Hi! (Sorry for slight delay.) Welcome to the second half of my Labor Day/end of summer/goodbye August double-post, and I'm here with my surprise album review that will probably be unsurprising to a lot of you: Folklore by Taylor Swift! Aka the album where Taylor invented the month of August. I've been wanting to review this album for a while since I had reviewed Evermore before, and this felt like the right time since August slipped away into a moment of time and we got a lot of Taylor news in August. I also just recently rewatched the Long Pond Studio Sessions and grew to love this album even more after that. By the way, you should definitely watch LPSS. It gives a whole new perspective on the songs seeing the production process and how it was all made during COVID. Let's see how it scores!
1. The 1
My rating: 4/5 Good
And we start with a song that's just kinda there. It's a solid opening track and I'll sing along when it comes on, but I don't really listen to this song much outside of the context of the album. I love the piano and the vocals, and I love how every time she says "the 1" it's a little bit different. The swinging rhythm and snapping is... alright. A bit out of place on this album in my opinion, but it works. The lyrics are simple but really drive the message home about wishing for someone you can't have, with some great lines like "I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn't though" and "tossing pennies in the pool, and if my wishes came true it would've been you". Overall, solid song.
2. Cardigan
My rating: 5/5 Great
Cardigan needs no introduction. This is by far the biggest chart hit from Folklore, and a huge fan favorite. I already loved this song back in 2020 before I was a Swiftie, and I actually didn't even know the full story behind this song yet. Obviously Folklore was written during COVID so it was a time of isolation where Taylor was reading a lot and crafting a lot of characters and stories in her mind that became songs. Cardigan is a member of a trilogy (along with August and Betty) told from the perspective of teenage lovers Betty, Augustine, and James. Cardigan is from Betty's perspective about James leaving her for someone else, with a simple but powerful refrain of "when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone's bed, you put me on and said I was your favorite", using a double-meaning of "put me on" that seems like a romantic gesture at first but is actually... well, a hoax, which we'll come back to later. This also has some of Taylor's most gorgeous piano lines, and a sound sample (as you know I'm a huge fan of those) using high heels on cobblestone as percussion. Love it.
3. The Last Great American Dynasty
My rating: 5/5 Great
Another storytelling-heavy song, but this time not a fictional one. (At least not entirely, it's somewhat of a fictionalized biography I guess.) This song draws parallels between Taylor Swift and the former owner of her Rhode Island Holiday House, named Rebekah Harkness. It tells the story of how she was blamed for all the problems in her neighborhood, hung out with famous people in a champagne pool, and in a feud with her neighbor, dyed his dog key-lime green (supposedly it was actually a cat but Taylor changed it since she would never dare disrespect a cat like that). And then there's the production. I love the very tropical, summery sound it has going on, which is very fitting for this end-of-summer atmosphere we're in right now. One of my favorites.
4. Exile (with Bon Iver)
My rating: X/5 no opinion
Ok, I really don't want to get into this, but I associate this song with an incredibly distressing time in my life. Not because of the lyrical content, but literally this song in and of itself. I've briefly mentioned this before but I don't want to elaborate. Especially seeing as I used to like this song but now cannot listen to it, I don't think it would be fair to have this song weigh down the total score just by association. Moving on.
5. My Tears Ricochet
My rating: 5/5 Great
"Taylor Swift isn't a good singer!" they scream. Swifthaters, I hereby present to you My Tears Ricochet, a song in which Taylor sings more than two octaves worth of vocal range, and it sounds gorgeous all the way through. This is a heart-wrenching track 5 if I've ever heard one, with production that evolves in the most heartbreaking and angry way. Lines like "you wear the same jewels that I gave you as you bury me" and "you hear my stolen lullabies" point to this song being a story about Taylor's masters being stolen. (Still super excited that Taylor finally owns her masters now!) I do kinda wish the original "look at all my tears... turning into your tears" outro line from LPSS was left in the final studio version, but that's a very minor "complaint". This is an amazing song all-around.
6. Mirrorball
My rating: 5/5 Great
Hello Speak Now, is that you? Yeah, even though lyrically this song is very different, the production sounds very much like Taylor's earlier country-rock sound, with a bit of a more mature and more synth-infused tinge to it. I find the songwriting in this song very intriguing - it uses an analogy between Taylor Swift and a disco ball and details all the aspects of it. A lifeless object that people are reflected off of. (This is not how I see Taylor, by the way! It's what she said.) Not much to say, it's just a really well-made song.
7. Seven
My rating: 5/5 Great
"Love you to the moon and to Saturn" is among Taylor Swift's most iconic lyrics. This song has a lot of aspects to it. The title is inspired by the perspective of a seven-year-old child. On the surface, it's a playful and innocent song about Taylor and a childhood friend/crush, but it's got some real hard-hitting lines. "I've been meaning to tell you, I think your house is haunted / your dad is always mad and that must be why". Once you realize what that actually means, it's one of the most heartbreaking lines on the album. Really sad song but I adore it.
8. August
My rating: 5/5 Great
Ah yes, the month Taylor Swift invented that just slipped away into a moment in time. This is the second song in the teenage love triangle, told from Augustine's perspective about her summer fling with James and how it faded away from her. The production is a standout on this album. I mean this in a great way, Chappell Roan's new song The Subway reminds me a bit of this in a lot of ways. The chord progression, the guitars, the drums, even the strings near the end. I love the lyrics here. I especially am a fan of the "get in the car" part in the outro, which according to LPSS she added in the studio during the recording process. Gorgeous.
9. This Is Me Trying
My rating: 5/5 Great
Contender for the saddest song on Folklore. "Pulled the car off the road to the lookout, could've followed my fears all the way down"... wow. Taylor described a whole tragic story in just seventeen words. "I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere" has always been an intriguing line to me. And the production is some of Taylor's most gorgeous. It's a departure from the rest of Folklore, with a very synth-heavy, swirling production that seems to simulate the swirling of thoughts, or the feeling of being on the aforementioned "sphere" of not being able to move forward in life no matter how hard you try. W o w. Yet another great song.
10. Illicit Affairs
My rating: 5/5 Great
Whenever I listen to this song I always feel like rewatching the Eras Tour movie. Something that I love about Illicit Affairs is how minimal it is. Although it may not be her shortest, in my opinion it goes by quicker than any other Taylor song, and I can't quite explain why. In very few words, Taylor captures the "dwindling mercurial high" of secretly loving someone. Obviously, the bridge is absolutely iconic (especially on the Eras Tour). "DON'T CALL ME KID. DON'T CALL ME BABY." How can you not love it. Amazing song.
11. Invisible String
My rating: 6/5 Curious, Mystical, Wondrous... Words That Describe Time Also Describe This Song
We went from "ME-HE-HEEEE!" to "meeee-eeeeee-eeeeee-eeeeee-eeeeeeeeeeeeeee" in just two albums. In all seriousness, after listening to it on repeat, watching LPSS, and beginning reading the fanmade book "Invisible Strings", a collection of poetry inspired by Taylor Swift songs and edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty (highly recommend to the more torturedly poetic Swifties), an invisible string began to tie me to this song. I've decided that this song is one of my all-time top 13 songs in Taylor's discography. I get chills when I listen to this song. The vocals, the guitar, the bells, the key changes, the lyrics about fate (even though it's about a now somewhat problematic ex-boyfriend but I like to just ignore that), Invisible String has it all. I don't think I need to say more.
12. Mad Woman
My rating: 5/5 Great
Another stunning piano line! I don't know why but musically this song reminds me a bit of Cardigan. They're in the same key and have similar melodic progressions. This makes me think there's a connection - maybe this song is also from Betty's perspective years later? The songwriting is some of Taylor's strongest. Taylor talks about themes of sexism in The Man, but that song has been criticized for being presented in a much more basic, almost cliched way. This song has been known to elevate this theme by a mile. It's another song allegedly about Scooter Braun, with refrains of "every time you call me crazy I get more crazy" and "no one likes a mad woman, you made her like that". It's another example of effective simplicity. Once again, great song.
13. Epiphany
My rating: 6/5 No I'm Not Gonna Try To Make A Joke About This One Because Of The Song's Subject Material
Alright, now here's my favorite song on Folklore. This song has historically been one of my, not just top 13, but actually top 5 all-time favorite songs of Taylor's, up there with The Way I Loved You, Enchanted, Happiness, and All Too Well. This is another one of the saddest songs on Folklore, that's quite simply about... all the things people just can't speak about. In very few words, she describes her late grandfather's experience fighting in the war: "keep your helmet / keep your life, son / just a flesh wound / here's your rifle / crawling up the beaches now / sir, I think he's bleeding out / and some things you just can't speak about". She likens this to the experience of health workers during the COVID pandemic: "something med school did not cover / someone's daughter, someone's mother / holds your hand through plastic now / doc, I think she's crashing out / and some things you just can't speak about". Not to mention the production. It captures the storytelling atmosphere very well, with just a few simple piano chords and sweeping synths. Absolutely gorgeous.
14. Betty
My rating: 1/5 Bad
...well this sticks out like a sore thumb. As much as I hate to say this about a song on one of my favorite albums, I just genuinely do not like this song at all. This song completes the teenage love triangle with a song from James' perspective. I find it a lot harder to get into a song told from the opposite gender perspective (unless it's Too Little Too Late by Laufey of course, that song is amazing). I think James' character is really annoying and unlikable in this song, so it doesn't really work out-of-context because people who don't know about the love triangle (that's not many people, but some) may think Taylor is actually the one showing up to an ex's party uninvited after being with someone else over the summer and just wanting Betty back. (And also continuing to claim that Taylor is gay. Can we just not obsessively assume someone's sexuality? I know that just because she said she's straight doesn't mean she has to be straight, but like... that's for another post later on.) This song isn't a 0/5 because of the guitar and I like the bridge and outro okay, and the fact that this is one of my bottom 13 least favorite Taylor Swift songs is honestly a really good sign about how strong Tay's discography is, with only two or maybe three songs out of over 250 being true 0/5s for me.
15. Peace
My rating: 5/5 Great
I feel like this song could fit on Reputation. The instrumentation is nothing like Rep, as Rep is known for maximalist, bass-heavy, hyperpop-tinged synth-pop songs, but the lyrical themes could fit together. It's sort of like Delicate, about the challenge of finding love as a famous person, especially in a time of not having the greatest... well, reputation. "I'd give you my sunshine, give you my best, but the rain is always gonna come if you're standing with me." It is thought to be about Joe, and it's sadder now looking back on how he was affected by this publicity. One thing I love about this song (which Taylor mentions in LPSS) is how it works on many levels, so although in her case it's about how she could never give someone peace due to her fame and reputation, people who aren't famous can still relate to the feeling of giving all their love and questioning if it's enough due to their inevitable flaws. And the production, which I mentioned earlier, is a standout. There's really only five components to it: the vocals which were recorded in one take, the relentless pulse synth, the sweeping synth pads, the electric guitar, and the piano, and I love this sort of anxiously relaxing sound. Beautiful.
16. Hoax
My rating: 5/5 Great
And we've reached the end of the main edition of Folklore. This is another song with a lyrical style sort of like Epiphany, using very few words: "my only one / my smoking gun / my eclipsed sun / this has broken me down / my twisted knife / my sleepless night / my winless fight / this has frozen my ground". It's very poetic, telling the story of a deceptive relationship, which could be applied to a failed romance or to the masters situation. Similarly to Peace, this song also has fairly minimal production and it's quite effective. It's really just Taylor, a piano, a guitar, and some light synth strings. By the way, Aaron Dessner really did a great job on this one, playing multiple instruments and it all comes together gorgeously. Another great track.
17. The Lakes
My rating: 3/5 Decent
So Folklore has one bonus track, and it's... ok. I'm not huge on this whole "hyper-poetic juxtaposed with modern references" lyrical style, and the "what are my Wordsworth" line is a bit cringey. Yes, I understand the idea of escapism and trying to get away from the modern world and run off to The Lakes where all the poets went to die and how this requires these delicate poetic lines like "I want auroras and sad prose / I want to watch wisteria grow" and "I bathe in cliffside pools with my calamitous love and insurmountable grief" in the same song as these out-of-place references like "hunters with cellphones", "namedropping sleaze", "no one around to tweet it"... the combination of them is just not really my style. Musically however, this song is quite gorgeous. The intro is a bit unsettling with the intentionally distorted, silent film-style orchestra, but it grows into something pretty beautiful. Overall it's just a decent track for me.
Conclusion
Overall album rating: 95% (Great Album)
Wow. This album now beats out Taylor's own Midnights and TTPD by one point, ties Lyn Lapid's Buzzkill, and sits just two points behind Laufey's Bewitched. This album has an incredible amount of great music, but it's unfortunately not quite a no-skip album due to Exile and Betty. I'd place it within my top 5 Taylor albums alongside Midnights, Speak Now, Red, and Evermore. (Will The Life Of A Showgirl beat it out? We can't say for sure yet...)
Favorites: Epiphany, Invisible String
Least favorites: Betty, Exile
I'll be reviewing A Matter Of Time and possibly Man's Best Friend later this month, but that's all for now! Byeeeeeeeeee!
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