|
Post by Admin on Dec 11, 2020 5:35:03 GMT
There's more where folklore came from. After the surprise release of her eighth studio album in July, Taylor Swift again announced a new record on short notice – in this case, evermore, on the eve of its Dec. 11 midnight release. On social media, Swift referred to the album as folklore's sister record. "To put it plainly, we just couldn't stop writing songs," she wrote. And though fans have long referred to each of the star's album cycles as eras, Swift says not so fast this time around. "There was something different with folklore," she explained. "In making it, I felt less like I was departing and more like I was returning." On evermore, Swift reunites with The National's Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, Justin Vernon and "WB," – aka William Bowery, aka Joe Alwyn, as confirmed in her recent Disney+ concert film, Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions. New collaborators enter the fray as well, with a full-fledged feature from The National ("coney island"), backing vocals from Mumford & Sons' Marcus Mumford (" like me") and a track featuring the sisters HAIM ("no body, no crime"). The production choices of folklore – the skittering programming and intricately textured instrumentation commonly found in Dessner's work – carry over on evermore. And the records are clearly in lyrical dialogue: On album opener "willow," over intricate acoustic guitars, Swift sings, "Show me the places where the others gave you scars." As on folklore, evermore evokes sweeping scenes with specific details: a tented tennis court; ladies lunching. There's a continuity in the stories told – for instance, the mud-covered truck tires of "'tis the damn season" – that harken back to Swift's earliest settings. On "marjorie," she draws on her own familial lore, paying tribute to her maternal grandmother Marjorie Finlay, herself a singer. And on "no body, no crime," HAIM steps in to help spin a saga of suspected infidelity, avenging an adulterer thanks to a boating license and a little elbow grease (perhaps an homage to The Chicks' "Goodbye Earl"?) The folklore-evermore era has been one marked by a spirit of artistic freedom. Unbound by pop convention, and perhaps with newfound commercial flexibility – with the success of folklore as proof of surprise-release viability – Swift is able to both explore abstract turns of phrase ("gold rush") and unfurl narratives ("champagne problems"). On both albums, she's been permitted to play with sound and texture in a way that feels uncharacteristic of contemporary radio pop. Whatever's next – whether it's a continued exploration of the folklore-evermore aesthetic, or something else altogether – a reminder: the next time Taylor Swift says, "not a lot going on at the moment," there's always more up her sleeve. evermore tracklist: willow champagne problems gold rush 'tis the damn season tolerate it no body, no crime (feat. HAIM) happiness dorothea coney island (feat. The National) ivy like me long story short marjorie closure evermore (feat. Bon Iver) right where you left me (bonus track) it's time to go (bonus track)
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 11, 2020 19:31:49 GMT
With Evermore coasting on its older sibling’s tidal wave of success, Swift and her team had even more freedom to do whatever they wanted, and it reflects back in the music. She’s working here again with Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, and although Folklore’s moody, “indie”-inspired sound is still the dominant feature of Evermore, there’s room for more variety and experimentation this time around. The wicked country murder ballad “No Body, No Crime,” guest-starring Este and Danielle Haim, rubs elbows with the twinkling chamber-pop track “Gold Rush.” Swift warmly sings against honky-tonk piano in “Dorothea” and then, in the complete opposite direction, artificially distorts her voice on the seething “Closure,” using Bon Iver’s Messina vocal modifier to turn her soft timbre into a barely-contained robotic growl. It’s a refreshing change of pace: Swift’s usual approach to dabbling in new genres or sounds is to go balls-to-the-wall, but on Evermore, she’s just as good at curating these more detailed production flourishes, all with the same contouring and meticulousness as she does with her best lyrics.
Story songs are still the heart of the matter on Evermore, and Swift has a whole new cast of characters to join Betty, James, Rebecca and the rest from her prior Long Pond sessions. “‘Tis the Damn Season” introduces Dorothea, a Hollywood actress who returns to her hometown and reunites with a high school flame in a very adult tryst. We get to hear his side of the story in “Dorothea,” as he yearns for her to close the distance between them: “You got shiny friends since you left town/A tiny screen’s the only place I see you now.” But unlike the teenage love triangle that ran through the center of Folklore, there are few neat conclusions to Evermore’s tales. A woman breaks up with her college sweetheart the night he planned to propose; two con artists fall in love and promise an impossible life of stability to each other. On “Tolerate It,” one of Swift’s most damning relationship vignettes to date, one person’s love is met with cruel indifference from their other half. “I wait by the door like I’m just a kid/Use my best colors for your portrait/Lay the table with the fancy shit/And watch you tolerate it,” Swift warbles, making the situation sound, convincingly, like a fate worse than death.
Granted, none of these stories are executed with more or less finesse than the ones on Folklore. Whether by design, or simply by which songs she decided to put on which album, Evermore’s most revelatory moments come when Swift turns the mythmaking back around to herself. “Marjorie,” the closest thing the album has to a centerpiece, is a brilliant and devastating piece of songcraft, an instant classic in the Swift canon. Anyone familiar with the charity track “Ronan” is aware that Swift can write a damn good eulogy, and here she paints her own grandmother Marjorie Finley as an indelible force, a woman so much like herself yet whose complete story she’ll never be able to tell. “What died didn’t stay dead/What died didn’t stay dead,” Swift sings, steadfast. “You’re alive, you’re alive, in my head.” It’s hard to think of another song that so perfectly captures the delayed tragedy of losing a loved one when you’re too young to see their full worth.
If Swift seems hesitant to give her characters happy endings, or endings in general, it may be because she’s still figuring out her own next chapter right on the page. “I was dancing when the music stopped/And in the disbelief/I can’t face reinvention/I haven’t met the new me yet,” she sings on “Happiness,” a track she recorded just a week before the album dropped. It’s a gorgeous, ambient song, reminiscent of Chromatics without the four-on-the-floor beats, and while she’s ostensibly singing about divorce, Swift touches on so much more – nuanced acts of forgiveness, complex personal histories, the ability to visualize and know how a person can look in different shades of light. No doubt Swift is still the master of writing a spiteful kiss-off, but the songs of Evermore are a welcomed step in a more mature direction, the result of months and months of her getting lost in the woods and questioning her way forward. By the time you’re reading this, she may have already found the answer.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 12, 2020 6:31:24 GMT
Dropping hints? Taylor Swift fans are convinced that one of the songs on her ninth album, Evermore, is a nod to Gigi Hadid‘s daughter — and they brought out all their receipts. Taylor Swift's Song Lyrics Decoded: Celebs Featured in Her Songs The 30-year-old Grammy winner broke the internet on Thursday, December 10, when she announced that she had written and produced a second album during the coronavirus pandemic, a “sister record” to July’s Folklore. When the new tracks hit streaming services the next day, listeners combed through the lyrics for clues about Swift’s famous pals — and might have uncovered a reveal in “Dorothea.” “Y’all hear me out. My best friend just cracked something I guess. ‘August’ is track 8 on folkore and gigi has posted a picture on Instagram captioning ‘August, waiting for our girl,'” one fan tweeted. “The track 8 of evermore is dorothea. SO WHAT IF GIGI’S BABY’S NAME IS DOROTHEA? 🤯.” Us Weekly confirmed in April that Hadid, 25, was pregnant and expecting her first child with on-off boyfriend Zayn Malik. The pair began dating in 2015 and split twice before reconciling in January. Hadid confirmed the baby news during an April appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and gave birth to her daughter in late September. Though the model hasn’t publicly announced her little one’s moniker yet, Swifties compared the new Evermore track to Folklore‘s “Betty,” named after Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds‘ third daughter. Now, music lovers are sensing a pattern. “Gigi Hadid’s baby is named Dorothea and you can’t convince me otherwise,” another fan tweeted after listening to the surprise album.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 12, 2020 19:39:05 GMT
From "Mad Woman" to "No Body, No Crime," Taylor Swift has apparently had female rage on the mind. In the case of the latter song, the sixth track off of her second surprise album of the year, Evermore, Swift teams up with longtime pals Haim to avenge the murder of a woman named Este, who confronted her cheating husband and was killed for it. Swift reveals to EW exclusively where the idea for the song came from, and how she got the group — which consists of sisters Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim — involved. "Working with the Haim sisters on 'No Body, No Crime' was pretty hilarious because it came about after I wrote a pretty dark murder mystery song and had named the character Este, because she’s the friend I have who would be stoked to be in a song like that," Swift says of the track. "I had finished the song and was nailing down some lyric details and texted her, 'You’re not going to understand this text for a few days but... which chain restaurant do you like best?' and I named a few." http://instagram.com/p/CInkR4Ajyi1 Swift continues, "She chose Olive Garden and a few days later I sent her the song and asked if they would sing on it. It was an immediate 'YES.'" (The popular Italian chain appears in the lyrics of the song: "Este wasn't there/ Tuesday night at Olive Garden.") Though they've been friends for years and even toured together, Swift and the Haim sisters had never before collaborated on a song together. "We can’t figure out why we hadn’t collaborated sooner. We’ve toured together, played live together, choreographed dances like we’re at summer camp, but it took a song about avenging your friend’s murder to give us the idea to take this step," Swift explains, adding, "Long story short, I’m the 4th Haim sister now, confirmed." Evermore, which is the "sister record" to Swift's eighth studio album Folklore, dropped on Thursday night along with the music video for "Willow."
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 13, 2020 5:00:12 GMT
Italian restaurant chain Olive Garden has officially responded to Taylor Swift's Evermore shoutout in "No Body, No Crime" — and the discourse will make you crave some bottomless breadsticks.
The restaurant became a trending topic on Twitter following the debut of Swift's surprise ninth studio album and companion piece to Folklore, on Friday, Dec. 11. In "No Body, No Crime," a country-twanged murder ballad featuring sister music trio Haim, Swift sings, "Este wasn't there, Tuesday night at Olive Gardеn." It has since sent fans (and Olive Garden) into a collective frenzy.
One Twitter user tweeted at the restaurant chain and asked how it felt to be name-dropped by Swift. Olive Garden responded with a famous line from the 2001 Reese Witherspoon film Legally Blonde. "What, like it’s hard?" they asked. Another Twitter user then inquired about the restaurant chain's favorite song from the new album. The answer is pretty clear, but Olive Garden confirmed it's "No Body, No Crime" for good measure. "We're listening, (to track 6) on replay — eating our feelings in breadsticks."
So, how did the Olive Garden nod come about? Swift told Entertainment Weekly on Friday that the restaurant choice came from Este Haim, one-third of the Haim sisters and the name of the central character in the song. "I wrote a pretty dark murder mystery song and had named the character Este, because she's the friend I have who would be stoked to be in a song like that," Swift said. "I had finished the song and was nailing down some lyric details and texted [Este], 'You're not going to understand this text for a few days but which chain restaurant do you like best?' and I named a few."
After she chose Olive Garden, Swift sent her the song a few days later and asked if the group would like to sing on it. "It was an immediate 'YES,'" Swift said. "We can't figure out why we hadn't collaborated sooner. We've toured together, played live together, [and] choreographed dances like we're at summer camp, but it took a song about avenging your friend's murder to give us the idea to take this step." She added, "Long story short, I'm the fourth Haim sister now, confirmed."
|
|