The Swiftening – Pt 1: “folklore”

(The Swiftening Series: 1. folklore | 2. Lover | 3. reputation | 4. 1989 | 5. Red | 6. Speak Now | 7. Fearless | 8. Taylor Swift)

A few weeks back, I made a confession that rocked my world to the core… I liked Taylor Swift’s newest album evermore. Okay, that’s a little dramatic, maybe, but my hipster cred was certainly tarnished. In that review, I mentioned that Swift’s music has just never landed well with me. She’s had some hits and some definite misses, but in general I’ve never been able to honestly articulate my feelings on her – never exactly hate, but never exactly love, either.

So, inexplicably, I’ve been listening to a lot of Taylor Swift lately. Like, a lot a lot. Part of it is social – my good friend Sam is a huge fan of hers and has encouraged me to dive into more of the artist’s discography after I liked evermore so much. I really like talking to people about music in general, so it’s been fun for me to listen to Swift’s albums and talk to Sam about them. We have such differing opinions on the music that it’s always an engaging conversation. But also, I think a part of it is genuine enjoyment. Really. Certainly it’s not all my favorite, but there’s something about Swift’s music that is resonating with me right now.

And when something resonates with me, I want to investigate it. Analyze it. Break it apart and understand what parts of it are making me feel.

So after hours and hours of Swift, I thought to myself… hey, this could make an interesting blog series, couldn’t it?

So this is the first part of what will be an eight part (yes, really) series. Each part will cover my thoughts on another Swift album. And just because that’s how I’ve been listening to them, I’m going to go in backwards order starting with folklore (I have already covered evermore, after all). I probably won’t be posting these one after the other, but if I have no other pressing topics I want to talk about for the week, I can see myself getting through these albums pretty soon! If that sounds interesting, follow along.

If not… uh… sorry?

In general, folklore is a successful departure from Swift’s previous songwriting style because of how well it plays to her strengths. At her heart, Swift is a storyteller, a holdover from her country days. She cannot help but dig into the details of the stories she tells, sometimes to her own detriment in songs that would really be better served to stay general. (Not to show my hand early, but a reoccurring problem I have with Swift’s pre-folklore work is how often she tries to jam long, wordy lyrics into simple, pop melodies.) But the stripped down and more emotionally-focused genre of folk fits this tendency perfectly – folklore is an album of stories. Stories about Swift and about fictional situations, playing with truth and fiction in a way that works so well for the title.

There are still some missteps here, however. Swift has not abandoned her pop career by any means, and I don’t think you could find anyone who legitimately wants to argue that this is an album of folk music. But it’s a stylistic direction that works for her and I can really see her growing and making some fantastic stuff going forward with this direction (and she already has).

Much like evermore, folklore has a strong opening with “the 1”. In many ways, this is the bridge between the poppy style of Lover and the soft, woodsy style of folklore and evermore. It’s certainly stripped down and minimal, beginning with just piano chords, light strings, and a simple beat. Yet, it has a really gripping hook and lyrics that slot incredibly well into the shapes of the melody. Fitting her lyrics into a melody is something that Swift has struggled with in the past, so it’s really great to see a melding of her generally well-written lyrics with a melody that suits it.

Next up is “cardigan,” a song I have a lot more mixed feelings on. See, when folklore first came out, I was urged by the hype and promise that it was a very different Swift album to listen to it. Yet, I bailed after only a few songs, generally feeling positive about Swift’s new direction but not really moved to pay much more attention to it. I don’t want to pin the blame all on one track, because in hindsight there is a lot to love about “cardigan,” but I think it is a good example of some of the traits of Swift’s songwriting I don’t like as much. Where there are certainly some beautiful lyrics in this song (I’m particularly fond of the repeated “when you are young they assume you know nothing“), most of it feels unmoored and forced into the melody. In direct contrast to “the 1,” “cardigan” feels amorphous and not nearly as gripping. There also isn’t much build. It’s certainly not the worst of Swift’s offenders when it comes to build, (that’ll be in another post), but it mostly stays at one note save for the bridge.

That being said, I do love the story “cardigan” tells with its companion songs, “betty” and “august.” None of these songs are particular favorites of mine on their own, so it’s actually quite fortuitous of folklore that the three of them together, as a package, are much stronger than the sum of their parts.

I have similar problems with “august” as I do “cardigan.” Though I do think “august” has a much more engaging structure, it feels similarly unmoored. However, I do love the emotional tension in this track – Swift’s vocals at the end of the song gain a certain edge that really sells the story of the song and provide some great contrast when compared to the thin and wispy quality of the beginning.

“Betty” is the sweet, simple love song of the trio. It’s not exactly groundbreaking, but it calls back to Swift’s roots in a charming way. The lyrics are perhaps not deep or artistic, but they’re earnest.

And though all these qualities don’t necessarily make for perfect songs to listen to, in my opinion, they do make for great storytelling. This trio tells the same story from three different perspectives with three characters – Betty’s perspective in “cardigan,” James’s perspective in “betty,” and an unnamed summer fling of James’s in “august” (she is often called Augustine by Swift fans, in reference to the song’s title).

In “betty,” James begs Betty’s forgiveness for cheating on her with Augustine. The song’s lyrical simplicity, then, characterizes James as not particularly emotionally intelligent. He uses juvenile wording (“stupid friends,” “go fuck myself”) and repeatedly asks questions of Betty in the chorus pointing out his general cluelessness to the situation. This is made even more apparent by the contrast between his perspective and Betty’s. In “cardigan,” Betty seems to have a far more emotionally mature understanding of the situation. She directly references a line from “betty” (“I’m only seventeen / I don’t know anything”) with the line “when you are young they assume you know nothing.” The song suggests that Betty feels far more conflicted about reconciling with James than he assumes, and the far more “mature” sound of the lyrics and song reflects Betty’s more untrusting and dark perspective on the situation. “August,” then, is the outsider perspective, the girl who James cheated on Betty with. Augustine’s involvement in the story is brief, connecting to that thin and wispy sound, but deeply emotional. For being a song in the perspective of the homewrecker, it’s empathetic with just a note of darkness, especially when you consider how callous James actually is compared to Augustine’s naïve romanticization of him.

I think the storytelling within these three songs is really engaging, and I love the repeated imagery and motifs which connect them. I love stories that play with perspective, and it’s always fun to see the same situation from so many different points of view. It’s not an obvious thing, either, which makes unravelling the story and comparing the three songs together all the more engaging. It’s a fun aspect to this album that I really appreciate.

Unfortunately,. such a fun little storyline can’t buoy all of the less-exciting songs in this album. While I enjoyed the collaborations with Matt Berninger and HAIM in evermore, her collaboration track in folklore, the sleepy “exile” with Bon Iver, doesn’t really work for me as much. The interplay between the two singers in this track just don’t really carve into any kind of emotion. It probably doesn’t help that Bon Iver’s brand of monotone sadness has never worked for me, and I think it brings the track away from sadness and more towards dead-eyed sleepiness. “Mirrorball” is similarly one-note, plodding along. It has beautiful lyrics, with that personal touch Swift is so well-known for (obviously commenting on her feelings towards her own fame), but the song itself doesn’t tap much into that emotion.

And many other tracks off this album truly don’t differentiate themselves. It doesn’t bode well that, with how many times I’ve listened to it now, tracks like “seven” and “this is me trying” have just sort of slid out of my brain. Still, I think it’s notable that this is Swift’s first foray into this genre and style, so I can excuse some missteps as she works out her individual voice in this new soundscape.

But when the new sound works, it really works. I think “invisible string” is notable for how unabashedly folk it is. Based on the Chinese folk myth of the “red string of fate,” which is an invisible red thread connecting two people who are destined to meet, no matter how far away from each other they might be, it ruminates on the coincidences and near-misses of Swift and her current partner Joe Alwyn. It’s a lovely little song, stripped down and focused in the personal details of the lives it chronicles, pitch-perfect for the sound of this album.

I also can’t help but love “last great american dynasty.” It’s one of those cheekily self-referential Swift tracks that I feel somewhat mixed on (more to come on that in later posts as well). However, I think this works far better than others due to its literary distance from the socialite woman the song focuses on. What direct comparisons Swift makes between the woman who once owned her house and herself feel earned, because from the very beginning the earnest and slightly humorous tone sells the story to the reader and invites them to make their own connections.

I also find a guilty pleasure in “illicit affairs”. What is so interesting about this song is how it toes the line between the emotionally raw and the scandalous judgment of an unhealthy relationship dynamic. In the perspective of a narrator dating someone who is cheating on their lover (possibly while also cheating on their own lover, it’s not fully clear), it features advice for ways to hide the infidelity alongside dark statements about the futility of the singer’s situation. The listener has no choice but to see the hypocrisy of the singer and their illicit lover – they are desperately going out of their way to preserve a relationship that is hurting everyone involved and will only ever end in heartbreak. It makes the slow, sappy, dramatic sound of the song feel earned, even if, when stepping back from the situation described, it makes you feel a little icky.

I want to finish this review with my thoughts on my favorite song of the album, “peace.” After hearing all of my thoughts about amorphous melodies and Swift’s bad habits when it comes to matching lyric to song, you might be surprised to find that I love this song so much. I mean, you could argue this song barely has a melody at all… but I think that’s what’s kind of fantastic about it. It’s the lyric of the song that forms its core and its emotional thread, and in my opinion it’s some of Swift’s best lyric-writing I’ve seen.

Besides the rhymes, it really could stand on its own as spoken word poetry, and I think would suffer terribly if it was forced to conform to a snappy, catchy pop melody. It is a fantastic example of what makes singer-songwriter music engaging – you are connecting on a deeply personal level with the person singing it by being confronted with that person’s words. No instruments are there to distract from Swift’s anxiety over the ways her fame might never allow her to have a healthy romantic relationship again.

That’s another thing I love about this song, though. Because as it is very obviously yet another Swift song about fame, it’s also resonant on a far more general level. The song’s repeated question: “Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?” is a question at the heart of so much art that I personally resonate with. It doesn’t matter that you are not a wildly famous (and at times infamous) pop star, there is something so cutting and horrifyingly relatable about looking at yourself and your struggles and wondering if they could possibly be lovable. It’s an extremely tense personal conflict, and one of those songs that moved me to tears when I realized what it was getting at.

So that’s folklore. A little rough and awkward and messy at parts, but with moments of brilliance that have stuck with me for days and weeks and months since I first really listened to it. Next time, an album I don’t have nearly as much sympathy for… Lover.

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