Taylor Swift -- Evermore

Ten minutes to go and counting

Looking forward to her follow ups Pinafore, Semaphore, and Abbatoir

That last one would have been Coil's best remix album.

Listening on YT Music, cuz it's not on Tidal for some reason.

(ok, it finally showed up, in time for Track 3)

It's good

It is really nice, and "unassuming" / relaxed.

Vintage tee, brand new phone
Pigs gush blood, cattle groan

I'm sorry

I feel like this is the acoustic-y singer-songwriter album that lots of ppl have been waiting for her to make, without the indie affectations (er, enhancements) of Folklore.

This also has a few of her most straight-up country songs since, when - before Red?

This sounds exactly as indie as Folklore to me (I'm not complaining, I like it that way)

“ivy” is the standout to me on first listen

ok, this song "Long Story Short" is pretty indie; but it's a jam

aw, this final track is beautiful

Wikipedia says that all of the songs except one (that one is Antonoff obv) are produced by Dessner? Wow

on first listen this is good but it doesn't have the standouts that folklore did

Same, I prefer folklore to this but it’s still good

That being said I’d be surprised if this split the Taylor vote on the year end poll

on my 2nd time through now... "'Tis the Damn Season" is really a jam ("damn"!)

Pretty sure I prefer this album to Folklore, for various reasons (none of them interesting enough to dwell on).

wish there were more of the distorted drums on "closure" elsewhere, i'd been thinking that sort of thing would have worked quite nicely on some of folklore

evermore feels more like a collection of B-sides than a proper album to me

i think the title track is my favourite on first listen

Yeah this is very much an outtakes album, but it's quite pleasant.

It’s definitely looser, like a lot of quick follow ups to creative breakthroughs. The For The Roses to Folklore’s Blue, perhaps (and it shares with that album the sense that the song melodies bend to fit in all the words).

Folklore’s Blue

omg the audacity

Yeah on first listen I much prefer Folklore. Still I like that she released two (surprise) albums in a year. It’s refreshing especially for such a big act.

omfg “tis the damn season”

seven tracks in and i could not disagree more dramatically with the assertion that this is obviously a b-sides or an outtakes record

“happiness” ;_;

no one tell lj that taylor swift is exploring new time signatures

you could not make a song more tailored to my sensibilities than “long story short”

feeling some certainty after my first listen that this is going to be my favorite taylor record, every track blew me away and the sequencing kept me locked in (folklore has mostly great sequencing but it gets a little misty at the end imo)

that is ludicrously vmic lol but fine haha

I actually didn't hate folklore, is my horrid little secret here, so I probably will listen to this at some point

title track is her best closer by a mile

while it's not quite as immediately great as folklore there's still plenty to love here. i do wish there were more antonoff tracks to balance things out though. i agree the title track is her best closer, it's so good

one thing though is i quite like "champagne problems" but i swear the melody is pieced together from three or four different other of her songs?

and i take back it not having the sort of standouts that folklore did, "long story short" and "evermore" are just as great as the best moments from folklore

one thing though is i quite like "champagne problems" but i swear the melody is pieced together from three or four different other of her songs?

maybe this is intentional? the lyric's another look at the scenario of "Speak Now" too.

I can't help but hear these new songs in the light of her revisiting her past albums for the rerecording project.

I had the same impression about "Champagne Problems."

This is solid. "No Body, No Crime" sounds like normal times, i.e. Swift jamming with a skeleton of a song as she tosses lyrics to the Haim sisters.

I'll resist the hot takes, though. I need an album to crunch on next week.

xp like

"Time flies, messy as the mud on your truck tires"

sung with country inflections, amidst other singing in the more pop/r&b register of the 1989/Reputation era (or even "the 1")

these are songs as commentary on where she's at in her life, while at the same time being songs standing on their own

which is what she's always doing anyway, it all spirals, a mis en abyme

one of the tracks she's reused melodic phrases from in "champagne problems" is "all too well" but i haven't managed to place the others yet

there’ll be happiness after you
but there was happiness because of you
both of these things can be true

haha I'm listening to that tune as I type

"Evermore" is really gorgeous, and it's hard not to take for granted that she's singing with Vernon instead of the Panic at the Disco guy or Ed Sheeran.

He is absolutely her best-ever duet partner.

"Happiness" and "Marjorie" are my initial high points.

you booked the night train for a reason
so you could sit there in this hurt
bustling crowds or silent sleepers
you're not sure which is worse

the lyrics are so. good

"No Body No Crime" reminds me of something circa 1995 or so that I can't place

"happiness" has to be the most she's ever devastated me as a songwriter

Baba O'Marjorie

"No Body No Crime" reminds me of something circa 1995 or so that I can't place

“Sunny Came Home”?

shouldn't have said anything

why, was that it(?)

I don't know - probably - but I'll never be able to listen to it again without thinking of it

Sorry, I guess!

This is a v minor nitpick, but I wish "Long Story Short" didn't have those backing vox... sounds a little like the "Bob Clearmountain Mix" or something.

I don’t normally get into her lyrics too much (one way or another), but I really like how direct “Closure” is...

Don't treat me like
Some situation that needs to be handled

Imagine writing & recording a song as good as the title track, and having the discipline to hold it until the end of the second of two albums.

I don't think this is as strong as folklore, but it's pretty good. Time will tell if it stands on it's own or always seems like a collection of very good bonus tracks to me.

"“Sunny Came Home”?"

thanks I'd just managed to eliminate that particular earworm from my brain after 25 years, now it's back

tis the damn season owns

exactly, akm

My experience is—it’s hard for me to believe this album is nearly as long as Folklore, which feels like a slog from song to (good, if slightly overworked) song; whereas Evermore just flows effortlessly and lightly, it’s so loose, engaging, and delightful!

(Sorry, I’m posting too much... I didn’t expect ever to be this into a Taylor Swift album again!)

well maybe she'll release another one in four months so don't get comfy yet

So is this the PLUS to Folklore's SIGN? Or the Rise to Folklore's Black Is?

“ivy” is the standout to me on first listen

― winters (josh), Friday, December 11, 2020 12:05 AM (sixteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can't think of another moment in her catalog that sounds quite like the last minute of "Cowboy Like Me" - the guitar, harmonica, and vocal overdubs are beautifully balanced.

that song... is perfect

"champagne problems" kinda sits on a chord progression that's similar to both "all too well" and "cornelia st." not really bothered by this bc taylor has used similar chordal patterns before

The title track is really beautiful until Justin Vernon comes in moaning halfway through it.

"I come back stronger than a 90s trend" (on "willow") is a good line, though.

No strong feelings one way or the other about the rest of the album yet.

THANK YOU I thought I was the only one who thought Vernon's vocal was intrusively big and out of place in that song (the rest of which is great)

I too am not yet a fan of the duet with Oz

Folklore’s Blue

omg the audacity

― imago, Friday, 11 December 2020 08:10 (yesterday) link

I had assumed this was self-evident, but I was making a comment about the internal relationship between these records in the context of the artist's career, not a direct comparison in terms of quality.

Folklore was obviously a new sound for Taylor, and one in which she partly abandoned the false belief that her songs should be autobiographical in order to be relatable and emotionally "true". But otherwise it felt a bit like a retrenchment of Taylor's best prior songwriting qualities, building on the strengths of songs like "Last Kiss", "All Too Well" and "New Year's Day" and deepening those strengths. In that sense, like Blue, it feels a bit like a culmination, a snapping-into-focus.

The question "where next?" is always fraught. In retrospect, For The Roses was a transitional album in a clear sense, one foot still planted in Blue's spare confessionalism and heightened clarity, and one foot tentatively reaching out into new territory both stylistic (a sprinkling of jazz instrumentation etc.) and one at the songwriting/lyrical level, all those vertiginous changes in speed and sudden rushes of narrative detail (e.g. I went to see a friend tonight / it was very late when I walked in / my talking as it rambled / revealed suspicious reasoning / the visit seemed to darken him / I came in as bright as a neon light and I burned out right there before him) as if Joni was trying now to capture more of the restless uncertainty of her own thought patterns. Joni would spend the next three albums exploring and deepening the at times almost coltish discomforts of For The Roses's songwriting with increased confidence and increasing success. But it was the first album of hers I heard so I approached those in-betweenish qualities as if they were the point (albeit that, at 14, I wouldn't have articulated any of this in these terms).

I hear in Evermore a lot of that songwriting coltishness, Taylor placing stress on the classicism of her songwriting instincts in order to fit in as much impressionistic detail as she can, to capture with increasing pointillism the trailing details of a feeling, of a moment in time. Whether this works is as a matter of opinion, and whether she's doing this deliberately we won't know unless/until she makes another doco, but it seems clear to me that this is what the songs are often doing.

booming post

I'm not hearing the FTR comparison, Tim -- not yet. FTR, for one, boasted more instrumental filigrees than previous Mitchell albums. If anything, Swift has reversed the trajectory: from FTR back to Blue on the last two albums.

Also, I don't hear much affinity with Mitchell in Swift's work generally. Matthew Jones' FB wall had an excellent exchange b/w him and Ann Power about the roots of this album and Folklore's in late '80s Carly Simon, whose sensibilities weren't particularly melodic either but whose scansion grew more complex anyway.Ts

*Ann Powers obv

Again, this is not about whether the music literally resembles Joni.

Oh I know. I just don't see the affinities.

Enjoying it, though "no body no crime" just makes me want to put on "Past The Mission."

lol wow i’m not the only one who heard that

Marjorie & Closure were my big first-listen attention-grabbers. A good friend is going through something very similar to the situation that Closure describes, so that really hit a spot.

"closure" is really something else

also i am a fan of the bon iver part in "evermore"

much as it's sort of a double-time restaging of the effect of his bridge on "exile," but i think it works, his entrance kind of feels like a rush of panicked thoughts that briefly take over the song

I like "Closure" better than anything on folklore, though I'm mystified by her accent. I might be okay with it, though. That song definitely captures a particular kind of post-breakup feeling; it feels real. I like the "beers and candles" line and also the way she delivers it.

yeah she verges on a British accent at point on that song no?

"tolerate it" and "happiness" are like getting sucker-punched right in the emotions every time

the repetition of "i haven't met the new me yet/you haven't met the new me yet" in "happiness" and the way its meaning is changed by the different contexts it appears in... "all too well"-level

I've heard my kids play "Champagne Problems" and "No Body, No Crime" so far. The former seemed to ride that super-familiar C-G-Am-F chord "Hey Soul Sister" (et al) progression a little too hard. The latter was pretty primo MOR '90s, which was OK. Looking forward to listening to the rest of it at some point.

halfway thru this

my report is: it needs to lose 'champagne problems' urgently but otherwise not bad at all, odd-numbered tracks are particularly not-bad

have finished

my report is: sags a little in the middle, claws its way back, culminating in 'marjorie' into 'closure' which is probably the best two-track run of swift imo

Here's one for ya

Niche tweet: #Folklore is the Emily album and #Evermore is the Amy album. pic.twitter.com/RSeMLFpI9c

— Dr. Karen Tongson (@inlandemperor) December 12, 2020

“ivy” is just a fucking amazing song

i always forget the bridge is coming, and then it's like

so YEAH
it's a FIRE
it's a GODDAMN BLAZE IN THE DARK
and you starrrrrrted it

oh

goddamn

i find it interesting that the subject of taylor swift's sincerity has generated so much discussion lately when this album has, like, "marjorie" on it, but i also know that this discussion has nothing to do with her actual work

Yes, and I’m glad this actual thread has been spared the reach of that discussion.

for whatever reason, the one song that has really stayed with me from these first few days with this album is gold rush, which i haven't seen discussed much... that insistent, nagging melody in the chorus! her delivery! it's so good

“gold rush“ feels like an inversion of her usual themes bc she loves describing relationships as these magnetic fields that draw attention and on this song she is outright refusing someone bc of the attention that hovers around them (but also... reluctantly? as if she’s trying to convince herself she doesn’t want it—“so inviting, i almost jump in”). love the insistent pulse bleachers bring to the track too, and the intro/coda, like they’re these watery portals in and out of the song

"gold rush" and "ivy" are both amazing, yes.

Even more than with Folklore, I think questions of autobiography/sincerity feel almost irrelevant here - yes, there's "marjorie" and "long story short" and "closure" which are (or seem) autobiographical (and interestingly are clustered together near the end), but otherwise this album feels even more focused than its predecessor on inventing fictionalised narrative frameworks that provide a testing ground for exploring ideas about interpersonal relationships and for inhabiting perspectives increasingly imbued with moral ambiguity (an ironic development for a singer who used to present as pop's most self-righteous victim).

"long story short" of course is such a witty and knowing and sly dig not just at the singer's publicly-presented life to now but also her entire songwriting approach.

otm

This is my favorite TS album since Red, by a wide margin... it’s that thing where an artist you keep up with releases a random album that fits right in your “zone,” somehow. Love that!

“ivy” is just a fucking amazing song

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Sunday, December 13, 2020 5:27 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah "Ivy" and "Cowboy Like Me" have been stuck in my head all weekend. Second half of this album really outshines the first, but in a way that feels more like a crescendo. Love albums that do this - take you on a pleasant scenic drive and then hit the accelerator at some point and never look back, The National's Alligator being a prime example.

yeah "ivy" is where the album really takes off

she just needs any sort of editing instinct! nobody would really miss those middle two tracks and going straight from Happiness into Ivy would just work so much better

I like "Ivy" and loooove "Long Story Short" and a few others in the front, but, damn, y'all, after spending too much time on it last weekend, I haven't been so underwhelmed by a Swift release in years: her most melodically desiccated. What a helluva streak, though: three albums in 18 months is nothing to sneeze at.

the first half of the album is relatively weak for sure, i only really like "gold rush" and "no body, no crime" before "ivy". it's never bad but that section is nowhere near as strong as folklore

"dorothea" is funny to me because it's the absolute most national-y of all the dessner collabs, it still catches me off guard when her voice comes in instead of berninger's

“tolerate it” and “happiness” are two of her very best songs ever and they are in that first block

wack opinions itt

agree with brad! albeit as someone who's much less of a fan

“tis the damn season” too!

which feels thematically to me like a sequel to "i wish you would," but more assured and precise

this album does start off with its two weakest songs (musically—"champagne problems" is a lyrical success imo), i'm guessing that tends to throw ppl off

I didn't hate 'willow'! but yeah

anyway alfred i'm not sure i've ever seen an album grow on you so your opinion makes sense to me. but for my money it is her most accomplished body of work since red

my friend said "willow" reminded her of her high school loreena mckennitt phase and that is also now what the song makes me think of

anyway alfred i'm not sure i've ever seen an album grow on you so your opinion makes sense to me. but for my money it is her most accomplished body of work since red

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson),

Folklore sure did!

K Michelle's January album too. C'mon now.

i stand corrected! but this album is hardly melodically desiccated

the 5/4 rhythm adds a kind of verisimilitude to "tolerate it," it's the kind of halting, tentative rhythm of walking on eggshells around someone

the sighed "i" that leads into the chorus, that "iiiiiiiiiiiii," and the way it signifies the shift in the song's focus, from the subject's domination of every angle of the narrator's perspective, to the tortured feelings roiling beneath the narrator's outward expressions of care for this subject, that is exquisite and complex songwriting. of all the tracks on this record i feel like it's the one that confirms her craft has hit a different level even from the previous record

thanks, that's a wonderful reading of the song

I love the first half of this album but I can see how it could seem weak. it doesn't liftoff, nor does it bore inward. She's listening instead.

personally i wouldn't go nearly as far as "dessicated" but I do think this is melodically inferior to Folklore (which might be her best in that regard). these might be her best lyrics though.

If anyone else listened to the EOY NYT Popcast, Lindsay Zoladz talked about how she felt Folklore was masquerading as a stripped down record and was actually over-produced. I don't know if I agree that it's "over"-produced, certainly not any more than any of her other albums since Fearless, but I can see her point.

I wonder how folks are receiving the production on this album relative to Folklore? Personally I prefer most of the Antonoff songs on Folklore to the Dessner ones (there are exceptions of course), and I thought I appreciated that it didn't feel like a one trick pony National album with Swift vocals; but I have to say I'm very much enjoying the atmosphere and flow of Evermore, and I'm unsure if it's the songs, the production, or something else.

I agree that the production on Folklore could be seen as kind of fussy or mannered, while this one feels just right. It's packed with hooks -- delicate guitar licks, piano lines, vocal melodies that swoop in -- but nothing's pushing for attention, it all feels "in the pocket."

i think i can get with zoladz's description if it's specifically aimed at "exile"?

if anything evermore has production of even greater depth than folklore, the instrumentation of which almost always feels like it's lightly stirring (which is one of the things i really like about the record). "cowboy like me" and "dorothea" and "tolerate it" are in contrast very crafted atmospheres that remind me of like... fumbling towards ecstasy in terms of the layers they're trying to build around the songs

this conversation thankfully hasn't really happened on ilm but i told tim the other day that instead of torturing oneself over indie folk appropriation or whatever ppl should recognize these records for the revival of lilith fair sonics that they are

otm about late '90s. Yesterday I jotted down "1998-era Tori Amos" when listening to "Happiness."

"No Body No Crime" reminds me of something circa 1995 or so that I can't place

“Sunny Came Home”?

― good karma, my aesthetic (morrisp), Friday, December 11, 2020 12:20 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm about late '90s. Yesterday I jotted down "1998-era Tori Amos" when listening to "Happiness."

Totally. I hope her next record goes towards Choirgirl sonics

Repeating myself, but I just feel like this is really smart writing, especially given it's the chorus to the album's most conventionally catchy, pop-minded track:

And I fell from the pedestal
Right down the rabbit hole
Long story short, it was a bad time
Pushed from the precipice
Clung to the nearest lips
Long story short, it was the wrong guy

(also, "actually, I always felt I must look better in the rear view" - though I think the key here is to recognise that the singer is being ironic in presenting this as a new and insightful realisation)

Perhaps it's the subsequent reference to dropping a sword that makes me think of it, but I'm actually struck less by sonic similarities with Tori Amos (though they're there) than the increasing lyrical similarities at least with Tori's early work when the songs had fairly recognisable and coherent narratives, and she was doing stuff like this a lot.

In the case of "Long Story Short", I'm vaguely reminded of this section of "Take To The Sky" - there's that similar sense of combined earnestness and acknowledging yr own ridiculousness:

But my priest says, "You ain't saving no souls"
My father says, "You ain't making any money"
My doctor says, "You just took it to the limit"
And here I stand with this sword in my hand

(or, for a more concise example: "So you've found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts / what's so amazing about really deep thoughts?")

TS has been progressively embracing moral ambiguity and a decentring of her own POV for a while, of course, but the extent of that shift feels really apparent now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYHt7_RANiY

really enjoying this slightly quieter and more impressionistic arrangement, especially as i can't get this song out of my fucking head

Another stunner is “ivy,” a knotty fairytale that reveals darker characters in the storybook setting of Swift’s early work. Backed by banjo, trumpet, and gentle harmonies from Vernon, she begins with an allusion to Miller Williams’ 1997 poem “Compassion.” “I’ll meet you where the spirit meets the bone,” she sings before describing a forest dreamland corrupted by someone else’s roots. The Arkansas poet she quotes happens to be the father of outlaw country legend Lucinda Williams, who used the same line as the title of the first album she released on her own label, 2014’s Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone. (“We can do what we want to do now,” Williams said at the time, after decades of mistreatment from the music industry. “Plus we own the masters, everything we record.”)

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/taylor-swift-evermore/

I was surprised to learn it was Marcus Mumford doing the backing vocals on "Cowboy Like Me".

Good review by Sodomsky.

xp Hadn't looked at the credits. Adore that song. Looks like it's Vernon on electric guitar and drums? Reminds me every so slightly of "Beth/Rest."

Yeah that is an excellent review I think.

agreed, sodomsky nails a lot of it

he's among their best

after almost a week, my favorite tracks are the section of “Ivy” -> “Cowboy Like Me” -> “Long Story Short” -> “Marjorie” (“Cowboy” being the favorite among this lot)

(favorite tracks at the moment)

Yeah that's where it peaks for me, too. I listened to the NYT Popcast on Evermore yesterday and couldn't believe they all dismissed "Cowboy." Too subtle, I guess, but it was funny to hear Caramanica deride Dessner's production as heavy-handed and fussy and then trash the most straightforward and gorgeous singer/songwriter/country song she's put out since like "Never Grow Up."

first take on this album last week was that it wasn't as strong as Folklore and now I think it might be stronger? a testament to the album that everyone has different favorites, or that the favorites change from day to day. Frankly cannot get Willow out of my head, and yes to the Tori Amos comparisons, which seem strongest in parts of Gold Dust (itself an Amos-y title)and...something else, can't remember. Maybe it was Happiness. I walked around in a light rain at night the other night slightly high and listened to this entire album for the 20th time and was just kind of blown away by it. It's both meticulous and effortless sounding. Both albums are great crash courses in songcraft. You can kind of imagine how they were written; so many are based on what are essentially loops of piano, the kinds of things I am guessing, now, that Aaron might have dozens and dozens of. They're the kinds of melodies that come to your head at any time during the day (if you are at all musical) but he actually writes them down and records them; they are not, for the most part, very complicated, but they resonate and provide a kind of open template for a counter melody on top. What's most amazing about these songs though is those countermelodies, which I imagine Swift wrote herself; and they go everywhere. Sometimes there are like five of them in a song. I have a hard time breaking some of these songs into 'verse/chorus' structures; there are pre-choruses, post-choruses, entirely different meters for the verses with varying melodies. Exquisite.

Frankly cannot get Willow out of my head

She has an incredible ability to write earworms. I have had this experience with every one of her albums dating back to the s/t. Can still remember tossing and turning at night with "The Outside" chorus blaring in my brain.

and yes to the Tori Amos comparisons, which seem strongest in parts of Gold Dust (itself an Amos-y title)and

lol this slip pretty much proves yr point

ha! yeah, gold rush

and the other song was happiness, listening to it now. in fact if someone had played this for me and told me it was a tori amos song I'd have believed them.

also, I wonder if it's weird for Aaron Dessner who went from being 'guy in a moderately famous indie rock band' to cowriter of what will probably be seen as collectively one of the best American music releases of the 21st century.

I have been curious about how/if her core fanbase have been acquainting themselves with his work and everything he's attached to (namely The National ofc)

Some good stuff here from Marissa Moss on Evermore / Taylor's relationship with country music

https://dontrocktheinbox.substack.com/p/dont-rock-the-inbox-issue-3

xp Speaking of her core fanbase – I was chatting w/a coworker who seemed like a gonzo fan (based on his Slack comments re: Folklore); I mentioned Red, and he admitted that he hasn't heard anything earlier than 1989.

FYI, there’s an EP with a few different versions (mixes?) of “Willow,” including the one that brad posted above.

There’s something so... relaxed, superficially “minor” about “Ivy” and “Cowboy Like Me”, a vibe which feels almost like a breakthrough in her songwriting (they’re not actually minor at all, of course - this is some of her loveliest songwriting, performed with great delicacy) - an increasing realisation that you can skip the exclamation marks and the bold underline emphasis and still capture something important and alluring.

^yeah, this is well-stated... these songs don’t have that slightly “show-offy” quality that her stuff often has (including folklore, even though its songs present themselves as “understated”).

(and “show-offy” isn’t bad – just to be clear! – but I think one reason I connect w/evermore so much is that the songs work that other vibe which Tim expressed.)

one of the tracks she's reused melodic phrases from in "champagne problems" is "all too well" but i haven't managed to place the others yet

― ufo, Friday, December 11, 2020

"i knew you were trouble"

for whatever reason, the one song that has really stayed with me from these first few days with this album is gold rush, which i haven't seen discussed much...

― petey v, Sunday, December 13, 2020

what popped for me at once on first listen: morrissey's coastal town, interpolated in a way that immediately calls to mind some of the conjurings of NFR! (CSN, Cohen, sorry haters!) which hey, we found the Antonoff track! (so everything comes full circle and on first listen it's my favorite track on the record, until the next one comes in to eclipse it)

Huh, listen to “Cowboy Like Me” and Tori’s “Crazy” back to back.

now you hang from my lips
like the gardens of babylon

yes, the phrasings in bits of cowboy like me are very amos also. none of this is a knock, IMO. I'm all for more people writing songs that sound like this.

i saw some people giving 'some tent like thing' some criticism but I really like that line.

Me too - it's a cool line, and doesn't seem like the kind of lyric she would normally write.

that line is amazing!!!!

(It reminds me of a particular band or artist that I can't place.)

I think the comment I saw about that was on the hoffman forums, and someone did add "not sure what else she would have said, 'tarpaulin'?' and now I think "the tennis court was covered up with some tarpaulin' half the time, which is what elvis costello would have written and it would have been stupid

love Bernie Tarpaulin's lyrics

i am unsure why i love "cowboy like me" as much as i do (maybe because it reminds me of "papa was a rodeo" if covered by emmylou harris) but it is full of some terrific and realized writing, including "some tent like thing", it really nails down the protagonist's vernacular. amy hempel could've written it. unshowy and minor as referenced above, but no less striking. actually even more impressive than the knockout one-liners she's proven capable of.

That line reminds me of Connie Converse's "some sort of a squirrel thing"
I've found myself starting the record at "ivy" and then just letting that last stretch play. "cowboy like me" my fave though

yeah "ivy" --> "evermore" is her best ever stretch of songs

"papa was a rodeo" if covered by emmylou harris

^nice! it also makes me think of "papa was a rodeo" (but I shied away from mentioning that, as it felt too indie-schmindie a reference).

need more stately songs about reckless swindlers meeting their match tbh

i was talking to tim about this record yesterday and he pointed out that "cowboy like me" features one of her favorite lyrical tricks (which is all over this record), the repeated phrase that is altered by its new context each time it recurs, cf. "i haven't met the new me yet" in "happiness." "cowboy like me"'s is "i could be the way forward / only if they pay for it" which curdles into "we could be the way forward / and i know i'll pay for it." i keep thinking that insecurity and melancholy are the driving emotions of that song even though on the surface it is about finding love in your chosen field if that field happens to be con artistry, because it's a relationship where you're never certain if the person you're falling for is the real one, and you never know if they're ever being truly honest with you. and this is never stated outright, it just works through the song ambiguously, compromising every declaration of certainty, subtly poisoning lines like "i'm never gonna love again" from the very roots. it's great writing

song feels bottomless both in its sound and vision

we also talked about "ivy," i am sort of struck every time i hear it that it's the apotheosis of her career's worth of themes, the pull of an imaginary fairytale universe somehow unlocked by true love b/w the overdriven romantic and sexual tensions of songs like "treacherous," except in this song the latter so darkens and confuses the former that it feels like you're wandering through the ruins of a castle or a magical forest full of dead trees. it is so lost in this effect that lyrically she gives almost nothing away, there's so much allusion and incident that only sort of indirectly tells you what's going on ("and the old widow goes to the stone every day / but i don't, i just sit here and wait / grieving for the living"). it's like the song is wreathed in a fog. so often her successful writing is rooted in the specificity and resonance of her details so "ivy" really does feel like it has its foot in another world where nothing resolves so easily. so like while it's the apotheosis of her themes it delivers them with what feels like a new obliqueness and mystery

at least half of these ideas are copyright tim f btw

I also like the "tent-like thing" line a lot, but I wish she'd kept up that voice all the way through the song. The "gardens of Babylon" line sounds more like Taylor Swift to me, less like something that character would say.

I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now

i was talking to tim about this record yesterday and he pointed out that "cowboy like me" features one of her favorite lyrical tricks (which is all over this record), the repeated phrase that is altered by its new context each time it recurs, cf. "i haven't met the new me yet" in "happiness." "cowboy like me"'s is "i could be the way forward / only if they pay for it" which curdles into "we could be the way forward / and i know i'll pay for it."

Totally. She does this elsewhere in "Cowboy" with "I've got some tricks up my sleeve" then "You had some tricks up your sleeve" then "I've had some tricks up my sleeve," which seems simple enough but is a subtle and clever way to tell stories with the chorus not just the verses.

Probably stating the obvious (and previously stated), but this feels like the "10 years later" version of Folklore: the high-school drama has turned into adult relationships and regrets. Today it's "happiness" that's hitting me hardest.

"the lakes" is the only folklore track i don't really care for so i am really surprised at how great the evermore bonus tracks are

"great" may be overstating it, i wouldn't swap them for anything on the record, and "it's time to go" sort of confirms this is her joni mitchell record, taylor just had the good sense to cut "the windfall (everything for nothing)" from the official tracklist

I think my CD is scheduled to arrive tmrrw. Looking forward to it

lol I haven’t heard these yet but I still get the windfall joke

but which is 'Ray's Dad's Cadillac'?

closure sounds like casiontone for the painfully alone imo, i like its sentiment but it doesnt work for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur_wAcYDnuA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iRbIYkccgw

Really nice songs, IMO

girl... enough

I guess “Right Where You Left Me” sounds a little like “You Belong to Me”... which is not an unwelcome callback, for a post-breakup song years later.

Such good lyrics—

I’m sure that you got a wife out there
Kids and Christmas

Wow, just listened to "Tolerate It" and "closure": p cool; 5/4 grooves were not what I expected from her.

I find “Tolerate It” pops into my head a lot.

One of several remarkable things about "Cowboy Like Me" is how it kicks off with what turns out to essentially be the bridge melody, when it returns around 2:50. Can anyone think of another example of a song that does that? (I'm a connoisseur of bridges in songs, I can't off the top of my head.)

I love how this song floats along, stately & serene, lightly touching down every time it shifts from section to section.

It’s easy to imagine a Matrix-produced version of “Long Story Short” being a hit for an Avril or Michelle Branch in the early ‘00s (this is a virtue, btw).

I feel like "Ivy" through "Long Story Short" is her finest 3 song run ever.

Yes! (That’s the run I just experienced in the car.)

i wish to know
the fatal flaw that makes you long to be
magnificently cursed

the "lay the table with the fancy shit" chapter

the AND NOW! backing vocals in "long story short" are so deliriously infectious

Ftr, I was wrong about “Cowboy” kicking off with the bridge melody (don’t know why I heard it that way earlier).

Maybe not the thread for this I don't know

I’m thrilled to tell you that my new version of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is done and will be with you soon. It has 26 songs including 6 never before released songs from the vault. Love Story (Taylor’s Version) will be out tonight. Pre-order now at https://t.co/NqBDS6cGFl 💛💛 pic.twitter.com/Vjyy2gA72O

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) February 11, 2021

I thought the old Taylor was dead?

Thought this 1989-esque cover of "Champagne Problems" was alright

https://open.spotify.com/track/6RhtrocZlbccSXo80rfAyN?si=6bebef75a8184836

i put this on last night while enduring a few vaccine side effects and i cried through every song that doesn't feature haim

how's one to know
i'd live and die for moments that we stole
on begged and borrowed time

so tell me to run
or dare to sit and watch what we'll become
and drink my husband's wine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_wr-9X47ao

oh this is wonderful

It’s great - feels of a piece with “long story short”

Distracting band name, in a Taylor Swift context.

i would love a whole taylor album in the vein of this & "long story short"

fuck this is a good record. happy melancholidays y'all!

Yeah, I don't think many ppl "get" how good it is. Like forget everything about Taylor Swift (if you want); don't think of it as "Folklore's fun little sister" (or whatever her line is)... this album is something else altogther.

i think it might be her best album, though I need to revisit red. It's got the strangest, most complex songs she's ever released, but it's still very much a taylor swift record. it's also a lot less corny than folklore, which blew me away at first but just sounds a tad cliched now

like it still blows my mind that there are TWO songs on this record in 5/4 time

how’s one to know

I'm probably the only one that didn't know this about "Marjorie" but posting since I didn't find anything else in the thread...

The experience writing that song was really surreal, because I was kind of a wreck at times writing it, and I’d sort of breakdown sometimes. It was really hard to actually even sing it in the vocal booth without sounding like I had sort of a break [in my voice], because it just was really emotional. I think that one of the hardest forms of regret to sort of work through is the regret of being so young when you lost someone that you didn’t have the perspective to learn and appreciate who they were fully. I’d open up my grandmother’s closet and she had beautiful dresses from the 60s, I wish I’d asked her where she wore every single one of them, things like that. She was a singer and my mom would look at me so many times a year and say, ‘God, you’re just like her,’ when I’ll do some manners that I don’t recognize as being anyone other than mine. She died when I was 13, and she died, I think, when I was on a trip to Nashville to try and make it, to try to hand out my demos and CDs to record labels and things like that, so there were pretty insane coincidences like that, and I’ve always felt that thing like she was seeing this, because we have sort of to do that. One of the things on this song that still rips me apart when I listen to it is that she’s singing with me on this song. My mum found a bunch of her old records, a bunch of old vinyls of her singing opera, and I sent them to Aaron and he added them to the song. It says ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were singing to me now’, and then you actually hear Marjorie, my grandmother, actually sing. And it’s moments like that on the record that just make you feel like your whole heart is in this whole thing that you’re doing. Is all of you that you put into these things.

from this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQacWbsLbS4

I have come to the better-late-than-never conclusion over the last two days that "Marjorie" is one of her best songs. A brilliant mix of internal dialogue, concise storytelling, creative song structure, and magical lyricism. It deserves someone more knowledgeable and articulate than me to unpack, but a few things I love:

- how she anchors the song in these initial "advice" verses that are universal -- they could be interpreted as messages to her fans, reminders to herself, and/or values she believes her grandmother imparted on her
- the way she alters each pre-chorus ("If I didn't know better, I'd think you were...") to shift from just hearing her grandmother's voice in her head to being in conversation with one another: "Talking to me now"/"Listening to me now"/"Singing to me now"
- the way the song builds to that "Singing to me now" moment when Dessner adds Marjorie's vocals -- got choked up listening to this yesterday -- and how he brings these back in the outro
- how unlike most of her songs, which revolve around the chorus, that build in momentum is driven entirely by the bridge where the entire song's story is told in 16 utterly devastating lines that weave a specific narrative story, internal rhyming ("long limbs and frozen swims"), relatable emotions of regret and grief ("I should have asked you questions"/"I should have asked you how to be" !!!!) that then intersect back into specifics ("Watched as you signed your name Marjorie")...
- the way she ends the song returning to the pre-chorus instead of the chorus
- Dessner's production here is so light yet pretty complex:

That’s a track that actually existed for a while, and you can hear elements of it behind the song ‘peace.’ This weird drone that you hear on ‘peace,’ if you pay attention to the bridge of ‘marjorie,’ you’ll hear a little bit of that in the distance. Some of what you hear is from my friend Jason Treuting playing percussion, playing these chord sticks, that he actually made for a piece that my brother wrote called ‘Music for Wooden Strings.’ […] I collect a lot of rhythmic elements like that, and all kinds of other sounds, and I give them to my friend Ryan Olson, who’s a producer from Minnesota and has been developing this crazy software called Allovers Hi-Hat Generator. It can take sounds, any sounds, and split them into identifiable sound samples, and then regenerate them in randomized patterns that are weirdly very musical. […] That’s how I made the backing rhythm of ‘marjorie.’ Then I wrote a song to it, and Taylor wrote to that. In a weird way, it’s one of the most experimental songs on the album — it doesn’t sound that way, but when you pick apart the layers underneath it, it’s pretty interesting.

it's evermore season

"she would've made such a lovely bride
what a shame she's fucked in the head," they said