Taylor Swift -- Evermore

we also talked about "ivy," i am sort of struck every time i hear it that it's the apotheosis of her career's worth of themes, the pull of an imaginary fairytale universe somehow unlocked by true love b/w the overdriven romantic and sexual tensions of songs like "treacherous," except in this song the latter so darkens and confuses the former that it feels like you're wandering through the ruins of a castle or a magical forest full of dead trees. it is so lost in this effect that lyrically she gives almost nothing away, there's so much allusion and incident that only sort of indirectly tells you what's going on ("and the old widow goes to the stone every day / but i don't, i just sit here and wait / grieving for the living"). it's like the song is wreathed in a fog. so often her successful writing is rooted in the specificity and resonance of her details so "ivy" really does feel like it has its foot in another world where nothing resolves so easily. so like while it's the apotheosis of her themes it delivers them with what feels like a new obliqueness and mystery

at least half of these ideas are copyright tim f btw

I also like the "tent-like thing" line a lot, but I wish she'd kept up that voice all the way through the song. The "gardens of Babylon" line sounds more like Taylor Swift to me, less like something that character would say.

I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now

i was talking to tim about this record yesterday and he pointed out that "cowboy like me" features one of her favorite lyrical tricks (which is all over this record), the repeated phrase that is altered by its new context each time it recurs, cf. "i haven't met the new me yet" in "happiness." "cowboy like me"'s is "i could be the way forward / only if they pay for it" which curdles into "we could be the way forward / and i know i'll pay for it."

Totally. She does this elsewhere in "Cowboy" with "I've got some tricks up my sleeve" then "You had some tricks up your sleeve" then "I've had some tricks up my sleeve," which seems simple enough but is a subtle and clever way to tell stories with the chorus not just the verses.

Probably stating the obvious (and previously stated), but this feels like the "10 years later" version of Folklore: the high-school drama has turned into adult relationships and regrets. Today it's "happiness" that's hitting me hardest.

"the lakes" is the only folklore track i don't really care for so i am really surprised at how great the evermore bonus tracks are

"great" may be overstating it, i wouldn't swap them for anything on the record, and "it's time to go" sort of confirms this is her joni mitchell record, taylor just had the good sense to cut "the windfall (everything for nothing)" from the official tracklist

I think my CD is scheduled to arrive tmrrw. Looking forward to it

lol I haven’t heard these yet but I still get the windfall joke

but which is 'Ray's Dad's Cadillac'?

closure sounds like casiontone for the painfully alone imo, i like its sentiment but it doesnt work for me

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iRbIYkccgw

Really nice songs, IMO

girl... enough

I guess “Right Where You Left Me” sounds a little like “You Belong to Me”... which is not an unwelcome callback, for a post-breakup song years later.

Such good lyrics—

I’m sure that you got a wife out there
Kids and Christmas

Wow, just listened to "Tolerate It" and "closure": p cool; 5/4 grooves were not what I expected from her.

I find “Tolerate It” pops into my head a lot.

One of several remarkable things about "Cowboy Like Me" is how it kicks off with what turns out to essentially be the bridge melody, when it returns around 2:50. Can anyone think of another example of a song that does that? (I'm a connoisseur of bridges in songs, I can't off the top of my head.)

I love how this song floats along, stately & serene, lightly touching down every time it shifts from section to section.

It’s easy to imagine a Matrix-produced version of “Long Story Short” being a hit for an Avril or Michelle Branch in the early ‘00s (this is a virtue, btw).

I feel like "Ivy" through "Long Story Short" is her finest 3 song run ever.

Yes! (That’s the run I just experienced in the car.)

i wish to know
the fatal flaw that makes you long to be
magnificently cursed

the "lay the table with the fancy shit" chapter

the AND NOW! backing vocals in "long story short" are so deliriously infectious

Ftr, I was wrong about “Cowboy” kicking off with the bridge melody (don’t know why I heard it that way earlier).

Maybe not the thread for this I don't know

I’m thrilled to tell you that my new version of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is done and will be with you soon. It has 26 songs including 6 never before released songs from the vault. Love Story (Taylor’s Version) will be out tonight. Pre-order now at https://t.co/NqBDS6cGFl 💛💛 pic.twitter.com/Vjyy2gA72O

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) February 11, 2021

I thought the old Taylor was dead?

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.