Folklore: Taylor Swift's Palette Cleansing Album Is Her Best One Yet
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Folklore: Taylor Swift's Palette Cleansing Album Is Her Best One Yet - Music

Folklore: Taylor Swift's Palette Cleansing Album Is Her Best One Yet

This is not the Taylor Swift you know. But it is the Taylor Swift you always loved.

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It is fun solving the little puzzles Taylor Swift creates to roll out her albums. It is a good strategic move for a promotion that doesn't take much effort to stay in the news until the album comes out. This is why when Swift gave only 17 hours notice before unleashing her eighth studio album, Folklore, it felt like a seismic shock to her fandom.

At the beginning of the year 2020, we all had plans. Then the novel coronavirus spread turned into a pandemic and we all started to work towards finding the motivation to just get through the day. When Swift announced the arrival of the new album, it sure delighted her fandom, but there were many looking back and taking stock of what they did in four months of isolation.

Folklore has sixteen songs (bonus track, The Lakes, will be part of the deluxe edition on vinyl). In a note accompanied with the announcement, Swift said, "Before this year I probably would have overwrought when to release this music at the 'perfect' time, but the times we are living in keep reminding me that nothing is guaranteed. My gut is telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world. That's the side of uncertainty I can get on board with."

This is a big shift from her meticulously calculated, carefully curated rollouts. It is not just a change in the marketing approach. It is the complete overhaul of her music creating style. On the album, she collaborated with Aaron Dessner, The National's songwriter, for 11 of these 16 songs. Bon Iver (Justin Vernon) co-wrote and sang one song on the album. And a mysterious William Bowery who co-wrote two songs with Swift. If you look at the collaborations Swift has worked on in her career so far, these names couldn't possibly feature in any of the closest circles of her most distant collaborators. But to our surprise, these unions work.

Dessner's signature style of relying on strings, mellow percussions and letting the words shine can be felt all over Folklore. This acoustic, neo-classical style suits vocal directness of Swift. The opening track, The 1, is an astonishing display of how grounded she sounds. No chorus sticks out, zero processing, and pure vocals. Cardigan, the only song with a proper music video (beautifully directed by Swift while taking all necessary precautions approved by health professionals), feels like the calm after the storm. The air is clear, the earth is satiated and there is acceptance of the reflection in the shimmering puddle of rainwater.'

Since the unveiling of Reputation, loss of innocence has been a recurring theme in her songs. It gets far more devastating in Folklore because Swift, Dessner and Swift's frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff create songs that are simple of the surface but on a closer look you can peel off the layers for days. Best examples on the tracklist are Seven, Mad Woman, Mirrorball. She goes, "I can change everything bout me to fit in."

The Last Great American Dynasty is probably the most direct song confessing about Swift's new attitude towards life. Swift had said that her songs were a mix of real experiences and fictional stories. 'Dynasty's is clearly about the singer. She explores the history of her Rhode Island home by the sea. Before Swift bought it, it was home to the heir to the Standard Oil fortune. After he died, his widow had a grand time at the manse with her eccentric friends. Swift sings of the history and then not-so-subtly includes her narrative. “There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen / She had a marvellous time ruining everything,” she sings of the eccentric widow, Rebekah who died a long time ago. “Fifty years is a long time / Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits / Then it was bought by me… the loudest woman this town has ever seen."

With Folklore, Taylor Swift seems to have landed in a cabin in the woods and emerged a contemplating woman in her 30s who is not worried about the dramas but more interested in her craft as a brilliant songwriter. The soul searching endeavour in a lockdown can go either way. It can trigger the emotions you never asked for or it can give you profound insights about the person you are. Folklore shows that Swift's time under lockdown did the latter. Devoid of pop bangers, the emotional clarity of her thoughts is her real asset.

Cover artwork by Dhaval Punatar/AskMen India