Last December, when a few friends on the Tattler board told me that Taylor Swift was releasing another album, Evermore, I didn’t believe them. For reference, Folklore, Taylor’s last album, was released in July. But despite all my doubts and expressions of incredulity, it was true. Taylor had managed to release two albums in less than half a year.
Taylor describes Evermore as a sister album to Folklore, a deeper journey into the folklorian woods. Her description is accurate. While Evermore could stand alone as an album separate from Folklore, the parallels between Evermore and Folklore are undeniable. Both albums stray in genre from Taylor’s older work, most of which can be described as pop or country. Both rely on the intelligence of Taylor’s co-collaborators, of which there are many. Jack Antonoff, Justin Vernon, Aaron Dessner, and William Bowery (an alias for Taylor’s boyfriend, Joe Alwyn) provide both variety in musical instrumentation and style, Finally, both rely heavily on Taylor’s uncanny ability to write stories—in both albums, she masterfully composes fictional narratives that are as clever as they are compelling.
As in Folklore, there are moments of brilliance in Evermore. Mellow piano chords open “Champagne Problems”, which tells the gripping tale of two lovers who have different expectations for their future. Resonant drums drive “Gold Rush” forward, the thumping rhythm juxtaposing with Taylor’s voice to create a quixotic song of fresh love. Wailing sirens preface the macabre tone of “No Body, No Crime”, which is an enthralling, macabre murder mystery.
But despite Evermore’s mercurial highs, its weaknesses are also apparent. Every song on Evermore is good, but some of them are forgettable. While many songs (”Champagne Problems”, “Gold Rush”, “No Body, No Crime”, “‘Tis The Damn Season”, “Dorothea”, “Marjorie”, “Evermore”) feel quite memorable, others disappear after a few listens. While this curse is true of all of Taylor’s albums—and in general, all albums—Evermore felt particularly susceptible. At this point, Taylor has written so many songs that some of them inevitably lack the narrative energy that characterizes her best songs.
It is possible, however, that after a few months have passed, I’ll come back to the album and find that some of the songs I find unremarkable now (“Long Story Short”, “Cowboy Like Me”, “Happiness”, “Tolerate It”, “Ivy”) suddenly become new favorites. Certainly, listening to music again has led me to reconsider many of my previous opinions. For example, Reputation, an album that I once derided as overly edgy, has been a source of great joy during the pandemic. Outside of Taylor’s music, I’ve become fond of Romantic-era piano and cello pieces, music that I would never have listened to voluntarily a few years ago.
The practice of perennially revisiting music is what makes music so inherently valuable—once music is made, it exists forever, serving as a soundtrack for our emotions, a mirror for our souls. Just as we revisit Beethoven’s grand symphonies or Chopin’s intimate nocturnes, future generations will continue to listen to today’s music, searching for emotional completion. Certainly, Taylor’s intensely emotional lyrics will be savored in the years to come. In “Willow”, the opening track of Evermore, Taylor says that she “comes back stronger than a 90s trend.” Decades from now, when artificial intelligence is creating tonally perfect symphonies and driving our cars and curating our entire lives, perhaps Taylor’s music will still be as potent then—in the year 2050, hopefully her music will be fondly remembered as more than a 2010s trend.