This is the last one of these while I’m still in college, and I can’t say I expected myself to write about someone so close to home during my last month 6-ish hours away from PA.
Every spring, I fall into the Taylor Swift trap. At this point, she’s the only artist (maybe other than Fleetwood Mac) for whom I have an entire five-hour playlist (that is on the conservative side) of just her music that I really do listen to from time to time. I get stuck in this Taylor rut for 2-4 weeks every spring, putting in so many listening minutes that she ends up on my Spotify Top 5 Artists list annually. Outside of this spring obsession, I really don’t listen to her that much… funny how my moods work.
Anyway, if you weren’t catching on, right now I am in one of those fateful couple of weeks of listening to a sickening amount of my fellow Wyomissing, Pennsylvania native, so I figured it’s the perfect chance to talk about my favorite album: folklore.
Most songs on this album will immediately send me back to the lifeguard chairs from the pool I worked at in the summer of 2020. It was her eighth studio album, which she surprise-released from quarantine. Wikipedia will tell you that it falls into genres like folk, pop, indie, “namely chamber pop, indie folk, electro-folk, folk rock, and indie rock,” whatever all of that means. The writer of this page even went as far to say that this album was super cottagecore. Sure.
Following the poppier release of Lover in 2019, folklore is the cooler, indie older sister that made me actually become a Taylor Swift fan. This album is nearly perfect (even though it could do without “exile”).
But we were something, don’t you think so?
Roaring 20s tossing pennies in the pool
And if my wishes came true
It would’ve been you
Way to start strong. “the 1” is so innocently sad but addictingly beautiful all at once. It sounds like a slow evening at the pool, when there’s really not that many families left, you know you’re headed home soon, and can just appreciate the simplicity of the moment. Not sure how much of that comes from the song itself or that time of my life–but I like to think it’s both.
Then boom, “cardigan.” Banger. Skip “exile.” Appreciate “my tears ricochet.” Relish in “mirrorball.” Be intrigued by how Taylor works “Pennsylvania” into “seven,” and relate to it. Get lost in “august”… la la la, more good music… then:
Green was the color of the grass
Where I used to read at Centennial Park
I used to think I would meet somebody there
Some of her most vivid and eloquent lines to this day are given to us in “invisible string.” Somehow that adorable little guitar work and flashes of her fictional beautiful memories make me understand “that single thread of gold.” A fitting song for an album called folklore.
She continues on this rampage of incredible music until finishing us all off with her bonus track, “the lakes.” With a mesmerizing chorus and some more beautiful lyricism, she’s almost asking me to restart the entire album and relive the whole experience again (which I do occasionally).
There’s a reason this album stood atop the Billboard 200 charts for eight weeks, was the best-selling album of 2020, won Album of the Year at the 63rd Grammys, and was put at 173 on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” The world knew she just did something insane, too. And how does she respond? With evermore. And for this, I consider myself blessed.
So anyway, growing up in her hometown, having her first grade teacher some 10-odd years later, and seeing our local newspaper congratulate the local on her engagement, I still fought being a fan of hers for a while. folklore rewrote that story for me. I know every listener has a weird resonance with an album or two of hers, so today I thought it would be fun to give a little insight into mine. I’ll probably stay on the Taylor Swift train for a week or so longer, and I totally expect to see her on my Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year–at least some things never change.
A couple of years ago (when the obsession really began), I listened to all of her discography chronologically and stand by this ranking featuring my favorite songs from each:
- folklore – the 1, invisible string, cardigan, the lakes
- evermore – willow, ivy, cowboy like me
- Speak Now – Mean, Back To December, Speak Now
- Fearless – Fifteen, Mr. Perfectly Fine, The Other Side of the Door
- Lover – Lover, False God, It’s Nice To Have A Friend
- The Tortured Poets Department – The Bolter, I Hate It Here
- Midnights – Sweet Nothing, The Great War
- Reputation – Don’t Blame Me, Dress
- 1989 – Style, New Romantics
- Taylor Swift – A Place in this World, Stay Beautiful
- Red – Red, All Too Well (10 min), Nothing New
**Excluded from the ranking:
The Life of a Showgirl – heard one song and decided I didn’t want to taint my opinion of her just yet, so have never actually listened to it all
Iz FM 
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