The pen is her sword, and Taylor Swift continues to sharpen, ‘evermore’
By: Jack Clohisy
Tags: Evermore, Album Review, Taylor Swift, Folklore, Music Review

Taylor Swift via the Digital Booklet of “evermore”

Rating: ★★★★★

As Swift proved on folklore (2020) released this past July, she is a wordsmith. Crafting up love triangles, childhood memories, and stories of scorned women, Swift provided the locked-down world with tales to keep it entertained. However, Swift wasn’t done quite yet, and unbeknownst to the public until December 10, folklore has a sister, and her name is evermore.

Imagine folklore in color: pictures of hope, a bittersweet take on the sorrow and yearning seen months ago, evermore promises better days ahead. Swift dives deeper into herself and pulls from her ever-expansive imagination to bring forth her most creative project yet. It would be unjust to assess the beauty of evermore without acknowledging the influences from her sister album. What folklore started, evermore expands upon.

Leading off with “willow,” Swift leads us back into the forest, swooning, “Life was a willow and it bent right to your wind.” Just like her metaphoric folklore lead single “cardigan,” Swift employs her literary prowess on “willow,” pushing back the branches into the dizzying wonder that is evermore.

On “champagne problems,” an image of a failed proposal takes center stage. Swift laments, “Sometimes you just don’t know the answer / Till someone’s on their knees and asks you.” In true folklore style, evermore carries over the burden of a love lost.

The cover of “evermore” via the album’s Digital Booklet

The palette of this album is expansive and vibrant. folklore was 17 shades of black, white, and blue, but evermore took the rainbow of emotions, the good, the bad, and everything in between, and paints it across the canvas. “gold rush,” like “mirrorball,” evokes a dreamy, idyllic serenity. Though “mirrorball” was more representative of Swift’s fears as a musician out of the spotlight, “gold rush” takes that spotlight and shines it on someone with the same admiration Swift craved for “on that tightrope.”

“‘tis the damn season” reflects on a hometown love that finds its way back into her mind again. The track fits right in Swift’s discography with her heartbreak-filled song “Back to December” from Speak Now (2010).

A deep cut in the making, “tolerate it” looks to challenge “my tears ricochet” as Swift’s best track five between the sister albums. Where “my tears ricochet” leads with disdain, “tolerate it” opens with vulnerability. Swift digs, “I know my love should be celebrated / But you tolerate it.” Feeling thrown into the background of her lover’s attention, Swift pleads for an answer: does he love her, or is their love dead?

“no body, no crime” brings Swift back to her country roots as “betty” did on folklore. Teamed up with HAIM, the women confront infidelity head on. Like a scene from Gone Girl (2014), “no body, no crime” is filled with the vigilante justice deserving of an unfaithful man.

In the seventh track, “happiness” is anything but happy. Bittersweet at best, the track is full of reminiscence. “There’ll be happiness after you / But there was happiness because of you too,” Swift reconciles with a dying relationship.

Taylor Swift via the Digital Booklet of “evermore”

In “dorothea” and “marjorie,” the same name-and-storytelling tactic utilized in folklore with “betty” is evident. This time, the love is distant, with Dorothea being a movie star, and her lover living a life devoid of her presence. But as Swift reassures on the track, “And if you’re ever tired of being known / … / You know, you’ll always know me.” However, in Marjorie’s story, Swift won’t be able to see her again. Unlike Dorothea, Marjorie isn’t just gone, she’s dead, but Swifts knows, “What died didn’t stay dead / You’re alive, you’re alive in my head.” Marjorie is the name of Swift’s grandmother, and what better way to pay tribute to her and those lost to COVID-19 than to craft a song about remaining connected after death. Swift writes in her description of evermore, “I also know this holiday season will be a lonely one for most of us and if there are any of you out there who turn to music to cope with missing loved ones the way I do, this is for you.” This album, like her entire discography, is extremely personal.

Aaron Dessner, one of Swift’s main collaborators on folklore and evermore, teams up with her on “coney island,” featuring Dessner’s band The National. Like “champagne problems,” Swift presents another broken relationship. Lost and confused, Swift grapples with the decline of the romance, with. The National inquiring, “Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest gray?” Feeling lost and alone on Coney Island is a creative concept, and one only Swift can animate so pristinely.

“ivy” is the purest love song on evermore. Laden with descriptions of nature and all its beautiful flora, Swift paints a picture of the lush, green wilderness seen through the black-and-white lens on folklore. She gushes, “Oh, I can’t / Stop you putting roots in my dreamland / My house of stone, your ivy grows / And now I’m covered in you.” A true highlight of this album, “ivy” sets evermore on a course for love, steering away from the more cynically-oriented folklore.

In “cowboy like me,” Swift presents an adventurous love. Met with someone who’s a “bandit” like her, Swift is able to claim a lover who’s talked about by all the “lunching ladies” in town. Just like her crafty partner, Swift is able to swoon him as well, and so she says, “you’re a cowboy like me.” Her storytelling is flawless, and Swift is able to create scenarios so different from one another yet so cohesive as a whole.

Taylor Swift via the Digital Booklet of “evermore”

Swift tells a “long story short” about a failed love during a tumultuous period, a “bad time.” This confusing time is behind her, but Swift believes, “I always felt I must look better in the rear view / Missing me / At the golden gates they once held the keys to.” At the end of the day, the “bad times” don’t define Swift, so she exclaims, “Long story short, I survived.” For Swift, who’s experienced her share of heartbreak and betrayal, she minimizes the struggle and focuses on the positive.

In the same way Swift can express her frustrations and independence on “mad woman,” she takes a stand in “closure.” A lover that wronged her attempts to check up on her, but Swift is having none of it, striking, “Don’t treat me like some situation that needs to be handled / I’m fine with my spite / And my tears.” She pushes off his letters to her, stating, “I don’t need your ‘closure.’” Swift is empowered in folklore, but she is especially cognizant of her worth in evermore.

It wouldn’t feel complete for evermore to neglect the intense, career-defining ballad “exile” on folklore, so Swift enlists Bon Iver once again on the closing title-track. In contrast to “exile,” Bon Iver makes use of his falsetto in the same back-and-forth torment with Swift. She acknowledges the troubles love goes through at times, and closes, “I had a feeling so peculiar / This pain wouldn’t be for / Evermore.” A fitting end to the album, there is a sense of completion like“hoax” provided folklore with.

Just as she did with folklore, Swift continues to up the ante with another alternative surprise release on the heels of her highly-acclaimed quarantine project. evermore takes all that folklore leaves unwritten and expands. Painting pictures of dreamscapes and fantasies left unexplored, Swift embarks on a journey deeper into the thickness. This time around, she strikes gold (a “gold rush,” Swift might say). Even for a songwriter as accomplished as herself, Swift evolves with time, even in a span as short as July to December.

evermore picks up right where folklore left off, but added new layers, stories, and discoveries to the mystical woodland Swift continues to travel further into.

Highlights: “willow,” “champagne problems,” “gold rush,” “tolerate it,” “no body, no crime (feat. HAIM)”, “ivy,” and “evermore (feat. Bon Iver)”