Taylor Swift’s new album Evermore proclaims: ‘I survived!’

A song from Taylor Swift’s new surprise album Increasingly seems to refer to her horrible dose in 2016, when “I fell from the pedestal / Right down the rabbit hole”.

In that anti-Wonderland, Swift found herself regarded as the personification of white American privilege. Locked in an unworthy feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, her public image was distorted into that of a wealth calculating creature. His delight in setting clues and riddles for fans took on a sinister connotation, the fake smile concealing an intriguing mind. Everything had a hidden purpose. For the more insane anti-Swiftians, the purring and purring cats on their various social media platforms resembled the spoiled felines of a Bond villain trying to take over the world.

The song about this turbulent period in Swift’s professional life is called “Long Story Short” and ends with the words: “I survived.” In short: his enemies have fallen silent; it’s West and Kardashian who now reveal themselves as the super rich narcissists. Meanwhile, Swift has moved on as a musician, first with the extraordinary expressiveness of 2019. Lover, then with his impressive shift to introspection this year Folklore. Increasingly, whose existence was announced just hours before its release, is its sister album.

Is it a calculated move? Swift’s love of games and numerology should perhaps have sparked expectations for a couple of albums in 2020. “Since I was 13, I’ve been excited to turn 31 because it’s my lucky number backwards,” she added in explanation. of Increasinglysudden appearance on the eve of his 31st birthday.

There are also strong business reasons for the large number of new songs. The arrival of three albums in 16 months coincides with Swift’s fury over the sale of her past recordings. In 2019, record executive and manager Scooter Braun bought the rights to her first six albums, which were sold last month to a private equity group, reportedly for $ 300 million. Swift has started re-recording her early work to get the rights to it. Meanwhile, the flood of new songs, whose teachers he owns, makes up for the loss of old ones.

Its productivity also fits in with the new model of streamed music. Talking when Folklore It came to light, Spotify boss Daniel Ek warned musicians that “you can’t record music once every three or four years and you think that will be enough.” He cited Swift approvingly as an example of a big star who had received the message. In that sense, releasing not one but two surprise albums in a year is a sign of the relentless new economics of the music industry.

However, Swift claims that spontaneous creativity is the reason for Increasinglyappearance, not commercial invention. “To put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs,” he explains in the notes on the liner. Her and her Folklore collaborators, notably Aaron Dessner of the band The National and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, were on a roll. “Before I knew it, there were 17 stories,” he explains.

The first is “Willow”, which is sung from the point of view of a woman being taken away by a man, an overwhelming force similar to the unplanned creative energy that apparently sparked Increasinglyis doing. “Life was a willow tree and it bent directly to your wind,” Swift sings over a softly insistent acoustic melody, an unforced organic register. It’s a subtle song, refusing to make the subject of tumultuous emotion literal with melodramatic key changes or quirky vocals.

References to late fall and winter are repeated throughout the album, a muted season of intense colors. Echoes of Swift’s country-pop origins can be heard from time to time, but the instrumental arrangements of the songs generally play a picturesque background role, with few solos. Swift’s voice is the main source of melody.

Although she was never a singing powerhouse, it shows just how good a singer she is. Increasingly. One of her highlights, “Marjorie,” is a poignant ballad about her dead grandmother, an opera singer whose sampled trill can be heard at the end of the song. Swift follows a different tradition of vocalism, an idiomatic and conversational style that is no less demanding in terms of tonal control. The calm way he leads a song and masters his action is anything but easy.

The strange moment of overwriting (“We were like the mall before the Internet / It was the only place to be”) betrays the danger of prolific art, trying too hard to achieve the effect. But the album’s schematics are carefully designed, with themes carefully woven through the songs. The unfaithful man who meets a bad ending in “No Body, No Crime” is replaced by a compassionate portrait of an unfaithful woman in “Ivy.” The ex-lover who writes a letter in “Closure” (“See the shape of your name / It still spells pain”) is redeemed by Swift’s memory of seeing her grandmother “while signing your name Marjorie” on that track. Name. .

The songs duplicate each other, just like Increasingly fold back into Folklore, his brother 2020. There is calculus here, but not of the cynical variety. Consider it instead the signature of a singer-songwriter exercising her considerable talent.

★★★★ ☆

‘Evermore’ is released by Republic Records