On July 24th of 2020, fans and listeners of 31-year-old singer-songwriter Taylor Swift were pleasantly surprised with the unexpected release of her 8th studio album. “Folklore”, a collection of 17 songs that beautifully capture Swift’s storytelling abilities and lyrical artistry, was created during the first few months of quarantine in primarily virtual collaboration with The National’s Aaron Dessner and Jack Antoff. A mere 5 months later on December 11th, Swift dropped yet another album, “Evermore”, making history in more ways than one. Not only did this mean that the multi talented artist released 3 albums within a year and a half including “Folklore”’s predecessor, “Lover,”’s release in August of 2019, but “Folklore” and “Evermore” marked Swift’s first time using the same creative team for two studio albums.

“To put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs,” Swift told her Instagram followers in a post shared on December 10th 2020 that featured the cover photo and announcement of her 9th studio album “Evermore”. Described as “Folklore”’s “sister record”, “Evermore” features another 17 songs that build on the foundation of its predecessor and finish it’s story in a poetically rich package. Both albums are in high contrast stylistically from Swift’s previous three albums, which dabbled in the pop genre of the 2010s. The singer-songwriter describes her reasoning for her shift in style in an Instagram post, writing “I loved the escapism I found in these imaginary/not imaginary tales”. The addition of her latest two albums further prove Swift’s ability to dominate the charts of multiple genres since her original musical debut in 2006 with country single “Tim McGraw”, becoming the first artist to debut atop the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 twice with songs from both “Folklore” and “Evermore” simultaneously. Luckily for iUniversity Prep students, the low beat and soft melancholy theme of both albums make them a promising choice for study music, a collective 2 hours and 16 minutes of pure Taylor to buckle down on some work and even make geometry a little more bearable by jamming out the lyrics to “Cardigan” or “ Dorthea” as you find the area of a triangle. The remarkable resilience that Taylor Swift has demonstrated in pulling off not one but two hit albums in the midst of a pandemic is an admirable achievement and a quality that has kept the still young artist a force to be reckoned with in the music industry for 15 years and counting.

*Please consult with a parent or guardian prior to listening to any music listed in this article.

Sources

Aniftos, Rania. “Taylor Swift ‘Seriously’ Thanks Fans for ‘Evermore’ & ‘Willow’ Chart Achievements.” Billboard, 21 Dec. 2020, www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/9503678/taylor-swift-reacts-evermore-willow-chart-achievement.

Banerjee, Shreyas. “Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’ Is More than Just Another ‘Folklore.’” The Observer, observer.case.edu/taylor-swifts-evermore-is-more-than-just-another-folklore/.