Folklore by Taylor Swift // 5 Year Anniversary Album Review
Now lost in the memory of a moment in time, Folklore is an album that offered an escape from the chaos of the world, creating space for timeless stories of love, loss, friendship, and heartbreak to be passed down like folk songs. Folklore was the first page in a new chapter for Taylor Swift, as the process of writing and releasing this album was completely different than anything she had done prior and went on to shape her approach to making music from that point forward. It was surprise released in the heat of the cruelest summer yet - with the intention for this music serving as a form of escapism from all of the stress and fear that was at the forefront of everyone's minds during the early months of the pandemic. Taylor wrote these songs from many different perspectives, some rooted in her real-life experiences, others more based on fiction. She built up storylines within the lyrics that were all intricately tied together by an invisible string.
Pulling from her past, present and imagined future - Taylor unraveled a vivid tapestry of emotion throughout Folklore. She reflected on summers that slipped away like a bottle of wine, told the tales of all the mad women who came before her, and traced the shattered edges of disco balls that once glittered in the spotlight. She wrote about the greatest loves of all time - the kind that are over now - all of the clandestine meetings on cobblestone roads and the distant memories drenched in nostalgia and salt air. Through the old cardigan tucked under someone's bed, the grass in Centennial Park, and dozens of other hyper-specific details, Taylor captured this innate sense of longing and nostalgia for the kind of love that comes only once in twenty lifetimes, but will forever linger like a tattooed kiss. More than anything, Folklore embraced the quiet, beautiful pursuit of what it means to be truly living for the hope of it all.
This is a collection of songs she had been secretly working on for about three months remotely with long-time collaborator Jack Antonoff and first-time collaborator Aaron Dessner. Together, the three of them ventured deep into the metaphorical folklorian woods and emerged with some of the most evocative work of their careers. Much of Folklore began with Aaron sending Taylor an archive of instrumental tracks he had produced, and Taylor writing over them, layering her lyrics onto his compositions and sending them back. This was a completely different way of making music for Taylor, but ended up becoming the foundation of all the early collaborations and an approach that would become essential to much of their future work together. Their creative partnership quickly blossomed into one of the most significant of her entire career.
Every single song on Folklore is poetically crafted, showcasing some of the most emotionally rich and introspective songwriting of Taylor's entire career. Each track is paired with delicate indie and folk-inspired instrumentals that serve as a stunning backdrop for the stories being told. I still find myself uncovering new favorite lines and subtle moments that take on fresh meaning with time, proving just how timeless and layered this album truly is.
She begins with "the 1", which was the last song written for Folklore and ended up being one of the most connective to the work she would go on to write in the years to follow. Taylor wrote it, along with the closing track, "hoax", in the matter of just a few hours before submitting the final draft of the album. The songs that serve as bookends for Folklore are so intricately linked together through their shared narrative and yearning for a version of herself and her life that's gone. "I'm doing good, I'm on some new shit, been saying 'yes' instead of 'no'," is truly one of the greatest album openers of all time and beautifully reflects the new chapter of her career that was about to begin. "cardigan" similarly feels deeply linked to "the 1" for many reasons, as both are truly two of the greatest songs ever and hold so much weight and depth with every single lyric. They each set the tone so well for an album that is steeped in nostalgia, storytelling, and longing. "cardigan" shapes so much of the underlying storyline of Folklore and lays the foundation for much of the work she created in the years since. Alongside the premiere of the "cardigan" music video in 2020, Taylor wrote, "This song is about a lost romance and why young love is often fixed so permanently within our memories. Why it leaves such an indelible mark." It remains a stunning example of her ability to blend wistful nostalgia with deeply evocative storytelling. The Peter Pan and Wendy symbolism is particularly compelling, a recurring theme that threads through so much of her music. There is a yearning for a past love that was never meant to be, even though she wishes it could have.
Looking back at Folklore retrospectively, so much of the album feels like a profound reflection of Taylor's entire career, both in terms of where she's been as well as a certain level of fear and uncertainty that comes with what might lie ahead. While her situation is very singular, the message behind songs like "this is me trying" or "mirrorball" are definitely universal. These introspective moments that often lead to sort of an emotional spiral are at the center of so much of the lyricism of this album. It is made up of some of the most deeply personal and vulnerable moments of her discography, which is really saying something considering how much of herself she has always shared in her writing. Lyrics like "I've been having a hard time adjusting, I had the shiniest wheels, now they're rusting, I didn't know if you'd care if I came back, I have a lot of regrets about that" and "They told me all of my cages were mental, so I got wasted like all my potential" from "this is me trying" are devastating, but also so deeply honest and very relatable for anyone who has ever felt like they have found themselves at a crossroads in their own life. To write a song like that, or like the powerful "my tears ricochet", which is full of metaphors for betrayal and grief, bring so much sincerity and depth to her words.
"epiphany" stands out amongst the rest of the track list as it is not only deeply revealing of Taylor's family history, but also serves as a poignant tribute to the bravery of frontline healthcare workers during the height of the pandemic. She parallels her grandfather's experience fighting in World War II with the modern-day battles faced in hospital rooms, both of which are marked by trauma and immense sacrifice. These are the "things you just can't speak about", as she hauntingly describes. It is mournful and heavy, but incredibly moving as well. "Just one single glimpse of relief to make some sense of what you've seen" captures the longing for peace in the face of unimaginable pain, speaking to the universal need to find meaning in the most horrific situations.
The vividness and specificity of which Taylor writes these songs is so masterful. Her ability to blend fact and fiction in a way that feels both magical and grounded is truly stunning. On "the last great american dynasty", she threads the wild eccentricity of Holiday House in Rhode Island and the life of Rebekah Harkness into a story that is irresistibly fun. From card game bets with Salvador Dalí, to filling the pool with champagne and dogs dyed key-lime green, these wildly specific details add so much life and color to the song and the real-life history behind it. The plot twist of the house being "free of women with madness, their men and bad habits" for fifty years, for Taylor to winkingly reveal "...and then it was bought by me", is such a fun and clever spin that ties the entire story together.
"august" is such a special gem on Folklore, it has always felt like one of the best of her entire career, in all of it's glittering, timeless beauty. She tells the story of a fleeting summer love that was never truly hers, all that she's left with now is the hazy memory of all that could have been and a yearning for a moment suspended in time. "seven" has always gone in tandem for me, although they are both very different in terms of the story being told, the shared pining has always felt very similar. She is looking back into the memories of her childhood in Pennsylvania, wanting to return to the safety of her youth and innocence of that time. "Are there still beautiful things?" Taylor asks. The way she sings about the formative friendships that were lost to time is something I never really heard described in a song before, particularly the lyrics, "Though I can't recall your face, I still got love for you". The sweet sentiment behind lyrics like "love you to the moon and to Saturn" and "passed down like folk songs, the love lasts so long" feels like the heart of this album.
The recurring deep desire to start fresh comes full-circle on the bonus track, "the lakes", as she dreams of escaping to the idyllic Lake District. She imagines herself and her "muse" reuniting with the spirits of all the poets and creatives that also once sought solace there themselves. The line "I don't belong, and my beloved neither do you" truly encapsulates the album's journey through these feelings of longing for peace and connection beyond fame.
That theme of longing for peace threads beautifully into "invisible string", which stands in contrast to so much of the heartbreak explored in other tracks. Here, there's a gentle acceptance that every painful twist of her past may have guided her toward finding her soulmate. "Time wonderous time", Taylor wistfully sings, acknowledging that everything she had been through to that point was all part of the journey. It feels like the emotional resolution to so much of the heartache and confusion that Folklore was made up of. "Cold was the steel of my axe to grind for the boys who broke my heart, now I send their babies presents" is just the sweetest kind of closure for all of the stories she's spent her life telling through her music.
That sense of emotional maturity further deepens on "peace", which is one of the most beautifully written songs in Taylor's entire discography. If "invisible string" is the mystical pull that led her to find true love, then "peace" is the raw, realistic acknowledgement of what it takes to sustain that. She asks, "Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?" She is so open and vulnerable in describing this love in a way that is genuine and not a romanticized version of the feeling. "All these people think love's for show, but I would die for you in secret" is especially a standout lyric. It feels reminiscent of another all-time highlight, "The Archer" in the way she recognizes her insecurities, and her desire to be loved despite everything that can come in their way. "And you know that I'd swing with you for the fences, sit with you in the trenches, give you my wild, give you a child, give you the silence that only comes when two people understand each other, family that I chose, now that I see your brother as my brother, is it enough?"
The quiet hurt of "hoax" makes it one of the most unexpected closing tracks in Taylor's discography, but its placement on this album feels very symbolic for the time in which it was written. It ends on a note of hopeful sadness that is deeply contemplative and intentionally open ended in a way that was very reflective of the state of the world at the time. "You know I left a part of me back in New York," she sings, "You knew the hero died so what's the movie for? You knew it still hurts underneath my scars from when they pulled me apart". It mirrors the emotional uncertainty that defined the world that year, not necessarily looking to find any major resolution as she may have done with past albums, but acknowledging that sometimes the pain of your past may linger longer than you may anticipate.
As Taylor continued releasing music in the years following Folklore's 2020 release, the impact of this album in her subsequent work has become increasingly clear. So much of the emotion and lingering feelings that inspired the stories behind this album have echoed through so much of her other work. The entirety of her 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department, for example, feels like the result of her "digging up the grave another time" as she forewarned herself on the album's opening track. There are truly endless parallels to be drawn between those records.
This was an incredibly fruitful creative period for Taylor overall, to write an album as detailed and intricate as Folklore in such a short span of time is a testament to the once-in-a-generation talent she is and has always been. To then turn around and do it all over again just a few months later with Evermore, her second surprise album in December 2020, only further solidifies that. It's impossible to talk about one and not mention the other, as these albums are so intrinsically linked narratively and thematically. Both Folklore and Evermore were made in a completely new way for Taylor, as all of her previous releases were often carefully designed and calculated far in advance, the spontaneity and rawness that is at the heart of these two records is what makes them such special pieces of her discography. Though Folklore in particular went on to become one of the most celebrated and commercially successful albums she's ever released, neither were written with chart-topping singles or stadium tours in mind. These albums were made in quiet isolation for the sake of emotional escapism and catharsis. At their core, these albums were an escape for her just as much as they were for the listener, offering a shared breath in a moment that felt collectively heavy. They were each made at such specific, fleeting moments in time and under very rare circumstances that is impossible to ever replicate again.
On a personal level, Folklore quickly became one of the most important albums of my life and left me feeling deeply inspired by the emotional weight of her storytelling and the world she built within the music. I'll never ever forget the feeling I had when I first heard the opening notes of "the 1", it immediately felt like the start of something new and was such an emotional journey to listen through the rest of the album from that point on. Around the same time, I read Love is a Mixtape by Rob Sheffield - a book that, much like Folklore, inspired me to think about music on a much deeper level than I ever had before. Both made me want to look more closely at the reasons behind my connection to the music I love, to explore why certain artists move me so deeply and the stories that make up those songs.
My 2020 review of Folklore was the very first time I ever wrote about music through a long-form, analytical lens - which truly completely changed my life and made me feel like I finally found my direction as a writer. My love for writing about music in the way that I do now all comes from how deeply moved I was by Folklore five years ago. While I have definitely grown as a writer since then, revisiting that post now reminds me of how far I've come. The response to that review, which went on to reach thousands of readers and remains one of my highest-viewed posts to this day, motivated me to keep writing and improving at a time that I really needed it the most. From that moment forward, I began including more music-related content into my blog and I eventually decided to center my work exclusively around highlighting the power of music and the stories behind it. Folklore will always hold a special place in my heart for being the album that started it all.
Thanks for reading! I have written about Folklore many times over the past five years - check out my 2020 reviews of Folklore and Evermore, my review of Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions Record Store Day exclusive, the RSD exclusive 7" vinyl of "the lakes", as well as my 7" vinyl collection + songwriting demo of "cardigan", many more are linked below and coming soon, always!
All photos are my own!
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