhood” of folklore and evermore once again, “ivy,” as track ten, correlates to folklore’s tenth track, “illicit affairs.” Within the story of the former, a woman also finds herself falling prey to the charms of a man who belongs to another. She’s also ready to swear again because it’s been a few songs since she has, so she sings, “Oh, goddamn/My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand/Taking mine, but it’s been promised to another.” It’s the “goddamn” in this song that sees easy comparisons to 90s sadcore queen, Sophie B. Hawkins, known for her “damn”-laden hit, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover.” The fatalistic air of the song employs the overtaking nature of ivy as Swift laments and relishes, “I can’t stop you putting roots in my dreamland/My house of stone, your ivy grows/And now I’m covered in you.” And probably cum, too.
Picking up the country vibe from “no body, no crime” again, “cowboy like me” is actually just a rehashing of the 2006 movie, Priceless starring Audrey Tautou. Like this song, it’s a movie about two con artists who end up falling in love (granted Tautou’s character has always been doing it for money, whereas her fellow poor boy only just now started hustling thanks largely to being turned down by her on the Azure Coast–and being strapped for cash himself). But most importantly, Swift says “fuck” yet again, as though continuing to make up for all the lost time in her songs when she never did with, “Plotted hard to fuck this up/And the old men that I’ve swindled really did believe I was the one.”
Alluding once again to her long-standing feud with Kanye West (the closest the twenty-first century will ever have to a modern Greek myth), “long story short” is yet another love note to Alwyn, who got her through one of the roughest periods of her fame–“rough,” apparently, in that it’s difficult not to be America’s undisputed sweetheart. And because it is such a long story by now, it’s only fitting that Swift decides to rap it all up with the summation, “Long story short, it was a bad time/Pushed from the precipice/Clung to the nearest lips/Long story short, it was the wrong guy/Now I’m all about you.” Yeah, that’s shade at Tom Hiddleston.
Next is “marjorie,” with an opening akin to The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” (just as fellow millennial Miley Cyrus recently borrowed from another iconic 60s band, The Rolling Stones, by using similar opening notes from “Sympathy for the Devil” in “Plastic Hearts”). And what would such an “old soul”-oriented sound be without amounting to an ode to one’s grandmother? As track thirteen, it correlates to the lyrical message of folklore‘s thirteenth track, “epiphany,” and here Swift is all the more eager to believe that when someone dies they’re never really gone as she sings in the chorus, “What died didn’t stay dead/What died didn’t stay dead/You’re alive, you’re alive in my head.” It’s a nice thought to cling to particularly during this moment in history, when death is all around.
While usually fond of being “on the nose,” Swift does not opt to make “closure” the final song on the record, but rather, the penultimate one. As the most sonically rebellious track on the album for its “industrial folk” drum machine, Swift proceeds to call phony baloney on an ex’s “letter” (she means email or long text, one assumes) as she rails, “Don’t treat me like some situation that needs to be handled/I’m fine with my spite/And my tears, and my beers and my candles/I can feel you smoothing me over.” Calling his attempts “fake” and “oh so unnecessary,” Swift concludes, “I know that it’s over, I don’t need your/Closure, closure, your closure.” If only Rachel Green had been made aware of a song like this before leaving Ross a drunken message demanding closure while he was still dating Julie. The last song (apart from the additional bonus tracks of “right where you left me” and “it’s time to go”) on the standard edition of the album is, what else, “evermore” featuring Bon Iver. Rejoining after folklore’s “exile,” the duo exudes an equally if not more morose tone for their second collaboration–just in time for the bleak winter ahead. So it is that Swift spares no attempt at conjuring the imagery of just such a season while singing, “Hey December/Guess I’m feeling unmoored/Can’t remember/What I used to fight for.”
Although the lyrics speak generally to being in the bell jar, they also apply quite aptly to what people have been continuing to feel throughout the pandemic. Feelings captured by, “And I was catching my breath/Barefoot in the wildest winter/Catching my death/And I couldn’t be sure I had a feeling so peculiar/That this pain would be for/Evermore.” Not wanting everyone listening to this record to kill themselves among lit candles and flannel, she changes tack at the end of the narrative to provide a glimmer of hope, like the one that the promise of the vaccine has without anyone wanting to address the many larger problems still at hand. One could say evermore is yet another part of that panacea the masses want so badly to believe in. But at least Pfizer isn’t involved in this one.
