In times of distress, I often turn to music for comfort. This seems to be true for many of us: in 2020, Spotify noted a significant increase in aptly themed playlists such as “work from home” and “nostalgia.” It is no secret that the past year has been hard on many of us in different ways. Surviving a global pandemic requires extreme patience, a glass-half-full disposition, and lots of distractions. In the musical landscape of 2020, Taylor Swift has been on the minds of many with the arrival of not one, but two studio albums that were written and released in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. These albums, unlike any of her previous bodies of work, are acts of healing—desperately needed during such a tough year.
With top spots on Rolling Stone’s “best albums of the year” lists and chart-topping streams, Taylor Swift’s new music made waves in the 2020 music industry. I think the overwhelmingly positive reactions to folklore and evermore are telling of the general mental state of many people during the pandemic. These albums are softer, more slowed down, and rawer than any of Taylor’s previous work. They are truthful and intimate, perfect for how we listen to music these days: not in clubs or at parties or concerts, but alone withheadphones, coming out of laptop speakers, or soundtracking listless drives.
To me, folklore and evermore are about seclusion, growth, reflection, and healing. They are albums built from, and speaking to, isolation and solitude. I’ve learned that others feel this way too; I recently read a tweet that went something along the lines of “the only correct way to listen to the new Taylor Swift albums are in a cabin in the middle of a snowy forest.” I don’t have a cabin, so I did the next best thing and went for a walk along a snowy forest trail near my house, where I played folklore and evermore from start to finish. No skips, no pauses, no shuffling. Here is what I found: a Taylor who is sure of herself—or, at least, growing to be. One who is not as angry or vengeful as she was during her reputation days, but who is acknowledging that the pain she felt is still with her by looking through her past and towards an open future.
An unanticipated result of staying home during the pandemic is how much time I’ve had to think—or, even better, to overthink. When nothing new is happening in your present, it’s easy to focus on all the things that have happened in your past. Past friendships, relationships, regrets, and memories. This sentiment is echoed in folklore and evermore; it comes to life in the simple nostalgia of a song like folklore’s “seven.” Sometimes, I think about how I might never feel as brave as I did when I was a young girl, wreaking havoc, running through the fields near my childhood home. “seven” captures the feeling of rampaging through nature and creating a world of your own to play in. The song also reminds me of how it is easy to think of simple childhood memories as times when we were at our best, as Taylor sings, “I hit my peak at seven.” Inevermore’s “dorothea,” Taylor laments over a past friendship, singing those thoughts that always come along with thinking of old friends: “Do you ever stop and think about me?” Being disconnected from friends and consequently thinking of all the past friendships that you have had is an experience perfectly expressed in this song. The lyric “a tiny screen’s the only place I see you now” feels reflective of being tied to the endless scrolling of social media as some sort of connection to others in such an isolated year.
As a university student, I find it easy to see myself in “‘tis the damn season” from evermore, a ballad for those returning home and falling into old ways again. For students who are used to being on campus surrounded by new faces, it is easy to feel like we have gone backwards, learning in our childhood bedrooms and seeing people we went to high school with at the grocery store. Along with the feeling of coming home again, there is the trap of pondering those “What ifs?” that are so easy to ask with these abrupt shifts happening in life. The specific “what if” of a relationship that never turned into anything official is explored in folklore’s “the 1,” where Taylor begs the question, “We were something, don’t you think so?”
It is true that folklore and evermore have a tendency to look at past relationships and memories as painful experiences, as we are all guilty of doing at one time or another. But there is also an acknowledgement that just because things have ended in pain does not mean that this is all they offered us. This feeling is perfectly expressed in evermore’s “happiness,” where Taylor sings, “There’ll be happiness after you / But there was happiness because of you / Both of these things can be true.” Amongst all the pain, there is so much hope in this album. That’s why I think it appealed to so many in 2020, a year when everything felt so bleak. A similar idea is echoed in another track from the same album: “marjorie,” a heart-breaking song about loss that focuses less on the pain of losing someone, and more on the beauty of having known them, and of having them be a part of your life in the first place. In “peace” from folklore, Taylor starts with all that she cannot give to someone she loves: the peace and quiet of a normal life. It’s a sad message, that she can’t offer a simple life to the one she loves, but the song doesn’t end there. She offers things that may be more important, lays out all that she can give with her love, says that she’ll “sit with them in the trenches” and give them her “wild.” She even sings that she can give them “the silence that only comes when two people understand each other.” To me, that seems like the greatest kind of peace. She doesn’t lose hope by dwelling on what she can’t deliver, but instead focuses on all that she can give. Pain and beauty are given equal weight in these albums.
For me, folklore and evermore are about the little moments. They’re about the moments in which we’ve learned to seize joy in this year; walks with families, mugs of tea, all those everyday things that bring even a slice of joy need to be savoured in a world that is so uncertain and scary. To find these little pieces of happiness can be difficult, but sometimes it can be helpful to simply give yourself a break. As Taylor herself sings in “this is me trying”: “At least I’m trying.” Sometimes trying is the best you can do.
The pinnacle of these two albums and all that they are telling comes together in the title track and final song of evermore. At the beginning of the song, Taylor sings a melancholy “I had a feeling so peculiar / That this pain would be for / Evermore.” This line struck me upon first listen because it was how I had been feeling for months: that all the pain of the COVID-19 pandemic would surely never end. The feeling of being “unmoored” that Taylor sings of on “evermore” has been felt by many whose lives have been disrupted so abruptly and absolutely by the pandemic. What I didn’t notice, however, was the end of the song, when Taylor sings the same line with an alteration: “This pain wouldn’t be for evermore.” The notion that to survive pain you must believe that it will pass is a fitting end to these two albums that have come from, and aim to overcome, loneliness.
Retrospectively, these albums might not have been as good of a distraction from 2020 as much as they validated that we are not alone in all those feelings that the year has brought about. When looking at the bigger picture, these albums bring hope. In all the loneliness and nostalgia, folklore and evermore tell us that the pain will not last, that there will be happiness again—a message that was much needed by all those listening to Taylor Swift amongst the turbulence of 2020, and one that is still resonant in 2021.
