In case you missed the big news, Taylor Swift just dropped a surprise album at 12am Friday morning. evermore is her second album release of this year and IMO Swift has absolutely killed it in 2020.
Before getting into this album review it’s only fair that I be completely honest about my relationship with TSwift and her music. We’ve had a rocky past. I was super anti-Swift prior to the release of “Look What You Made Me Do” in 2017. All her songs sounded the same to me, and it wasn’t a sound I particularly enjoyed. But I liked “LWYMMD”, and I was kinda into the sound of “You Need To Calm Down”, so when folklore dropped in July I decided to give it a shot.
I was a convert by the end of the first song.
It’s official, y’all, I’m now a Swiftie. (Well, I’m a 2020 Swiftie. Is there another word for us?) So when I heard that Taylor was dropping her second album of the year, and that it was folklore’s sister album, and that it had the dreamy name evermore, I was thrilled. Yes, I did stay up late to stream it. Yes, late for me is 9pm (which is when the album dropped for all us Pacific Coast-ers). And yes, I loved it.
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How did Tay manage to be so productive in 2020? Was her 2020 different from ours? Probably not, but her explanation for producing a second album at the end of a heck of a year was simple and delightful. She told her fans on Insta: “To put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs. To try and put it more poetically, it feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of this music. We chose to wander deeper in.”
Yes, girl.
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evermore keeps with the delightfully folksy, fairytale vibes of folklore, and they definitely listen like sister albums. The new album features 15 songs plus two bonus tracks (available on the deluxe physical edition). And fans of folklore will love Bon Iver’s return in this album’s final title song, “evermore.” I was listening to this album (for the second time) in bed last night, and when “evermore” hit, it sent me into some crazy deep breathing. Like, yoga-style breath. Maybe that’s just the effect Bon Iver and TSwift have on my soul?
“willow” is almost as delightful an opening to evermore as “the 1” was for folklore. Both set the tone for the album equally well. “I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit” still gives me chills when I listen to folklore because it marks a break from Taylor’s old style — a break that’s delightfully apparent throughout the entire album. And the opening lines of “willow”, “I’m like the water when your ship rolled in that night / Rough on the surface but you cut through like a knife” sets the tone for this album: it’s about romance and longing and lust and what happens when those intertwine. Plus, it’s just insanely magical — I mean, watch the music video:
“willow” is almost fiery in its approach and really starts the album off with a bang, and we see different love stories play out throughout the album with markedly different results between them. Everything gets wrapped up with a little bow in the album’s final song, “evermore,” which takes a more melancholy look at longing and the pain it leads to; that is, until the end of the song, when it’s suggested that a new warmth can come after the cold darkness of winter. “Evermore” might be my favorite song of this album just because of its final lines:
And I was catching my breath
Floors of a cabin creaking under my step
And I couldn’t be sure
I had a feeling so peculiar
This pain wouldn’t be for
Evermore
Swift uses evermore to continue the storytelling she introduced in folklore. Are these stories about Taylor herself? Are they more nods to exes? Maybe, maybe not — like any good art, Swift surely draws off her own experiences when she’s crafting these stories, but she’s also just a great storyteller and music is her preferred medium. “happiness,” “closure,” and “evermore” are definitely breakup songs, but not in the same vein as “Teardrops on my Guitar” — her new way of mourning is slightly more distant and definitely more mature.
Longtime Swifties will like her nod to her country roots in “cowboy like me.” It’s not overwhelmingly country though, and I think it really showcases the melding between Swift’s old style and her departure from that. Plus it’s a super cute love story.
“no body, no crime” featuring HAIM is one of the biggest delightful departures from Swift’s old style, and tells a super compelling story — infidelity, murder, and cover-ups? Honestly, this song is right on par with most of the true crime stories I’m obsessed with. New small-town crime dramas are going to be begging for the rights to this one for sure.
Those are just the highlights — we haven’t even gotten into “dorothea” (is it really about Selena Gomez?) or “long story short,” the only song that was confirmed to be totally based on fact (and Taylor’s relationship with Joe Alwyn). Our big takeaway? evermore slaps just as much as folklore did. Maybe even more. Keep ‘em coming, Taylor, because we are here for it!
PREORDER EVERMORE HERE
Did you love evermore as much as we did? Let us know in the comments!
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