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    Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’: Let’s Discuss

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyPopcastSubscribe:Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsTaylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’: Let’s DiscussA second album written and recorded during pandemic lockdown carries the singer and songwriter further from conventional pop.Hosted by Jon Caramanica. Produced by Pedro Rosado.More episodes ofPopcastDecember 15, 2020Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’: Let’s DiscussDecember 9, 2020The Best Albums of 2020? Let’s DiscussNovember 29, 2020Saweetie, City Girls and the Female Rapper RenaissanceNovember 18, 2020  •  More

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    'Evermore' Review: Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’ Sequel Is a Journey Deeper Inward

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAlbum Review‘Evermore,’ Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’ Sequel, Is a Journey Deeper InwardThe singer and songwriter’s July album traded glossy sheen for an acoustic-Minimalistic palette. A second album with the same collaborators moves even further from her pop past.Taylor Swift surprised fans with a second album written and recorded during the coronavirus lockdown, “Evermore.”Credit…Beth GarrabrantDec. 11, 2020Sequels are always tricky. The original is a creative leap; the follow-up is likely to be incremental. Until now, Taylor Swift has switched up her collaborators and general sound with each album. But she has rightly billed “Evermore,” her surprise-release ninth album, as the “sister” to the one she released less than five months ago, “Folklore.”“It feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of this music,” Swift wrote in a statement. “We chose to wander deeper in.”She continued writing songs with the “Folklore” brain trust of producers and musicians — primarily Aaron Dessner of the National, who plays most of the instruments and collaborated on 14 of 15 songs. Swift’s boyfriend, the actor Joe Alwyn, had a hand in three songs under the pseudonym William Bowery; Jack Antonoff, who also wrote with Swift on “Folklore,” worked on two.[embedded content]“Evermore” clings to the acoustic-Minimalistic palette of “Folklore,” with homey piano and imperturbable guitar patterns. Swift and Dessner enlisted more backup musicians for mini-orchestral arrangements by Bryce Dessner, also of the National, but for most of “Evermore,” Swift turns even further inward, away from her pop past, than she did on “Folklore,” drifting toward elegant but cerebral craftsmanship.On “Folklore,” Swift decided she could set aside autobiography to tell stories that weren’t necessarily her own. “Evermore” features more character studies and role playing, as she sings about infidelity, con jobs, even murder. “Ivy,” written with Aaron Dessner and Antonoff, is a folky, convoluted song about a married woman’s secret affair, enfolded by banjo and guitar picking as she sings about the temptation that tears at her: “Your touch brought forth an incandescent glow/Tarnished but so grand.”In “’Tis the Damn Season,” the singer visits her hometown for the holidays and suggests a weekend fling with someone she had left behind. In “Champagne Problems,” the narrator turns down an earnest proposal, singing, “Sometimes you just don’t know the answer/Til someone’s on their knees and asks you.” The music is an elaborate, evolving sigh, starting with low-fi, oompah piano chords that grow entwined with guitar arpeggios and a choir of “aah”s. Swift has more fun with “No Body, No Crime,” joined by two of the sisters in Haim, Este and Danielle, singing about cheating, revenge and unsolved murders and egged on by a yowling harmonica.Swift’s latest breakup songs, her longtime specialty, seek maturity by stepping back. Churchy organ tones surround her as she faces the end of a seven-year romance in “Happiness,” slipping toward anger — “I hope she’ll be a beautiful fool/Who takes my spot next to you” — but determined to be fair: “There’ll be happiness after you/But there was happiness because of you too.” And the album’s title song, “Evermore,” looks back, over a serene piano line, on how she used to believe “that this pain would be for evermore”; Bon Iver (Justin Vernon), returning after his appearance on “Folklore,” arrives midway through to recall more turbulent times, but Swift is determined to put pain behind her.Swift can still bristle, as she does in “Closure.” With insistently clattering percussion and electronic creaks behind her, she refuses to give an ex the satisfaction of pretending to be amicable. Even though “It’s been a long time,” she sneers, “Don’t treat me like some situation that needs to be handled/I’m fine with my spite and my tears.” It’s a glimpse of what Swift might call “the old Taylor,” still in close emotional combat.“Closure” is in an unconventional meter, 5/4; so is “Tolerate It,” in which Swift’s character is a woman giving her all to someone who takes her for granted. Those are two of the album’s countless musicianly flourishes, along with the restlessly intertwined guitar picking in “Willow” and the glimmering electronics and furtive pizzicato strings in “Marjorie” (which pays fond tribute to Swift’s grandmother, Marjorie Finlay). The sonic details of “Evermore” are radiant and meticulous; the songwriting is poised and careful. It’s an album to respect. But with all its constructions and conceits, it also keeps a certain emotional distance.Taylor Swift“Evermore”(Republic)AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Taylor Swift Announces Second Surprise Album of 2020, ‘Evermore’

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTaylor Swift Announces Second Surprise Quarantine Album, ‘Evermore’The “sister record” to her Grammy-nominated “Folklore” again features Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff and Justin Vernon, along with new collaborators.Taylor Swift’s ninth album, “Evermore,” is a creative continuation of her blockbuster “Folklore.”Credit…Beth GarrabrantPublished More

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    The Best Albums of 2020? Let’s Discuss

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyPopcastSubscribe:Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsThe Best Albums of 2020? Let’s DiscussAn absence of live music refocused attention on records, and work by Fiona Apple, Taylor Swift and Run the Jewels spoke loudly.Hosted by Jon Caramanica. Produced by Pedro Rosado.More episodes ofPopcastDecember 9, 2020The Best Albums of 2020? Let’s DiscussNovember 29, 2020Saweetie, City Girls and the Female Rapper RenaissanceNovember 18, 2020  •  More

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    Taylor Swift Illuminates ‘Folklore’ in a Stripped-Down Studio Concert

    “Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions” is straightforward and cozy. Taylor Swift and her two main collaborators and producers for her album “Folklore” — Aaron Dessner (from the National) and Jack Antonoff (a linchpin of Bleachers and fun., and a producer for Lorde, Lana Del Rey and others) — play through the album’s 17 songs at Dessner’s Long Pond Studio, a rural haven in Hudson, N.Y. Conversations between the collaborators introduce each song; birds and insects chirp.“Folklore” was released in July, and the documentary, out now on the Disney+ streaming service, was shot in September. Swift, Dessner and Antonoff perform as a trio on guitars, piano and a handful of other instruments, stripping away some of the fussy intricacies of the album’s studio versions in a way that heightens the songs’ sense of pristine contemplation. Often the music is just a rippling piano pattern and a modestly strummed guitar or two, each note precious. “The Long Pond Sessions” is a small-scale, casual-looking production; Swift is credited as the makeup artist. Mostly it’s just three musicians in a room, wearing everyday clothes and headphones, analyzing and performing songs they’re proud of.The big twist is that the September sessions were the first time that Swift, Antonoff and Dessner were together in the same place. During the pandemic, they had each recorded in their own studios, collaborating long-distance. In a nighttime conversation on a deck at the studio, Swift says that playing the songs in real time will “make me realize it’s a real album. Seems like a big mirage.” Musicians deeply miss performing live; with any other album, she would have gone to tour arenas.Swift got her start bringing teen-pop scenarios — breakups, crushes, insecurities — to country music. Then she moved decisively into the pop mainstream, trading banjo for synthesizers. “The Long Pond Studio Sessions” is not the first time she has made clear that she’s the songwriter and not just the singer. The deluxe edition of her 2014 blockbuster “1989,” which was made with the Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin, included her own demos of some songs, demonstrating her authorship. And last year, alongside her album “Lover,” she released an extensive archive of journal and diary entries, including song drafts.“Folklore” backs off slightly from the bold-outline, clear-cut arena-pop songwriting of albums like “1989” and “Red.” In quarantine, Swift chose a more introspective approach — but also, as she points out when talking about “Illicit Affairs,” a choice to be less autobiographical than her past songwriting. For many of the songs, Dessner — one of the main composers behind the National’s somber, reflective rock — sent instrumental tracks to Swift; then Swift came up with words and melodies. In the documentary, Swift says she was nervous about telling her label, “I know there’s not like a big single, and I’m not doing like a big pop thing.”But her songwriting remains self-conscious and meticulous. Swift and her collaborators detail the ways that songs on the album overlap with and echo one another; three of them — “Cardigan,” “August” and “Betty” — tell the same story from different characters’ perspectives. She explains “Mirrorball” to Antonoff as a cascade of interlocking images: “We have mirrorballs in the middle of a dance floor because they reflect light. They are broken a million times and that’s what makes them so shiny. We have people like that in society too — they hang there and every time they break, it entertains us. And when you shine a light on them, it’s this glittering fantastic thing.”Swift has written and sung — particularly on her 2017 album, “Reputation” — about the pressures of celebrity. On “Folklore,” she sings about them more subtly in “Mirrorball,” “Hoax” and “Peace,” coming to terms with her place in the information economy. But she also knows how to feed tabloids. A big reveal from “The Long Pond Studio Sessions” is that the pseudonymous, no-profile songwriting collaborator on two key songs, “Exile” and “Betty,” is her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn. She got her headlines.For “Exile” — a cathartic post-breakup ballad that’s a duet with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver — Vernon appears remotely, from his own recording setup in Wisconsin. His face is almost entirely concealed behind a bandanna and a baseball cap, but the emotion in his voice rises to meet hers as the song spills over in recriminations.While “The Long Pond Studio Sessions” is a positioning statement like her recent Netflix documentary, “Miss Americana” — which revealed her longtime struggle to declare herself as a left-leaning thinker amid the conservative assumptions of country music — it’s also, more important, a musical experience. Songwriting — mysterious, telegraphic, crafty and personal as well as potentially lucrative — is Taylor Swift’s mission. “Folklore,” made under singular circumstances and challenging old reflexes, is likely to be just one step in her trajectory. More