Taylor Swift - folklore ALBUM REVIEW

Okay, hear me out. I’m not a giant Taylor Swift fan. While I hated reputation and kinda liked Lover, I believe that 1989 is by far her best record. Along with having hit after hit after hit from that record, it never got old or felt stale. 1989 was (and still is) a very impressive record to me, and I consider it to be one of the best pop records of the 2010s. Now, not even a year after Lover, we have folklore, a surprise release that shook the music industry to its core. With a new sound and aesthetic based on the indie-looking album art alone, I was actually quite excited for folklore and how it would turn out. Let’s get into folklore and see how it is.

folklore is an indie rock album with folk, alternative, and dream pop influences. There are only three main collaborators on the album. They are Jack Antonoff (the super-producer that I mentioned in my Gaslighter review), Aaron Dessner from The National, and Bon Iver, the sole feature on the album. As it is with most of Swift’s albums, her storytelling is top-notch. For each track that I listen to, I can’t decide if I’m listening to a Lana Del Rey album or even a Lykke Li album at some points. I was alone with I was listening to folklore, and that honestly helped with the experience. I’m currently thinking of this as the peak of Swift’s artistic trajectory. She’s matured quite a bit between folklore and Lover, and I’m very impressed by it. What I also find impressive about this is that every song stands on its own in its simplicity and uniqueness, if that even makes sense. If I had to pick one track that I liked the most, it’d be “exile,” the track with Bon Iver. That track just sounds so beautiful to me, although it is quite depressing.

To put it bluntly, folklore is Taylor Swift’s best album since 1989. Who knows when her next album will release, but I certainly hope she sticks to this sound. The Lana-adjacent sound fits Swift extremely well while showing off her maturity as an artist. While this is quite a high note for her career, I think she can top folklore and possibly 1989 if she plays her cards right.


8/10


Stream folklore here

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