Ms. Taylor Alison Swift has done it again: for the second time this year, she has dropped a surprise album. Evermore was released last Friday as a sister album to Folklore, which was dropped in July. This release makes it the 3rd album Swift has released in the span of 16 months with a total of 52 songs.
Ranking of songs (it’s important to note I consider this a zero-skip album, and it was very hard to rank):
- “champagne problems”
- “gold rush”
- “‘tis the damn season”
- “ivy”
- “tolerate it”
- “willow”
- “no body, no crime” (feat. HAIM)
- “happiness”
- “marjorie”
- “coney island” (feat. The National)
- “evermore” (feat. Bon Iver)
- “long story short”
- “dorothea”
- “closure”
- “cowboy like me”
Best lyrics (in no particular order):
- “I made you my temple, my mural, my sky. Now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life”
- “And wonder about the only soul who can tell which smiles I’m faking and the heart I know I’m breakin’ is my own, to leave the warmest bed I’ve ever known”
- “Tell me, when did your winning smile, begin to look like a smirk?”
- “I don’t like that falling feels like flying till the bone crush”
- “I always felt I must look better in the rearview”
- “If I can’t relate to you anymore, then who am I related to?
- “Seeing the shape of your name still spells out pain”
- “Don’t treat me like some situation that needs to be handled”
- “Your heart was glass I dropped it”
- “There’ll be happiness after you, but there was happiness because of you”
- “My mind turns your life into folklore”
- The ENTIRE “champagne problems” bridge
- “Life is a willow and it bent right to your wind, but I come back stronger than a ‘90s trend”
Top 5 genius moments:
- Mentioning exes in “coney island”
- “Who coaxed you into paradise and left you there? Will you forgive my soul when you’re too wise to trust me and too old to care?”
- Reference to ex-boyfriend Tom Hiddleston.
- “Were you standing in the hallway with a big cake, happy birthday”
- Reference to ex-boyfriend Jake Gyllenhal who forgot about her birthday party discussed in “The Moment I Knew” from Taylor Swift’s Red Album.
- “Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest gray?”
- Reference to ex-boyfriend John Mayer and the song that was written about him from the Speak Now album called “Dear John”
- “And when I got into the accident the sight that flashed before me was your face”
- Reference to the snowmobile accident Swift and ex-boyfriend Harry Styles got into which is also discussed in “Out of the Woods” from 1989.
- “But when I walked up to the podium I think that I forgot to say your name”
- Reference to when Swift forgot to say ex-boyfriend Calvin Harris’s name in her acceptance speech for an award.
- “Who coaxed you into paradise and left you there? Will you forgive my soul when you’re too wise to trust me and too old to care?”
- The entire “willow” music video
- The gold string Swift follows in the video is from her song “invisible string”.
- Scenes in the music video represent her different eras.
- Storytelling
- “dorothea” is written by her high school boyfriend as he watches her chase fame and fortune. “‘tis the damn season” is written by Dorothea about the love she still has for the boy and her desire to see him again.
- Other songs tell stories of forbidden love, murder, crushes, and shattered romance.
- Grandmother’s voice in “marjorie”
- The song was written and named after her grandmother, and Swift used her old opera tapes to include her voice in the song.
- “happiness” was written one week before the album’s release
