Less than five months after Taylor Swift surprise-released “Folklore,” which she conceived and recorded wholly within pandemic isolation, comes a follow-up album, “Evermore,” on which she works with many of the same collaborators, including Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff and Justin Vernon.

Swift continues the sonic and lyrical approaches of “Folklore”: writing about subjects other than herself, dabbling in production more abstruse than the pop music that made her famous.

On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the year in Taylor Swift, and the ways “Evermore” deepens Swift’s move away from conventional pop — but for how long?

Guests:

• Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporter

• Caryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editor

• Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music critic