© Beth Garrabrant
Culture & Living
8 inside details you need to know about Taylor Swift’s surprise new album, Folklore
The international pop sensation has broken form in more ways than one with the release of her surprise new album. Here’s everything you need to know about the record, from nods to the pandemic and politics, to collaborations with The National and Bon Iver
To the surprise (and delight) of fans, Taylor Swift revealed on Instagram that she would release a surprise eighth studio album, Folklore, on July 24. While Swift’s album cycles have always been carefully curated—a cohesive artistic vision with two or three years between records—Folklore is Swift breaking her own cycle. It’s been less than a year since she shared her sunny and liberating LP Lover, the shortest gap she’s ever had between projects.
Growing up in the public eye, Swift has always been the subject of tabloid fodder. But she’s a master storyteller and an adeptly introspective songwriter, known for her dramatic flair that often toes the line between fiction and reality. On Folklore, Swift largely trades pop for indie folk and leans into telling tales. Like many of us, isolation has let her imagination run wild and focus on the importance of the now. It’s also allowed her to be more emotionally raw than ever.
According to Swift, 2020 prompted her to embrace her inner carpe diem: “Before this year, I probably would’ve overthought when to release this music at the ‘perfect’ time,” she writes on Instagram, “but the times we’re living in keep reminding me that nothing is guaranteed.” And with that, Swift took a leap of faith, leaning into the uncertainty we’re experiencing at the moment, and gave us the balm we so desperately needed.
© Beth Garrabrant
1. The overall aesthetic of Folklore seems to pull from 2012’s Safe & Sound
From the cowboy boot-wearing girl next door on debut album Taylor Swift (2006) to the rainbow fringe-flaunting free spirit of Lover (2019), Taylor Swift’s album cycles are an aesthetic. Her latest, Folklore, is no different. This time around, though, Swift has opted for a pastoral palette combining Midsommar (Ari Aster’s 2019 folk-horror film), #cottagecore and tall trees.
Since announcing the record, Swift hit the refresh button on her Instagram, posting black-and-white images of her alone in the woods—ones that seem to parallel the isolated nature vibe of her 2012 music video for Safe & Sound with former alt-country duo The Civil Wars. Finding inspiration from a song that was, after all, featured on the soundtrack for a film centred on a dystopian world—The Hunger Games—seems rather on the nose for current times. This isn’t too surprising: often, Swift can be seen referencing old songs (and versions of herself).
2. Bon Iver and The National’s Aaron Dessner collaborated with Swift on Folklore
Straying from the synth-pop embraced on her past few records, Swift opted for an ethereal indie-folk sound on Folklore. To help craft it, the singer enlisted The National’s Aaron Dessner who co-wrote or co-produced 11 of the album’s 16 songs, as well as Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and The National members Bryan Devendorf and Bryce Dessner for “beautiful orchestration”. According to Variety, the singer has been a “longtime fan” of The National and was even spotted hanging out at the group’s concert in New York in June 2019. Also featured on the record is Swift’s regular collaborator Jack Antonoff.
3. Folklore pays homage to former versions of herself on Speak Now and Red
Swift is the queen of clues and words are her love language. In her Instagram post discussing her decision to release Folklore, she says, “My gut is telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world.” At the end of the prologue of her 2010 album Speak Now—the first record Swift penned entirely by herself—she wrote: “I don’t think you should wait. I think you should speak now.” It doesn’t seem like a coincidence. With the release of Folklore, there was an urgency for Swift to share it with the world.
The record is a swirl of the more delicate moments in her discography—the nostalgia and hyper-romanticism of Speak Now and the wistful country moments throughout 2012’s Red. She’s “still on that tightrope,” on the woozy, steel pedal-tinged Mirrorball—a callback to Speak Now’s Innocent—and delivers a handful of allusions to Mine with the wistful August (“You weren’t mine to lose”). Traces of chamber-pop from The Last Time, which Swift did with Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody on Red appear on Folklore with the Vernon-assisted Exile.
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4. High-school nostalgia is abundant on the record
With the harmonica-flanked Betty, Swift takes on the role of James, detailing a high-school love triangle. (This is one of three linked teenage stories about a love triangle that Swift has penned.) And there’s a smattering of allusions to teenage years throughout Folklore on August (“Meet me at the mall”) and Invisible String (“Teal was the colour of your shirt/When you were 16 at the yoghurt shop/You used to work at to make a little money”). On Cardigan, an aspirational Lana Del Rey-like jaunt, Swift revisits the older versions of herself affectionately: “Vintage tee, brand new phone/High heels on cobblestones/When you are young they assume you know nothing/Sequin smile, black lipstick/Sensual politics/When you are young they assume you know nothing.” And the swirl of Swift’s haunted vocals on Mirrorball illuminate what feels like the last dance at prom.
5. William Bowery doesn’t seem to exist
On Exile and Betty, a certain William Bowery is credited as a songwriter. Swift is no stranger to using a pseudonym—she used the name Nils Sjöberg to secretly co-write Calvin Haris and Rihanna’s 2016 hit This Is What You Came For. Fans seem to think that it could be either Swift’s brother Austin—it’s suspected he recorded a cover of Look What You Made Me Do under a fake band name—or her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn.
6. Illicit Affairs is a follow-up to Reputation’s Getaway Car
Oh how Swift can make a clandestine romance seem so film noir. While Getaway Car created a theatrical nighttime escape, Illicit Affairs goes into the gritty details and heartache of infidelity, like meeting in parking lots and buying perfume for a lover who doesn’t care. “Don’t call me kid/Don’t call me baby/Look at this godforsaken mess that you made me/You showed me colours you know I can’t see with anyone else,” she fumes over finger-plucked strings. It’s like Death by a Thousand Cuts (Lover), but “they lie… a million little times.”
7. Swift addresses her disillusionment with politics and the state of the world
As Swift has become an important political advocate, it’s not surprising that she tackles the distress that she’s felt about it. On Exile, a duet featuring Vernon’s syrupy baritone, Swift senses the impending doom of a dystopian society: “I think I’ve seen this film before/And I didn’t like the ending/You’re not my homeland anymore/So what am I defending now?” The devastation of COVID-19 also weighs heavy on Swift’s mind as her whispery vocals soar through the ethereal hymn Epiphany: “Something med school did not cover/Someone’s daughter, someone’s mother/Holds your hand through plastic now.”
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8. She’s vocal about the distress the Big Machine label battle has caused her
Throughout the course of her career, Swift has been met with gendered criticism. In a 2013 interview with Vanity Fair, she said, “For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend… that’s taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist.”
You know Swift means business when she lowers her vocal register (see: Bad Blood). On Lover, she criticised the double standards of women in the music industry with the flashy electropop anthem The Man. On Folklore, she sends a personal message. With Mad Woman, which channels the sparse, sombre keys of Gary Jules’ cover of Mad World, Swift takes aim at Big Machine (her former label) founder Scott Borchetta, and Scooter Braun, whose company acquired the label in June 2019—and with it, Swift’s back catalogue. “Do you see my face in the neighbour’s lawn?/Does she smile /Or does she mouth ‘fuck you forever?’” she seethes. Swift, in a series of sarcastic kiss-offs says, “It’s obvious that wanting me dead has really brought you two together.” Ouch.
