Taylor Swift -- Evermore

xp like

"Time flies, messy as the mud on your truck tires"

sung with country inflections, amidst other singing in the more pop/r&b register of the 1989/Reputation era (or even "the 1")

these are songs as commentary on where she's at in her life, while at the same time being songs standing on their own

which is what she's always doing anyway, it all spirals, a mis en abyme

one of the tracks she's reused melodic phrases from in "champagne problems" is "all too well" but i haven't managed to place the others yet

there’ll be happiness after you
but there was happiness because of you
both of these things can be true

haha I'm listening to that tune as I type

"Evermore" is really gorgeous, and it's hard not to take for granted that she's singing with Vernon instead of the Panic at the Disco guy or Ed Sheeran.

He is absolutely her best-ever duet partner.

"Happiness" and "Marjorie" are my initial high points.

you booked the night train for a reason
so you could sit there in this hurt
bustling crowds or silent sleepers
you're not sure which is worse

the lyrics are so. good

"No Body No Crime" reminds me of something circa 1995 or so that I can't place

"happiness" has to be the most she's ever devastated me as a songwriter

Baba O'Marjorie

"No Body No Crime" reminds me of something circa 1995 or so that I can't place

“Sunny Came Home”?

shouldn't have said anything

why, was that it(?)

I don't know - probably - but I'll never be able to listen to it again without thinking of it

Sorry, I guess!

This is a v minor nitpick, but I wish "Long Story Short" didn't have those backing vox... sounds a little like the "Bob Clearmountain Mix" or something.

I don’t normally get into her lyrics too much (one way or another), but I really like how direct “Closure” is...

Don't treat me like
Some situation that needs to be handled

Imagine writing & recording a song as good as the title track, and having the discipline to hold it until the end of the second of two albums.

I don't think this is as strong as folklore, but it's pretty good. Time will tell if it stands on it's own or always seems like a collection of very good bonus tracks to me.

"“Sunny Came Home”?"

thanks I'd just managed to eliminate that particular earworm from my brain after 25 years, now it's back

tis the damn season owns

exactly, akm

My experience is—it’s hard for me to believe this album is nearly as long as Folklore, which feels like a slog from song to (good, if slightly overworked) song; whereas Evermore just flows effortlessly and lightly, it’s so loose, engaging, and delightful!

(Sorry, I’m posting too much... I didn’t expect ever to be this into a Taylor Swift album again!)

well maybe she'll release another one in four months so don't get comfy yet

So is this the PLUS to Folklore's SIGN? Or the Rise to Folklore's Black Is?

“ivy” is the standout to me on first listen

― winters (josh), Friday, December 11, 2020 12:05 AM (sixteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can't think of another moment in her catalog that sounds quite like the last minute of "Cowboy Like Me" - the guitar, harmonica, and vocal overdubs are beautifully balanced.

that song... is perfect

"champagne problems" kinda sits on a chord progression that's similar to both "all too well" and "cornelia st." not really bothered by this bc taylor has used similar chordal patterns before

The title track is really beautiful until Justin Vernon comes in moaning halfway through it.

"I come back stronger than a 90s trend" (on "willow") is a good line, though.

No strong feelings one way or the other about the rest of the album yet.

THANK YOU I thought I was the only one who thought Vernon's vocal was intrusively big and out of place in that song (the rest of which is great)

I too am not yet a fan of the duet with Oz

Folklore’s Blue

omg the audacity

― imago, Friday, 11 December 2020 08:10 (yesterday) link

I had assumed this was self-evident, but I was making a comment about the internal relationship between these records in the context of the artist's career, not a direct comparison in terms of quality.

Folklore was obviously a new sound for Taylor, and one in which she partly abandoned the false belief that her songs should be autobiographical in order to be relatable and emotionally "true". But otherwise it felt a bit like a retrenchment of Taylor's best prior songwriting qualities, building on the strengths of songs like "Last Kiss", "All Too Well" and "New Year's Day" and deepening those strengths. In that sense, like Blue, it feels a bit like a culmination, a snapping-into-focus.

The question "where next?" is always fraught. In retrospect, For The Roses was a transitional album in a clear sense, one foot still planted in Blue's spare confessionalism and heightened clarity, and one foot tentatively reaching out into new territory both stylistic (a sprinkling of jazz instrumentation etc.) and one at the songwriting/lyrical level, all those vertiginous changes in speed and sudden rushes of narrative detail (e.g. I went to see a friend tonight / it was very late when I walked in / my talking as it rambled / revealed suspicious reasoning / the visit seemed to darken him / I came in as bright as a neon light and I burned out right there before him) as if Joni was trying now to capture more of the restless uncertainty of her own thought patterns. Joni would spend the next three albums exploring and deepening the at times almost coltish discomforts of For The Roses's songwriting with increased confidence and increasing success. But it was the first album of hers I heard so I approached those in-betweenish qualities as if they were the point (albeit that, at 14, I wouldn't have articulated any of this in these terms).

I hear in Evermore a lot of that songwriting coltishness, Taylor placing stress on the classicism of her songwriting instincts in order to fit in as much impressionistic detail as she can, to capture with increasing pointillism the trailing details of a feeling, of a moment in time. Whether this works is as a matter of opinion, and whether she's doing this deliberately we won't know unless/until she makes another doco, but it seems clear to me that this is what the songs are often doing.

booming post

I'm not hearing the FTR comparison, Tim -- not yet. FTR, for one, boasted more instrumental filigrees than previous Mitchell albums. If anything, Swift has reversed the trajectory: from FTR back to Blue on the last two albums.

Also, I don't hear much affinity with Mitchell in Swift's work generally. Matthew Jones' FB wall had an excellent exchange b/w him and Ann Power about the roots of this album and Folklore's in late '80s Carly Simon, whose sensibilities weren't particularly melodic either but whose scansion grew more complex anyway.Ts

*Ann Powers obv

Again, this is not about whether the music literally resembles Joni.

Oh I know. I just don't see the affinities.

Enjoying it, though "no body no crime" just makes me want to put on "Past The Mission."

lol wow i’m not the only one who heard that

Marjorie & Closure were my big first-listen attention-grabbers. A good friend is going through something very similar to the situation that Closure describes, so that really hit a spot.

"closure" is really something else

also i am a fan of the bon iver part in "evermore"

much as it's sort of a double-time restaging of the effect of his bridge on "exile," but i think it works, his entrance kind of feels like a rush of panicked thoughts that briefly take over the song

I like "Closure" better than anything on folklore, though I'm mystified by her accent. I might be okay with it, though. That song definitely captures a particular kind of post-breakup feeling; it feels real. I like the "beers and candles" line and also the way she delivers it.

yeah she verges on a British accent at point on that song no?

"tolerate it" and "happiness" are like getting sucker-punched right in the emotions every time

the repetition of "i haven't met the new me yet/you haven't met the new me yet" in "happiness" and the way its meaning is changed by the different contexts it appears in... "all too well"-level

I've heard my kids play "Champagne Problems" and "No Body, No Crime" so far. The former seemed to ride that super-familiar C-G-Am-F chord "Hey Soul Sister" (et al) progression a little too hard. The latter was pretty primo MOR '90s, which was OK. Looking forward to listening to the rest of it at some point.

halfway thru this

my report is: it needs to lose 'champagne problems' urgently but otherwise not bad at all, odd-numbered tracks are particularly not-bad

Thought this 1989-esque cover of "Champagne Problems" was alright

https://open.spotify.com/track/6RhtrocZlbccSXo80rfAyN?si=6bebef75a8184836

i put this on last night while enduring a few vaccine side effects and i cried through every song that doesn't feature haim

how's one to know
i'd live and die for moments that we stole
on begged and borrowed time

so tell me to run
or dare to sit and watch what we'll become
and drink my husband's wine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_wr-9X47ao

oh this is wonderful

It’s great - feels of a piece with “long story short”

Distracting band name, in a Taylor Swift context.

i would love a whole taylor album in the vein of this & "long story short"

fuck this is a good record. happy melancholidays y'all!

Yeah, I don't think many ppl "get" how good it is. Like forget everything about Taylor Swift (if you want); don't think of it as "Folklore's fun little sister" (or whatever her line is)... this album is something else altogther.

i think it might be her best album, though I need to revisit red. It's got the strangest, most complex songs she's ever released, but it's still very much a taylor swift record. it's also a lot less corny than folklore, which blew me away at first but just sounds a tad cliched now

like it still blows my mind that there are TWO songs on this record in 5/4 time

how’s one to know

I'm probably the only one that didn't know this about "Marjorie" but posting since I didn't find anything else in the thread...

The experience writing that song was really surreal, because I was kind of a wreck at times writing it, and I’d sort of breakdown sometimes. It was really hard to actually even sing it in the vocal booth without sounding like I had sort of a break [in my voice], because it just was really emotional. I think that one of the hardest forms of regret to sort of work through is the regret of being so young when you lost someone that you didn’t have the perspective to learn and appreciate who they were fully. I’d open up my grandmother’s closet and she had beautiful dresses from the 60s, I wish I’d asked her where she wore every single one of them, things like that. She was a singer and my mom would look at me so many times a year and say, ‘God, you’re just like her,’ when I’ll do some manners that I don’t recognize as being anyone other than mine. She died when I was 13, and she died, I think, when I was on a trip to Nashville to try and make it, to try to hand out my demos and CDs to record labels and things like that, so there were pretty insane coincidences like that, and I’ve always felt that thing like she was seeing this, because we have sort of to do that. One of the things on this song that still rips me apart when I listen to it is that she’s singing with me on this song. My mum found a bunch of her old records, a bunch of old vinyls of her singing opera, and I sent them to Aaron and he added them to the song. It says ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were singing to me now’, and then you actually hear Marjorie, my grandmother, actually sing. And it’s moments like that on the record that just make you feel like your whole heart is in this whole thing that you’re doing. Is all of you that you put into these things.

from this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQacWbsLbS4

I have come to the better-late-than-never conclusion over the last two days that "Marjorie" is one of her best songs. A brilliant mix of internal dialogue, concise storytelling, creative song structure, and magical lyricism. It deserves someone more knowledgeable and articulate than me to unpack, but a few things I love:

- how she anchors the song in these initial "advice" verses that are universal -- they could be interpreted as messages to her fans, reminders to herself, and/or values she believes her grandmother imparted on her
- the way she alters each pre-chorus ("If I didn't know better, I'd think you were...") to shift from just hearing her grandmother's voice in her head to being in conversation with one another: "Talking to me now"/"Listening to me now"/"Singing to me now"
- the way the song builds to that "Singing to me now" moment when Dessner adds Marjorie's vocals -- got choked up listening to this yesterday -- and how he brings these back in the outro
- how unlike most of her songs, which revolve around the chorus, that build in momentum is driven entirely by the bridge where the entire song's story is told in 16 utterly devastating lines that weave a specific narrative story, internal rhyming ("long limbs and frozen swims"), relatable emotions of regret and grief ("I should have asked you questions"/"I should have asked you how to be" !!!!) that then intersect back into specifics ("Watched as you signed your name Marjorie")...
- the way she ends the song returning to the pre-chorus instead of the chorus
- Dessner's production here is so light yet pretty complex:

That’s a track that actually existed for a while, and you can hear elements of it behind the song ‘peace.’ This weird drone that you hear on ‘peace,’ if you pay attention to the bridge of ‘marjorie,’ you’ll hear a little bit of that in the distance. Some of what you hear is from my friend Jason Treuting playing percussion, playing these chord sticks, that he actually made for a piece that my brother wrote called ‘Music for Wooden Strings.’ […] I collect a lot of rhythmic elements like that, and all kinds of other sounds, and I give them to my friend Ryan Olson, who’s a producer from Minnesota and has been developing this crazy software called Allovers Hi-Hat Generator. It can take sounds, any sounds, and split them into identifiable sound samples, and then regenerate them in randomized patterns that are weirdly very musical. […] That’s how I made the backing rhythm of ‘marjorie.’ Then I wrote a song to it, and Taylor wrote to that. In a weird way, it’s one of the most experimental songs on the album — it doesn’t sound that way, but when you pick apart the layers underneath it, it’s pretty interesting.