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

Spotify

Apple Music

YouTube Music



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lil Yachty - Let’s Start Here. ALBUM REVIEW

-
Image
I gotta keep holding to my promises about reviewing. I always love it when an artist takes a risk with their material. Whether or not it works out, I usually admire the risk and appreciate the fact that any artist can do something out of their comfort zone. Either way, the artist in question today is Lil Yachty, a rapper that has basically become a joke the longer his career’s gone on. However, going into a new genre out of left field isn’t totally new to rap. Childish Gambino jumping into the world of neo-soul with Awaken, My Love! , along with later projects from Mac Miller and Tyler, the Creator having more jazz influences, have proven that turning to a new genre for new ideas has worked out pretty well. Yachty, however, has turned to psychedelic rock in the vein of Tame Impala for this new album, Let’s Start Here. to mark the new chapter of his career. Let’s get into it. Having stuck around with Yachty during the rough patches, I can easily say that Let’s Start Here. is his best ...
Read more

Kendrick Lamar - GNX ALBUM REVIEW

-
Image
Woah, a new review? After this long? Yeah, sure. Why not? I got some plans in the works to keep this active in some form, and I’ll show off some more details in the post after this! What timing for an album to end up bringing this little site back, even if it’s just for a little bit of time. The last post on here was last June, and a lot has happened in my life since then, whether it’s in music or my personal life. Arguably, the biggest moment in music of the year was the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, which exploded just before this summer with “Like That,” a song off of the first of two Future and Metro Boomin’ albums from this year, WE DON’T TRUST YOU . I don’t need to go into just how massive this beef was (and in still is in some ways), but if you need one major takeaway, I’ll say this: One of the biggest hits of the year, regardless of genre, essentially boiled down to Kendrick calling Drake a pedophile for four-and-a-half minutes. “Not Like Us,” a song where one of the m...
Read more

Porter Robinson - Nurture ALBUM REVIEW

-
Image
I wanna just lay in a field of grass, but I’m allergic to pollen :( I’ve always had a very strange relationship with electronic music. The bad music I’ve heard in the genre has been some of the worst music I’ve ever heard, and the good stuff is some of the greatest music I’ve ever heard. For some context, we have artists like The Chainsmokers on one end, and Daft Punk on the other. There are some subgenres in here too that work. Electropop is one of them, being an obvious fusion of pop and electronic music. In the little community of the AOTY website, the users there have been hyped as hell for this Porter Robinson album, Nurture . It’s apparently his first in seven years, and I’ve only heard one single from it, titled “Musician.” While it wasn’t the best electropop song I’ve heard, it’s certainly an interesting sound that I think can work pretty well. So, with how anticipated it is in the AOTY community, I figured I should take a listen and see what all the fuss is about. Let’s get in...
Read more