Album Review: Taylor Swift Breathes Stories to Life with Folklore

The 30-year-old star switches the script yet again in an indie folk record both sprawling in scope and intimate in delivery.

Written by Annie Lyons

Taylor Swift has never been known for her ambiguity. After all, “Teardrops On My Guitar” really was about a crush named Drew. While the direct name-drops have been few and far between since that breakthrough single, she’s continued to cover her personal life with diary entry intimacy, alluding to recognizable relationships and events. And even if a Swiftian tale might have a little more kissing in the rain than most, painstaking details and lyrical prowess add weight to her larger-than-life pronouncements.

Part of what makes her self-mythologizing so interesting is that her songs have never existed in a vacuum. They converse with each other, her discography a vibrant living document that speaks its own secret language that any novice Swiftie can learn. Lyrics often echo or invert earlier sentiments, and the smallest details have payoff years later. Swift has always felt so intentional with her songwriting that it’s hard to not consider her first seven records as fluid chapters in a greater story she’s been penning all along.

No record better illustrates this than 2019’s Lover. Favoring eclecticness over cohesiveness, the album served as a musical autobiography, calling back to all her different eras with the references to match. With Swift at the precipice of turning 30, Lover was a satisfying bookend to the first 15 years of her career that showcased her growth and maturity as an artist. Whatever came next was sure to be a new Taylor.

No one thought it would come so soon.

Released on July 24, her eighth studio album, Folklore, arrived with none of the ceremony typical of a Swift album. She eschewed her usual methodology — social media scavenger hunts, highly promoted singles, music videos scattered with hints — in favor of a couple tweets sent with not even a full day’s notice.

Produced largely by The National’s Aaron Dessner, with a handful of songs from usual collaborator Jack Antonoff, Folklore settles somewhere between indie folk and chamber pop with a fondness for piano melodies and acoustic guitar. No rousing stadium anthems or synth-laden pop textures exist here. It’s fitting that Swift’s first foray as a lowercase girl (Folklore and its contents are all stylicized in lowercase letters) feels like a “Twilight” soundtrack in the best way — there’s an earthiness reminiscent of “Safe and Sound,” her haunting 2012 collaboration with alt-country duo The Civil Wars.

Even more than its branding and sound, Folklore represents new horizons in Swift’s songwriting as she delves into imaginative fictions and pointedly takes herself out of the limelight. As she explains in its introduction on social media, the album centers around the concept of folklore: “Myths, ghost stories, and fables. Fairy tales and parables. Gossip and legend. Someone’s secrets written in the sky for all to behold.”

Swift populates Folklore with a slew of characters, from a ghost watching their enemies at a funeral to a disgraced socialite dodging rumors to a child wanting to run away with their best friend. One moment, she personifies a disco ball in a metaphor that escapes triteness with surprising poignancy. The next, she imagines what it was like for her grandfather to land at Guadalcanal in 1942. As she sings in “Peace,” the devil’s in the details — but now, Swift brandishes such specifics from the storyteller’s seat.

An album highlight is her depiction of a teenage love triangle, where each character gets a chance to share their point-of-view. Told over a three-song arc, a 17-year-old cheats on their girlfriend over the summer and attempts to make amends. Each song represents an essential tenet of Folklore: “August” covers desire, “Betty” regret, and “Cardigan” memory.

Told from the perspective of the unnamed ‘other woman,’ “August” captures the month’s transitional feelings by setting the doomed summer fling to shimmering strings and jangly guitar. Reminiscent of Swift’s self-titled debut and its follow-up, Fearless, the harmonica-ridden and twangy “Betty” sees the speaker James apologize to their girlfriend Betty. The nostalgia’s fitting as James attempts a grand gesture at a party that feels akin to the rom-com sensibilities of Swift’s early eras. “I’m only 17, I don’t know anything / But I know I miss you,” she sings.

But the ending’s already written. In “Cardigan,” Betty reflects on the bittersweet “stars and scars” left by her first love. The track calls back to Swift’s all-time masterpiece “All Too Well,” both continuing her storied affinity for winter wear and paralleling the song’s structure of tracing a relationship from beginning to end. Echoing the lyrics in “Betty,” she sings, “But I knew you'd linger like a tattoo kiss / I knew you'd haunt all of my what-ifs.”

Folklore commits to mood more than anything else. Songs take place in liminal spaces and feelings full of melancholy and yearning. The closest she gets to an upbeat pop song is the twinkling, ‘90s-esque “Mirrorball,” but it’s a lonely last dance, the kind that’s best accompanied with tears.

“Exile” deepens the “Twilight” feeling, marking her first collaboration with Bon Iver. On paper, their voices seem at odds; he’s all rough calluses, while she’s sighing softness. The contrast works — especially given the song’s conflicting tale of two ex-lovers who each have their own version of how things fell apart. “You never gave a warning sign,” he accuses. “I gave so many signs,” she returns, her words cutting into the lingering remnants of his. Yet it’s not so much hot-headed anger fueling their conversation as a raw desperation to get the last word. There’s no clear truth, leaving only frustration.

Songs lend themselves to speculation, like the fan theories that the traitor in “My Tears Ricochet” stands in for Scooter Braun, and “Betty” depicts a sapphic romance. Even if untrue, the individual interpretations feel right at home with Swift’s ideas of folklore blending truth and fiction as a tale gets passed down.

Not to say the record’s better left staying completely in Swift’s imagination. The album’s most hopeful tracks seem like clear odes to her relationship with boyfriend Joe Alywn.

“Invisible String” is a fanciful imagining about two people whose fates have always been intertwined, woven into reality by real-life details like Alywn’s teenage job at a frozen yogurt shop and a three-year anniversary trip to the Lake District in the United Kingdom. Set to a plucky acoustic guitar and gentle strings, it’s a fresh reprieve from the melancholy and yearning of the album’s first half.

The song shows off some of Swift’s finest songwriting to date, with lyrical gems like “Cold was the steel of my axe to grind / For the boys who broke my heart / Now I send their babies presents” (congrats, Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner!). Notably, Swift mimics the memorable lyric structure of “Red” and continues past color motifs, reinforcing how her views on love have changed from that of “burning red” to “one single thread of gold.”

Similar growth is found in “Peace,” a soothing balm that makes a lullaby out of a rapid, pulsing beat as Swift muses about how peace is the one thing she can never promise a partner. With a quiet sensuality, the song feels like a natural progression of Lover’s underrated “False God,” a funky bass line replacing the former’s saxophone. It’s cuts like this one that blend Folklore’s classic instrumentation with glitchy experimentation that make you wish for more daring production throughout.

While co-producer Dessner mostly steers clear of the perceptible heaviness found in The National’s catalogue, his love for piano melodies starts to feel overbearing. The biting anger behind “Mad Woman” is deeply felt on lines like “Does she smile? / Or does she mouth, ‘F-ck you forever?,’” but it feels limited by its humdrum piano and mellow drum beat. Even when things build up to fuller atmospherics with strings and distant tambourines, there’s polish and restraint when the song calls for rawness. Although with other lyrics dangerously close to a “we are the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn” reference, the song is still the album’s weakest point.

The same goes for “Epiphany” and “Hoax,” which rely on Swift’s words to power through tiresome piano contemplations. Folklore’s a step up from the similarly overstuffed Lover in that not a single track is ostensibly bad, but with an hourlong runtime, there’s certainly filler.

Don’t be fooled. The wistful and melancholic production might set the stage, but Folklore’s true highlight is its emotional and expansive lyricism — something that’s been a Swift staple since the very beginning.

Swift might’ve made the “indie record that’s much cooler than mine” that she playfully rolled her eyes at in “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” but it’s still her voice through and through. Folklore feels less like a tactical rebranding and more like the move of an artist who truly has nothing left to prove. Or, to put it in her own words via the album’s opening line: “I'm doing good, I'm on some new shit.” Take her or leave her.

Album Review: Taylor Swift Breathes Stories to Life with ‘Folklore’