It’s been awhile since I posted anything so I thought I’d come back with something a little different. Taylor Swift released Midnights in October of last year and her Eras tour has been conquering all Spring and Summer long. I’ve done reviews of all her albums up through Lover. Being the completionist I am, I’ve decided to look at the albums I have yet to review. I’ll get to Midnights eventually but for now let’s start with Folklore.
“The 1”
The first track always sets the tone for the rest of the album and this one lets the listener know right away this isn’t going to be like the other Taylor Swift albums. Her last few records opened with pulsing pop beats promising an hour or so of upbeat candy-coated synth. In contrast, “The 1” is a soft reminiscing of a past relationship, a one-that-got-away story guided more than driven by a low piano rift and almost lazy drums. It’s beautiful and entrancing, and entirely different than anything she’s thrown at us before.
“Cardigan”
If the first track defines the mood, the second must reinforce it, and “Cardigan” does that in abundance. There’s an almost ethereal vibe with these first two tracks, like she’s easing us into this new sonic experience. We do get a glimpse of some classic Taylor songwriting with lines like “Tried to change the ending/Peter losing Wendy” and “I knew you’d haunt all of my what-ifs.” So even though this is new stylistically it’s still the same old Taylor telling stories with heart. Definitely a solid second track.
“The Last Great American Dynasty”
It’s been a minute since we had a good story song from Swift. Unlike “Starlight” from Red this one isn’t dripping with saccharine nostalgia for a time period she hasn’t experienced. Okay, there is a little of that anemoia but it’s not sickly sweet but rather has some bite. This is the story of a woman and the extravagant life she lived after marrying into money. It has no regrets and bounces along at a more lively pace than the tracks before it, suggesting this album might not be all somber reflections. In a beautiful twist at the end it’s revealed that it’s the story of the woman who previously owned Swift’s Rhode Island home. Swift seems to see so many parts of herself in Rebekah, making the whole thing extra meta by being a commentary on the gossip and notoriety of eccentrically famous women.
“Exile (ft. Bon Iver)”
Even after all this time to sit with it I’m not sure I like this song. It’s a little too serious and is missing the charm of her other, and arguably better, duet “The Last Time” from Red. I do like the call and response echo of “you never gave a warning sign/(I gave so many signs),” clearly indicating missed communications in the relationship that are only revealed upon reflection once it has ended. It is a pretty song, it just feels too low a note to hit after the previous song.
“My Tears Ricochet”
I think it’s going to be obvious throughout my reviews that I am not the biggest fan of Swift’s partnership with Jack Antonoff (just wait until we get to Midnights), and unfortunately that means I do not particularly like this song. The music is forgettable and drags down the beauty of so many of the lyrics. The only time we get a breakthrough is when Swift shifts her pitch a little higher, and the music pulls back just enough to let these words sit there in their gloriousness:
“And I still talk to you
When I’m screaming at the sky
And when you can’t sleep at night
You hear my stolen lullabies”
“Mirrorball”
Another Antonoff casualty. There’s a lot of ethereal sounds with no real beat or melody. It does play well into Swift’s light, wispy voice but it lacks any forward momentum. The lyrics are well crafted but no emotional impact is felt because the song stays at the same disengaged level throughout, a theme that repeats itself quite regularly in most of the following tracks.
“Seven”
This has echoes of “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” from Lover, the strange, kind of creepy song near the end of that album. “Seven” is not as successful though because once again there’s almost no emotion to be drawn from the song. In “It’s Nice To Have a Friend” there’s a little bit of tongue-in-cheekness that feels like Swift winking at the listener as though they are in on the joke. This song just passes through without leaving any memorable piece for the listener to hold onto.
“August”
Yet again we get a dreary flat song that just exists as electronic sound with no inflection for impact. If it seems like I’m being repetitive in this point, just listen to the album. It’s another fairly forgettable addition to the album, with the one exception of the line “August sipped away like a bottle of wine.” My complaints around the songs on this album will rarely be directed at the lyrics. The album as a whole contains some of Swift’s most lyrically beautiful work.
“This is Me Trying”
Okay, I’m about to take back what I just said. While most of the tracks on the album at least feature interesting and poignant lyrics, this one does not. There’s nothing clever to find in it, and it continues the tradition of the previous five tracks of running bland musically. So this is perhaps the most forgettable song on the album.
“Illicit Affairs”
I love the way Swift pulls together words in this song but again, it’s lost in the mediocrity of the music. She was really leaning into music that didn’t push her voice beyond its lightness and for that the album suffers. It hardly works if you have the emotion on just one side of the equation. You need both the lyrics to hit, and the music to move.
“Invisible String”
We get a little more musical complexity here, though it still drags quite a bit. I mentioned “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” earlier, and this definitely has some of that almost ghostly whimsy coursing through it. So despite it still running mostly flat, there is a little spark here and there that elevates it beyond most of the other tracks.
“Mad Woman”
I’m curious why Swift decided not to have melodies in the second half on the album. Again, lyrically it’s interesting, telling the story of a scorned woman fighting back against those that called her crazy. The issue is it just sits in its own downess, never giving into the impulse to scream its anger through the music.
“Epiphany”
When I first heard this I was really moved by it but now I think that has more to do with the time it was released. 2020 was a year of uncertainty and this track pulls from that fear and anxiety in a rather subtle but insightful way. The song doesn’t sustain itself past its moment but it hits better than most of the other tracks once again due to the lyrics.
“Betty”
Finally a hook! This leans much more into Swift’s country roots, and showcases why that genre works. It’s a storytelling medium that relies on a call and response lyric to music structure, so it ends up being something you might actually be able to dance to, and sing along with. Swift makes it more interesting by telling it from the point-of-view of the boy who scorned the girl.
“Peace”
This is the rare case on the album where the drawn back music actually helps the emotional impact of the song. The lyrics are a whispered confession of fears Swift is telling her lover. She can’t provide the safety of a traditional relationship but promises to stick by their side if they come along with her. Letting her vocals drive the musical beats actually hits because you can hear the emotion in it clearly.
“Hoax”
The album ends on a rather lackluster note after fighting back to some semblance of rhythmically driven themes in the previous two tracks. “Hoax” is a fairly sleepy song and still has the main issue the rest of the album has of featuring forgettable music that drowns out the otherwise clever lyrics. However, the melancholy it sits in fits with the tone of the rest of the album and so seems a fitting end.
Bonus Track: “The Lakes”
“I want auroras and sad prose.” That about sums up this bonus song, and Folklore as an album. It’s Swift sitting around in her melancholia talking about beautiful images without infusing the emotions she’s written about into the actual music of the song. Much of this album feels like it could have been better delivered as a collection of poems, better to read than listen to. I’m afraid this will become a theme in the review of her next two albums but we’ll get to those soon enough.
Hollywood Consumer 