Date: December 30, 2020
Time of post: 8:30 PM
Quarantine Day: 280
Last Song I Listened To: "evermore" by Taylor Swift, featuring Bon Iver
Last Person I Communicated With: my dad, about serial killers, which my mother declared was "not appropriate dinnertime conversation"
Last Thing I Ate: pork tacos
Last Thing I Read: an article...about serial killers
Current Mood: feeling pretty accomplished and weirdly excited and hopeful about the future
One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: did some grocery shopping and got some "late" Christmas presents
One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: start tomorrow's blog post
One Reason I’m Stressed Today: COVID, politics, the state of our country...take your pick
One Reason I’m Happy Today: I treated myself to three new dresses, and they're super cute!
Dear Apocalypsers,
We made it!! ...To the end of the track-by-track review of evermore anyway! And this one's a doozy. I'm sorry. I just couldn't stop writing. It turns out (unsurprisingly) that I had a lot to say about these last 5 songs, more than I thought I would. So, I should probably let you dive right in. (If you need snacks or a bathroom break, I suggest you take it now...because this is about 8000 words....). Here's everything I think about Tracks 11-15: "cowboy like me," "long story short," "marjorie," "closure," and "evermore (featuring Bon Iver)"!
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| A few first-listen notes on "cowboy like me" and "long story short" |
Track 11: “cowboy like me”
Favorite line(s): “Forever is the sweetest con”
Initial thoughts and feelings:
Taylor Swift is at a point in her career where even songs that aren’t my personal “ride-or-die, Top 10, will-give-my-firstborn-to-see-this-song-live” favorites are still very, very, very good songs/works of art. And that’s kind of how I feel about “cowboy like me.” It’s a whole mood—a smoky bar, cool confidence, catch-a-stranger’s-eye-across-the-room kind of mood—it’s just not my mood. My very good friend (and 2019 ChLA Carol Gay Award Winner) Savannah Winkler said that this song is the “yeehaw ‘Getaway Car’” (see below for more), and I can never un-think that. And, like, “coney island,” I appreciate the heck out of this song without necessarily bopping to it; it’s almost sultry, and it creates such a vivid image. It’s also, like, this unconventional love song, a criminal’s meet-cute if you’re familiar with romcom/fanfic terms. (Actually, can someone make this a movie? Two cons meet in a bar/lounge—maybe they have the same mark/target—and they end up striking up a conversation and falling in love. I’d watch that.)Before I get too far into the lyrics, I want to point out for anyone who doesn’t know that that’s Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons singing backup on this track…which would explain the video interview you did at what looks very much to be the Mumford & Sons studio. (Side note: the way I desperately wanted this to be Joe Alwyn singing with her! Can that happen? Is that an option?)
🔍 | Fans have noticed that it appears that the location where Taylor Swift filmed her @GMA interview this morning appears to be Marcus Mumford from @MumfordAndSons home studio 👀 pic.twitter.com/bFml1u5Il2
— Taylor Swift News (@TSwiftNZ) November 25, 2020
Okay, but the lyrics! There’s
a lot of fun duality and surprises in this song! I especially like how it opens
with “I’m never gonna love again,” and we immediately think, “Oh no this cowboy
broke her heart and she’s swearing off men.” But by the time the song’s over,
we know that she’s fallen in love for real, so the “never gonna love again”
becomes more of a statement that she’s never going to fall for anyone else,
because this love is “the 1” or the “endgame” for her. (Sorry, had to throw
some T. Swift references in there.)
There are a few lyrics
that have been sticking in my brain, too, and I’m still mulling some of them
over. One of those is “And you asked me to dance / But I said, ‘Dancing is a dangerous
game.’” Dancing is a *thing* in Taylor Swift songs. Starting with her first
single, “Tim McGraw,” where we get, “When you think Tim McGraw / I hope you
think my favorite song / The one we danced to all night long / The moon like a
spotlight on the lake,” we get at least one lyric about dancing on every album
except Lover (which is like really, really mind boggling to me; if you
know if/where the word “dance/dancing” appears on Lover, please tell
me!). We also see “dancing” in a lot of breakup songs—“I’m not much for
dancing, but for you I did” in “Last Kiss,” “dancing ‘round the kitchen in the
refrigerator light” in “All Too Well,” “I was nowhere to be found / I hate the
crowds, you know that / Plus I saw you dance with him” in “betty”—which fits really
smoothly with the claim here that “dancing is a dangerous game” (peep my
conspiracy theories for more).
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| This is Savannah! We did a folklore photoshoot in November, so she's a very good and reliable Swiftie friend. |
Okay, finally, I want to
talk about the line “And the old men that I’ve swindled really did believe I
was the one.” Now, while this goes along with the conwoman vibes of the song,
it could also be a tongue-in-cheek reference to Taylor’s dating history and
specifically how the press used to berate her about it. She’s notoriously dated
several older men—like John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Calvin Harris, and Tom
Hiddleston—and none of those relationships worked out, and an insecure white
man writing about pop music might see that as her “swindling” them. It’s not
“Blank Space”-level, but I like to think this is a subtle jab at that rhetoric
around her dating life. Because like the narrator, Taylor’s happy now; what the
headlines say don’t matter to her nearly as much anymore.
Other T. Swift songs it
evokes:
“Getaway Car” (reputation,
2017): As Savannah said, this
song is the “yeehaw ‘Getaway Car.’” I don’t make the rules, but this is
correct. For reference, this song is rumored to be about meeting Tom Hiddleston
while she was dating Calvin Harris. There’s a lot of fan talk on the Internet
(that I honestly don’t have the energy to dig up articles on, because it’s her
personal life, and I honestly don’t care about the rumored dramatics of her
past relationships) that her relationship with Calvin was fizzling long before
they broke up, and a lot of people called her relationship with Tom a publicity
stunt anyway, so that’s something she pokes fun at in “Getaway Car”: “Well, he
was runnin’ after us / I was screamin’ ‘Go, go, go’ / But with 3 of us, honey,
it’s a sideshow / And the circus ain’t a love story /And now we’re both sorry”
and “Shoulda known I’d be the first to leave / Think about the places where you
first met me / In a getaway car / No, they never get far.” So, if you remember
my “And the old men that I’ve swindled” analysis from earlier, this context
about “Getaway Car” should help explain the connection. Both songs feel like
they’re addressing the same kind of situation.
But the real cowboy
connection for me is in the bridge: “We were jet set Bonnie and Clyde.” Now, if
you don’t do the occasional true crime deep dive (are you real??), go learn
about Bonnie and Clyde. They were infamous outlaws, and I’m sure that included some
conning, much like the couple in “cowboy like me.” And the relationship that
the narrator describes falls in line with the romanticized love story of Bonnie
and Clyde. Honestly, I kinda wish “cowboy like me” existed when Don Black and
Ivan Menchall were writing the Bonnie and Clyde musical.
All in all, I think you
can read this song as a metaphor for finding love in the entertainment
industry. Taylor’s found a real-life cowboy like her in Joe Alwyn, someone
who’s in the industry and understands what she’s gone through/is going through.
They’re partners in this relationship, and they understand that sometimes we
all have to fake it (or “con” people) in life and that all we’re really looking
for is someone we don’t feel the need to fake it around. It’s kind of beautiful
and clever in that sense.
My most ridiculous
theory involving this song: So, my first conspiracy theory is about dancing in Taylor Swift’s
music. Like I said, she talks about dancing a lot, but the one place it’s
conspicuously absent is on Lover, which, you know, is probably her most
romantic album to date. So, why? Was it a conscious choice? Did it just happen
that way? I don’t know. But I started thinking about how she says, “Dancing is
a dangerous game” in “cowboy like me,” and I keep having this image of Julia
Roberts as Vivian Ward from Pretty Woman (1990) refusing to kiss the men
because it was “too intimate.” It feels like the narrator might feel the same
way about dancing. All that to say, it’s a stretch, but it’s possible that
there’s no dancing on Lover because that’s the one love that doesn’t
feel dangerous for her. Think about it, and let me know if you want examples,
because this could go on.
Track #12: “long story
short”
Favorite line(s): “Long story short it was a bad time / Long story
short I survived”
Initial thoughts and
feelings: I liked this song the
first time I heard it. It felt like it could have been on 1989, and
that’s a compliment. I’ll admit that I thought it was a little simple the first
time I listened to it, and I still think the chorus could be punchier, but it’s
grown on me the more I think about how it tells her story of the last several
years. (See below for many more details on that.) But my absolute favorite part
of the song are the very last lines: “Long story short it was a bad time / Long
story short I survived.” It just…left me breathless…because sometimes that’s
all you can say about a situation. I know I’ve had moments in my life where, I
can look back on it and say, “Okay, you survived that. It wasn’t pretty. It
wasn’t easy. You didn’t come out of it a new and better and more put together
person…but you survived.” And that’s such a poignant message for 2020. Like, if
we get through this year, that’s enough for now. We don’t have to make 2 albums
or write a book or invent something; if we survive, that’s enough, and it’ll
get better from there. Like “happiness,” I think this song shows a lot of
self-awareness in how the narrator talks about her past and in recognizing some
of her behaviors that weren’t the best for her. I’m especially thinking about
the “clung to the nearest lips” line, which I think we’re meant to interpret
as, “I was just looking for comfort and companionship, and that’s not the best
way to choose a significant other.” The first half of the bridge where she
addresses her younger self is also really indicative of her growth, and I love
to see it. I said it with “peace” on folklore, and I’ll say it about
“long story short”—this song is deeply about her own life in so many ways that
we, as fans, can make educated guesses about but will never fully understand.
Connection to other
songs on folklore & evermore:
“happiness” & “closure”:
When I talked about
“happiness” in Part 2, I mentioned that I felt “closure” was a response to it,
and now I’d like to add that “long story short” and “closure” could go
hand-in-hand. A more general connection is that “happiness” describes a truly terrible
time in someone’s life, as does “long story short,” but the latter reassures us
that it all works out. The narrator survives and finds something good again,
which I really, really think the narrator of “happiness” needs to hear. More
specifically, “closure” references “the sea that you put between you and me”
(which I equate to “the great divide” referenced in “happiness”), and in “long
story short,” the narrator says of her new love, “My waves meet your shore /
ever and evermore.” So the narrator’s finally found someone who they don’t feel
like there’s space/distance between. There’s no great divide in this
relationship. (Side note: I’m really interested by all the water imagery on
this album. Someone write this paper with me.)
Other T. Swift songs it evokes:
Like “coney island” in
Part 2, I think you can connect “long story short” to a lot of her older songs,
and I don’t know if it’s because she’s been revisiting her catalogue while
re-recording or if, like a lot of us, 2020 has just prompted her to think about
her life and career. Anyway, here’s a chronological breakdown of lyrics and the
songs/moments I think the reference:
“I tried to pick my
battles 'til the battle picked me,” the 2009 VMAS—Where the Kanye drama began; Taylor’s “Love
Story” won the Video of the Year VMA over Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring
on It),” and Kanye West hopped up on stage to interrupt Taylor’s acceptance
speech and tell her that Beyonce’s video was better. It was embarrassing for
everyone involved, including poor Beyonce—and the Kanye/Taylor saga began. But
the point is, she didn’t choose this battle; Kanye’s unbelievable ego did.
“The knife cuts both
ways,” “Cruel Summer” (Lover, 2019)—In what could have (should have) been a single, Taylor states, “So
cut the headlights, summer’s a knife / I’m always waiting for you just to cut
to the bone.” While it’s never been confirmed that this is what the song’s
about, “Cruel Summer” could definitely refer, in part, to the summer of 2016
that followed Kanye’s “Famous” music video and the leaked (and spliced) video
of the Taylor/Kanye conversation. It was definitely not a good summer for
Taylor.
“And I fell from the
pedestal / Right down the rabbit hole,” (1989 era, “Wonderland” [1989,
2014], and the 2016 fallout)—A bonus track on 2014’s 1989, “Wonderland” has several very
clear references to Alice in Wonderland, such as 1) the title and 2)
lines like “Fell down a rabbit hole,” “Haven’t you heard what becomes of
curious minds?,” “Didn’t you calm my fears with a Cheshire Cat smile?,” and
“And in the end in Wonderland / We both went mad.” So, it’s pretty easy to see
that “long story short” might be recalling this song, but why? Well, 1989
was a major peak for Taylor’s career. The 1989 era brought her second
Album of the Year (making her the first woman ever to do so); it marked
her move to pop from country, and she shattered records from sales to touring.
You might even say she was on a pedestal. And when the aforementioned Kanye/Kim
drama hit in 2016 (just a few months after 1989 swept the Grammys), her
reputation definitely fell*
*Among people who don’t
have any critical thinking skills
“Pushed from the
precipice,” (1989-era fallout): This lyric, again, just reinforces the earlier “’til the battle
picked me” line, because the drama that caused the fallout wasn’t instigated by
Taylor. It was Kanye and Kim who “pushed” her.
“Actually / I always
felt I must look better in the rearview,” (driving allusions & reference to
her reputation)—Taylor loves a driving
reference. I could literally write a paper on it…and am. But, fun fact, this is
one of the only times that she (or the narrator) isn’t in the car; usually
she’s in the passenger seat; more recently, she’s been driving, and I have a
whole theory (technically it’s a hypothesis—sorry, Dad) on why. More on that
someday. But by saying that she’s in the rearview (mirror), it’s implied that
she’s being left while someone else drives away. Now, you can easily read this
as a breakup, in which case the implication is sarcastic that she must “look
better” when she’s being left because people do it so much. I think you can
also read this as a commentary on how she’s been historically known for her breakup
songs. She’s “better” at writing songs about being left than writing songs
about being in love…which is false, but it’s definitely an opinion that
circulates.
“Missing me / At the
golden gates they once held the keys to,” “Look What You Made Me Do” (reputation,
2017)—In the most epic
comeback of the century, there’s the line, “I don’t like your kingdom keys /
They once belonged to me.” The whole reputation album is a response to
the Kimye drama of 2016 (and also a tribute to Joe, who helped her through it),
so this is, yet again, another song about Kanye West—but also everyone who has
ever been cruel to her. Look what you made her do: write a record-breaking
album. Take that, ya hobos.
“When I dropped my sword
/ I threw it in the bushes, and I knocked on your door,” “Daylight” (Lover, 2019)—In “Daylight” (one of my personal faves, by the
way), there’s the line, “Threw out our cloaks and our daggers, because it’s
morning now / It’s brighter now,” which ends a verse about the couple fighting
(the metaphorical “darkness” before the dawn). Once they stop fighting, they
can see daylight. It’s an interesting callback, because the line in “long story
short” starts a turning point in the song. After this line, the narrator is
more focused on her current love and moving forward with them, which is also a
theme of “Daylight.”
“No more keepin’ score
now / I just keep you warm,” “peace” (folklore, 2020)—I squealed a little when I heard this for the
first time, because just a scant few months ago, I cried over the line “I’m a
fire, and I’ll keep your brittle heart warm / when your cascade ocean wave
blues come” in “peace” (another personal favorite). She’s clearly referencing
that song here, and you can’t convince me otherwise. It’s great because it
shows how “long story short” really is a story in its own way—Taylor’s story,
if you ask me—and that she really is letting go all of the crap in her past.
And, good for her. I’d probably hold onto it forever.
“Past me / I wanna tell
you not to get lost in these petty things / Your nemeses / Will defeat
themselves before you get the chance to swing”—I won’t say that these lines reference any one
thing, but rather everything that I’ve talked about above and more. I don’t
know who Taylor personally considers her nemeses, but I think Kanye West would
have been up there at one point, and I’d definitely say that Scooter Braun is
up there now. (If you’re not caught up on the Scooter Braun/Big Machine/masters
recordings disaster, this is a good article to read.) And, honestly, Present Taylor is right. Both
Kanye and Scooter dug themselves holes early on, and Taylor came out/is coming
out on top. Yes, Kimye caused her some absolutely horrifying emotional trauma
in 2016, but I think she took that and made something good with it. She
made an album that the fans adore; she toured said album and broke records; and, maybe most importantly, she was forced to step back and
reevaluate herself and, yes, her reputation, and she’s made some changes
(mostly to her social media presence) that seem to have taken a lot of stress
off of her—she’s become more private, and I think that’s been so good for her
mental health. And Scooter? Well, the second he refused to give her the chance
to buy back her life’s work, he basically signed a career away, because it’s
caused her to be very vocal about how artists are treated in the music industry
and allowed her to re-record her first 5 (eventually 6) albums, which
will 1) render her original masters basically worthless to Scooter and Big
Machine Records and 2) make her an obscene amount of money from the
sales and rights. So, yeah, long story short, Past Taylor, it’ll be hard, but
it’ll work out.
Track #13:
“marjorie"
Favorite line(s): “Never be so kind you forget to be clever / Never
be so clever you forget to be kind” or “I should've asked you how to be / Asked
you to write it down for me / Should've kept every grocery store receipt / 'Cause
every scrap of you would be taken from me / Watched as you signed your name
Marjorie / All your closets of backlogged dreams / And how you left them all to
me”
Initial thoughts and
feelings:
**You absolutely have to
watch the lyric video for this song. You should probably do it before you even
keep reading. I watched it the night the album dropped, and when I realized
that most people just listened on Spotify, I made it my life’s mission to tell
everyone about the lyric video. But, fair warning, it might (read: will) break
you.**
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| My final thoughts on the final 3 tracks after the first listen-through of evermore |
So, in a weird way, this
song that I don’t relate to right now is the most personal to me, and it’s
because of my favorite lyrics—they literally have kept me up at night before.
“Never be so kind you forget to be clever” is really special to me, because I
do have a tendency to let people take advantage of me. I have a hard time
saying “no.” I overextend myself for the sake of others. I put others’ needs
ahead of my own. And here’s the thing: I’m really, really clever. I know I am,
but I’ve always kind of shelved that in favor of being kind and nice and
well-liked by other people. I don’t know if it’s a Southern thing or something
we’re taught as women or a combination of both, but I’m working on finding that
balance, like the lyrics imply. Those lyrics and the opening lyrics of the next
verse—“Never be so polite that you forget your power / Never wield such power
you forget to be polite”—just feel like these “grandma-isms” that got passed
down in Taylor’s family, and I can’t help but wonder what my grandmothers might
have passed down to me if they had lived longer. And I think you can see Taylor
putting those ideas into practice more and more the older she gets. In her
documentary, Miss Americana, she talks about coming of age in the music
industry, specifically the country music industry, and how they tried to bottle
her as this meek, polite, silly, all-American young girl, and how she felt
“frozen” in that image for a long time. You could even say that she was
so polite that she forgot her power. There was also a lot of criticism about
her a-politicism pre-2016, how she didn’t speak up against Trump then, and how 1989
was a “white feminist” era for her—and there’s a lot of validity in those
statements that we can unpack some time, but I think we’ve seen her grow a
great deal in the last few years and find ways to utilize her power (to the
tune 87.8 million Twitter followers and 142 million Instagram followers) that’s
both polite and assertive.
My other favorite/most emotionally vulnerable line is “Should've kept every grocery store receipt / 'Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me…All your closets of backlogged dreams / And how you left them all to me.” This part hurts me in way I don’t know I can really articulate. In the same way that “I just realized everything I have is gonna someday be gone” in “Never Grow Up” (Speak Now, 2010) gives me an existential crisis, these lines do the same. I’ve always been a sensitive person. Once, as a kid, probably around 8 or so, I put some change from my piggy bank into my advent calendar and told the elves to give it to Santa to help with my presents. (Yes, we had elves that visited us years before Elf on the Shelf was a thing.) I got a very nice note (and my change) the next day telling me that that was very sweet, but Santa already had our gifts ready. I imagine my parents were equally touched and worried about me in that moment. But the point is that I’ve thought more than once about what dreams my parents may have put on hold for me—I know they had started saving for a cruise when my mom found out she was pregnant with me and that they’ve still never been on a cruise, and, yes, that does bother me in ways that it shouldn’t—so the line about “backlogged dreams” makes me feel a lot of things. I’m also sobbing because Marjorie was Taylor’s grandmother (on her mother’s side) who died in 2003, just 3 years before her self-titled album was released. Marjorie was a singer, too—an opera singer—and it breaks my heart that she didn’t live to see everything her granddaughter would do.
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| Left: Taylor Swift in her 2015 music video for "Wildest Dreams" Right: Taylor's grandmother Marjorie |
Some other fun facts
before I make myself cry (more than I already am):
1) Marjorie actually sings on this track. Right
after Taylor sings, “And if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were singing to
me know,” there’s an opera cadenza (? Scale? I don’t know anything about opera
terms, please forgive me), and that’s her grandmother. What’s really fun about
that to me is that, later in the song—right after “If I didn’t know better, I’d
think you were still around” and repeated a couple more times in the outro—there
are violins that mimic her singing*, which to me reads as Aaron Dessner (and
his twin brother Bryce who did the string arrangements) interpreting ways that
we see our deceased loved ones in everyday life. Marjorie’s vocals aren’t used
each time in the music, but her memory is evoked in the orchestral arrangement.
2) “marjorie” is track 13 on evermore, and
“epiphany” is track 13 on folklore. Both tracks are about Taylor’s
grandparents; “marjorie” is about her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Findlay,
and “epiphany” is, in part, about her paternal grandfather, Dean Swift, who
fought at the Battle of Guadalcanal in WWII.
*Note: I listened to
“marjorie” once to find this part, and I cried, so, I’m doing great, thanks.
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| I promise I didn't choose these lyrics as my favorite just because Taylor also loves them. |
Connection to other
songs on folklore & evermore:
“epiphany”: As stated above, track 13 on folklore
references Taylor’s paternal grandfather, Dean, and his service in WWII. In the
Long Pond Studio Sessions concert documentary on Disney+, Taylor talks
about how her grandfather was always private about what he experienced. Her
family didn’t even know he was at the Battle of Guadalcanal until her father
started doing genealogy research. My paternal grandfather was a navigator
during WWII, and my dad says the same thing—that he didn’t talk about it…ever.
I’m the kind of person who wants to talk out all my feelings, so I can’t
imagine the kind of horrors you’d have to face to literally never talk about
it. That’s…a special kind of terrible. It’s also worth noting that 13 has
always been Taylor’s favorite lucky number, so the fact that she gave that spot
to songs about her family is really sweet to me.
Other T. Swift songs it
evokes: While “marjorie” is the
only song about her grandmother, I thought I’d treat this as a
“Taylor-songs-that-give-me-the-same-vibes” category, aka “Songs That I Will
Uncontrollably Sob To As Soon As I Finish Writing This.”
“The Best Day” (Fearless,
2008): Taylor wrote, recorded,
and made the music video for this song as a Christmas gift for her mother,
Andrea (Marjorie’s daughter!). She was going to perform it as part of her
Fearless tour but dropped it from the set list because her mom—who went on tour with her—cried
every time she heard it (much like I do!). I think my favorite lyrics from this
song are “I know you were on my side even when I was wrong / And I love you for
giving me your eyes / For staying back and watching me shine,” because they
remind me of my mom, much like parts of “marjorie” do. “The Best Day”
also includes the line “look now, the sky is cold,” and “marjorie” has the
line, “You loved the amber skies so much,” and I like to think that Taylor had
many amber sky days with her mom and grandma.
“Never Grow Up” (Speak
Now, 2010): I referenced this song
earlier, but, uh, yeah, it really does make me cry. I thought about the lines,
“So here I am in my new apartment / In a big city, they just dropped me off” an
unhealthy amount when I moved to Manhattan. But I think the lyrics that best
capture the tone of “marjorie” is the bridge: “Take pictures in your mind of
your childhood room / Memorize what it sounded like when your dad gets home / Remember
the footsteps, remember the words said / And all your little brother's favorite
songs / I just realized everything I have is someday gonna be gone.” This
bridge gives me an existential crisis every time, because I always frantically
try to remember all those things. What did my childhood room look like? (It
was literally crushed in the tornado, so I’ll never be that person who comes
home to their childhood room as an adult visiting for holidays.) What did it
sound like when my dad got home? (Did our dogs bark? I can’t remember. I
remember the screen door—now long gone—used to make a smacking sound before the
front door opened because the screen was loose.) And, honestly, what are my
little brother’s favorite songs? I should probably ask, because I’m sure
they’ve changed. Is he still into ska music? (Update: ). Like I said, this song
is a full-on existential crisis in the same way that “Should've kept every
grocery store receipt / 'Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me” is a
full-on existential crisis. They both make me want to go hug my family and
force them to take a picture with me and just desperately cling to the
moment…which, I guess isn’t a terrible thing, but the whole “looming
knowledge of death and change” thing isn’t comforting to me at all.
“Soon You’ll Get Better”
(Lover, 2019): I’m
going to be real with you, Internet Blog. I skip this song every time except
for my cross-country Alabama-to-Kansas drives, because it is too damn sad to
listen to on my way to Wal-Mart. I cannot be crying in a Wal-Mart parking lot
to a Taylor Swift song on a random Tuesday afternoon. “Soon You’ll Get Better”
is about Andrea’s battle with cancer. She was first diagnosed with breast
cancer in 2015, and it returned in 2019. In January 2020, Taylor gave an
interview with Variety (it’s a very, very good read—check it out here)
and confirmed that the doctors had also discovered a brain tumor. I feel very lucky and grateful
to not be able to relate to that specifically, but my dad has been diagnosed
with Stage 4 kidney failure and has been on at-home dialysis for almost 2 years
now, so I know what it’s like to have a parent with fragile health. Even when
their numbers are good, you’re worried about when they won’t be—and if they’re
“too good” for “too long,” you actually start to get suspicious, which I know
is weird, but I don’t know; I still feel it. *You wonder what they’ll be around
to see and what they’ll miss out on—weddings, grandchildren, PhDs—and you
almost wish you could fast-track your life so they could be there for it all,
and you’re so mad that some things aren’t in your control to even think about
fast-tracking. So, needless to say, I almost never listen to “Soon You’ll Get
Better,” because it’s a little too much.
*Note: This is where I
started crying, can you tell?
Track #14: “closure”
Favorite line(s): “Don’t treat me like some kind of situation that
needs to be handled”
Initial thoughts and
feelings: This is not my favorite
song on the album, but I will fight for it, because I think it does some things
absolutely brilliantly. And, I might be wrong, but I feel like this is a song
that won’t jive with a lot of people, mostly because of the very experimental
track, so, if you feel that way, please let me try to talk you out of it. I’ll
admit the “robo-synth meets Tarzan’s ‘Trashing the Camp’” track is a bit
shocking, especially coming out of the sob-fest that is “marjorie,” but I love
how fitting it actually is for the song. (If you remember from the Long Pond
Studio Sessions, when Taylor and Aaron Dessner are talking about
“epiphany,” he mentions that Taylor had asked him to send her everything he was
working on, even the “weird stuff,” and I’d bet money that the track for
“closure” was one of those weird ones.) In fact, just about every
complaint you could have about this song, I think, can be justified in terms of
the theme of the song. Taylor is doing this thing that’s become popular in
music, which is throwing the audience for a loop. Like Kacey Musgraves’ “SpaceCowboy” isn’t about a ranch hand in outer space, “happiness” isn’t happy, and
“closure” isn’t about getting closure. From the woman who inspired my most
hopeless romantic dreams with “Love Story,” “You Belong with Me,” and
“Enchanted,” we now get a major dose of realism: we don’t always get closure
from people who have hurt us, and we have to figure out how to be okay with
that. Because, I think, if we can’t figure that out, then they still have power
over us and they’re still hurting us. And they don’t get to do that.
I really kind of love
this hot take from Taylor, and the disjointed, electro track mixed with the
soft piano I think perfectly represents the feeling of a) finding calm within
the turmoil of being approached by an ex and b) the stormy feelings that clash
when you’re looking for/hoping for closure from someone but knowing you won’t
get it. The music also brings out the tension in the song. This isn’t a song
about finding peace without getting the closure you want from someone; it’s a
little gritty and a little angry and little sassy—all very real feelings in
this kind of situation. I mean, you can’t tell me that “Yes, I got your letter
/ Yes, I’m doing better” isn’t twinged with a little exasperation. Like, “I’m
over you. Please stay out of my life, and screw your formalities.” And my favorite lyric—“Don’t treat me like
some situation that needs to be handled”—strikes a personal chord. When I’m
angry about something, don’t tell me to calm down (spoiler alert: I won’t), and
when talking to me, treat me like a person, not an item on a to-do list. And I
feel like that’s what this line is saying: “I am a person with valid feelings,
and I have a right to be mad at you, so don’t try to mend this just because
it’s ‘the right thing to do.’ Do it because you mean it, and if you don’t, then
no thanks.”
Now, I can also see some
people being upset about how the song ends. In reality, it doesn’t feel like it
says much, and then it just kind of fades out before anything really “hits,”
per say. It might be a coincidence, but “closure” is also the shortest song on
the album, coming in at 3:00 exactly (5 seconds shorter than “gold rush”). And
I kind of think there’s a reason for that; the story is over, but not in the
way they probably planned, and it’s not a neat ending tied up with a bow,
because there’s no closure. So the song just kind of ends, just like that
relationship did, and it kind of leaves you wanting more…just like that
relationship did.
Long story short (see
what I did there?), I think “closure” is a really smart song. Fight me on it.
Connection to other
songs on folklore & evermore:
“happiness”: Like I said in Part 2, I am convinced that
“closure” is a response to “happiness.” Initially that came from the parallels
between he lines, “across our great divide” and “reaching out across the sea
that you put between you and me,” but I have more evidence! Like I say above,
the line “Yes, I’m doing better” seems to be a response to the stereotypical
greeting, “I hope you’re doing well” (which, coming from an ex, would be really
infuriating, I think). That feeling corresponds really well with the line from
“happiness” “And I pulled your body into mine every goddamn night / Now I get
fake niceties.” The word “fake” is also repeated in “closure” in the line “But
it’s fake / And oh so unnecessary.” I am very into the idea of these two songs
being part of the “‘unhappily ever after’ anthology of marriages” that she
references in her album booklet letter.
“the 1”: Remember when we all clicked “play” on folklore
for the first time and were greeted with the liens “I’m doing good / I’m on
some new shit”? I cheered in my bedroom. Well, while “the 1” is a lot lighter
than “closure,” I like to think that the sentiments of “the 1” (especially
those opening lyrics) are embedded in the lyric “Yes, I’m doing better.” Both
songs are about moving on, and what we see is that that process takes on a lot
of different forms.
Track #15: “evermore ft.
Bon Iver”
Favorite line(s): “I swear (Is there a line that we can just go
cross?) / You were there / And I was catching my breath / Floors of a cabin
creaking under my step / And I couldn’t be sure / I had a feeling so peculiar /
That this pain wouldn’t be for / Evermore”
Initial thoughts and
feelings: I was almost very mad at
this song. The whole time I was listening to it and she kept repeating “I had a
feeling so peculiar that this pain would be for evermore,” I was thinking, “No.
No. Don’t end your album on this note. It’s too sad.” But then in the last
verse and chorus, she flipped it, and I freaked out. I was so glad that we got
a miniscule bit of hope. Because, as sad as this album is, it’s also hopeful:
“tolerate it” says, “I deserve better”; “happiness” says, “Things will be good
again”; “long story short” says, “I’ve survived hard things”; “marjorie” says,
“Memories keep you alive”; “closure” says, “I can be okay without them”—so when
I say I would have absolutely lost my mind (and not in an excited way) if her
closing track didn’t have some of that same bittersweetness to it, I mean it.
But, thankfully, Taylor pulled the old bait-and-switch on me, and I’ve never
been happier to be bamboozled. I’m very ready to hear the bonus tracks now!
With “evermore,” it
should also be noted that Bon Iver is now only the second signer that Taylor
has collaborated with twice, the other being Ed Sheeran (for “Everything HasChanged” on Red [2012] and “End Game” on reputation [2017]). And
while I didn’t/don’t obsessively love “exile” the way a lot of Twitter does, I
do very much love “evermore.” I love that Joe wrote and plays the piano part on
the recording; I love the imagery (like, I feel chilly listening to it);
I love the message. I think it’s beautiful.
Now, I have to give some
credit to Savannah Winkler again. And by “credit,” I mean “blame,” because what
I’m about to tell you may ruin your life like it did mine, and I don’t want to
be responsible for that. But when Savannah and I were talking about this song,
she mentioned that it could be interpreted as being about the pandemic. This
isn’t out of the realm of possibility, because “epiphany” on folklore is
clearly, in part, about the COVID-19 pandemic. So, you’re probably wondering
what prompted these thoughts.
 |
| It's her fault! ^^^ |
Well, the first clue
could be the months” “Gray November / I’ve been down since July” and “Hey December
/ Guess I’m feeling unmoored.” July is the month that Taylor dropped folklore,
and she wrote of that album, “n isolation my imagination has run wild and this
album is the result, a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a
stream of consciousness. Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy,
history, and memory.” folklore, and, by extension, evermore, have
been products of a pretty “down” time in life. And, yeah, November was gray.
There’s no other way to describe it. The nerves of the election, the knowledge
that even though Biden won the fight was far from over, missing holidays with loved
ones, the ever-increasing death toll because of out incompetent government—pretty
gray. Which led to a rather unmoored December. “Unmoored” is another sailing
term (I really wanna think about the water imagery on this album more) which
effectively means “lost.” When a ship comes unmoored, it basically gets untied and
is just floating; so applying that feeling to a person basically describes 2020…at
least for most of us.
You could also think
about the lines “And I was catching my breath / Staring out an open window /
Catching my death” as being about the airborne, respiratory, COVID-19 virus.
That’s all I’ll say about that.
I also think that the
line “I rewind the tape but all it does is pause / On the very moment all was
lost” could mean something different to everyone. For me, “the moment all was
lost” was March 12, 2020. It was my Spring Break. I was in Lincoln, NE visiting
my friend Meg, and it all hit. I was getting texts and emails about “extending”
K-State’s Spring Break. I was rearranging my Master’s defense that was
scheduled for Monday the 15th. When I got to Manhattan on the 14th,
I officially started my quarantining/isolating/social distancing, and that’s
the date I count my “Quarantine Day” from for these entries. Years from now, I’ll
still think about March 12th as the day it all “started” (or “ended,”
maybe).
And finally, the line “I
had a feeling so peculiar / That this pain would be for evermore” is just a
very honest description of a place I think we’ve all been in at some point this
year, not knowing if or when this will all end or how we’ll get through it or
what it will cost.
So, yeah. Feel free to
interpret this song as being about a relationship and healing from past
heartbreak…or to think about it as a song about collective healing from an
international tragedy.
Also, side note: The day
this album was announced, I had a Zoom rehearsal for a reading I was
participating in for our department (Zoom) Christmas party. (We were reading
excerpts from The Importance of Being Earnest, and I was reading for Miss
Prism, if you were curious.) And do you know what word I had to say??? My least
favorite word in the English language: PECULIAR!! So I’m already thinking about
how this word gets tangled up in my mouth every time, and then Taylor goes and
features it in a song! So I guess I’ll figure it out, even if I pronounce
it “peh-cue-lee-er” for evermore 😉
 |
| Actual footage of me trying to say "peculiar" |
Connection to other songs
on folklore & evermore:
“willow”: The first lyric in “willow” is “I’m like the
water when your ship rolled in that night / Rough on the surface, but you cut
through like a knife,” and then Taylor comes in with more water/ship imagery in “evermore”: “Guess I’m
feeling unmoored” and “I’m on waves, out being tossed.” So I love that the album
is bookended like that—and, if you dig back through these posts, you’ll find a
lot more water references, too!
“gold rush”: Like I mentioned way back in Part 1 of this series, I think the lines “I see myself padding across your wooden floors” and “Floors of a cabin creaking under my step” are evocative of each other; “gold rush” is all about talking yourself out of a crush and dousing those flames before they can burn (hurt) you, and “evermore” is knowing that you’ve been burned before but allowing yourself to heal and move forward. “gold rush” feels warmer, with its references to warm colors like gold, rose, and red and phrases like “my face in a red flush” and “rose blush,” and “evermore” is cooler with its references to “wildest winter” and the winter months of November and December. Plus, the musical tracks are different; “gold rush” is predominantly more upbeat, whereas “evermore” has a pretty somber piano track—thanks, Jack Antanoff and Joe Alwyn, respectively! But, I still think these songs complement each other.
Other T. Swift songs it
evokes:
“I Wish You Would” (1989,
2014): Full disclosure, this is
one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs, and I think it’s wildly underrated, but
my favorite part of the song is when she says, “I wish we could go back / And
remember what we were fighting for / I wish you knew that / I miss you too much
to be bad anymore,” and that parallels so nicely to “Can’t remember / What I used
to fight for” in “evermore.” And both those lyrics break my heart, because
there’s something so demoralizing about losing that “fight”, and, if you’re
thinking about a relationship, losing that desire to fight for and with
someone else. So, honestly, “I Wish You Would” might actually be sadder
than “evermore” if you break down the lyrics, because at least “evermore” is
vaguely hopeful; “I Wish You Would” is just about regret and wishing things were
different.
Can we talk about that
little Justin Vernon line “Is there a line that we can just go cross?” Yes, we
can, because Taylor talks about lines and crossing lines in several other
songs! (Just FYI, I made a Word doc of all her lyrics just so I could use the
search function to find said songs.) I only pulled the songs that use “line” in
reference to boundaries or communication, not literal lines (but there are a
few of those, too!).
“The Outside” (Taylor
Swift, 2006): “I didn’t know what I
would find / When I went lookin’ for a reason/ I know / I didn’t read between
the lines”
“Forever & Always” (Fearless,
2008): “Was I out of line? /
Did I say something way too honest / Made you run and hide / Like a scared
little boy?”
“Dear John” (Speak
Now, 2010): “You are an expert at
sorry / And keeping lines blurry”
“Haunted” (Speak Now,
2010): “You and I walk a
fragile line / I have known it all this time / But I never thought I’d live to
see it break”
“Girl At Home” (Red, 2012):
“I don’t even know her /
But I feel a responsibility to do what’s upstanding and right / It’s kinda like
a code, yeah / And you’ve been getting closer and closer and crossing so many lines”
“Don’t Blame Me” (reputation,
2017): “For you, I would cross
the line / I would waste my time”
“Daylight” (Lover, 2019):
“There are so many lines
that I’ve crossed unforgiven / I’ll tell you the truth, but never goodbye”
“exile” (folklore,
2020): “All this time / We
always walked a very thin line”
What does all this mean?
I don’t really know. You could write a whole paper just on this idea probably.
(Filing that idea away for later.) Does he want to cross a line from friends to
something more? Is he asking if there’s a way to skip all the tough parts and
just get to the place where things are good again? Is he asking her to cross
one of her moral lines for him? I really like the use of “we,” because that
implies that they would do it together. Is crossing said line really such a
good idea if we look at her catalogue? I don’t know! How will this
relationship end? I don’t know! We don’t know! They don’t
know!! Will crossing that line be worth it in the end? No one knows…and
maybe that’s the point. The beauty of the open-endedness is that you really don’t
know where everything goes from this point. It could be anything. It could be
so good.
So, if you’re reading
this and have made it through the previous 2 posts—wow! Thank you! I’m so
impressed, because I straight up rambled in these entries. But I’m not sorry. It
was so much fun to sit and think about all these songs and Taylor’s whole
career, especially at the end of this very weird year that has kind of been
made for reminiscing. I hope you've been inspired to go listen to her albums--new or old--or maybe to just go listen to some of your favorite artists a little more closely. And if you ever want to talk more about Taylor Swift, you
know where to find me! You know I’ll be talking about her for…well, you know.
Ever and evermore,
Katie
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