EVERMORE BY TAYLOR SWIFT: 4 YEARS LATER
Credit of Republic Records 2020. Protected under fair use.
Evermore, released in December 2020, served as the surprise sister album to Folklore, continuing Taylor Swift's move into indie-folk and alternative-pop. The two albums are connected sonically, but Evermore is more distinctly its own album, which has more topical and introspective material about the passages of Winter. It is a slower, cooler album than folklore is, though in many cases, musically, it is more emotionally monolithic in its depth.
It opens with the atmospheric "Willow," a chamber folk song featuring finger-picked acoustic guitar, orchestration, and blustery choruses. It establishes the feeling of the album and grounds it in feeling and atmosphere. Next up is "Champagne Problems," a heartbreaking story about someone declining a marriage proposal. Here, we explore mental health, regret, and emotional distance between the protagonist and their former partner. The sparse piano chords and choir harmonies give the song space, which serves as an emotional weight against what the track and lyrics articulate.
"Gold Rush" takes us back in character and into a quasi-chamber pop song. This track features horns, tempo changes, layered strings, and an upbeat structure which again speaks to Swift's exploration of obsession and insecurity, and is perhaps one of the busier, more dynamic moments rhythmically, on Evermore.
There are surprises built around storytelling on this album, as well. "'Tis the Damn Season" and "Dorothea" tell different perspectives of the same situation, featuring a woman travelling back to her record hometown at the holidays and the man she left behind. The lyrics in the two tracks offer overlapping references and show Swift's continuing interest in character-based writing.
"No Body, No Crime" is a slice of country dramatics, replete with murder-revenge plot, with Haim. It is less intimate than other moments featured here, but still operates in a theatrical way in keeping with the cinematic possibilities of the project. "Happiness" offered some of Swift's only introspective lyrics, lyrically exploring divorce and emotional changes through personal growth. The layered synthesizers and subtle downplay of instrumentation on this song afforded the lyrics a stream of conscious moment. "Happiness" is one of the quieter moments on Evermore.
The second half of Evermore continues to explore the deadness of longings and truths. " 'Ivy'" meanwhile notes forbidden love through metaphor, mixing banjo, guitar and trumpet to create dramatic tension. "Cowboy Like Me" is a song that extends the movement of an extended slower blues and folk rock song, where both are con artists unknowingly falling in love. "Marjorie" is likely one of the most personal songs, honouring Swift's grandmother after her death. The production mixes in audio of her grandmother's opera songs throughout, creating narrative weight through the complexity of emotion it suggests.
Finally title track Evermore, featuring Bon Iver, ends the standard edition of the album with a ballad on depression and healing. The two artists offer complementary vocals as an epilogue to grapple with despair, hope, and its hospitalization.
Four years since its release, Evermore has become an almost subtle but meaningful album in her vast catalogue of Taylor Swift. It is capable of competing the album in modern pop domination; it had no notion or want to be. At best, it offered complex character-driven storytelling, moody, dark summer music, and lyrical exploration of personal growth and insight. Evermore is an album designed for the long haul, not the uptick of the first listen.
