Taylor Swift -- Evermore

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.