To preface: I am not a Taylor Swift stan. Prior to moving in with my wife, I hadn’t heard any of her albums the whole way through and was only truly familiar with the songs of hers that played on the stereo loop at my first retail job or the ones that were memes on tumblr. Said wife enjoys Taylor Swift pretty unironically, albeit with caveats (both for songs and for ways that said musician has behaved or not behaved), and therefore I’ve since become familiar with Reputation, Lover, and now Folklore.
It probably goes without saying that Folklore is my favorite of the three. This isn’t one of those “oh this album is more serious and not bubblegum, pop music bad” takes. Some of the TSwift songs I like best are deeply bubblegum (“Paper Rings” comes to mind, I think that song is absolutely adorable; drift partner has told me that this is actually a minority opinion in TSwift fandom, but whatever, it’s what I think) and I have no problem with bubblegum or with any pop music. I like plenty of pop music. I just also gravitate especially to things with indie/folk-y/weird influences.
Upon first hearing Folklore, I immediately started getting into “this reminds me of _” thoughts. That’s one of the ways I relate to music, just in general, but I wanted to actually write a piece about it for this album because I kind of doubt that a lot of the things it reminds me of are going to be the things that other people who’ve written similar articles are reminded of. That’s really just a guess, because some of the stuff on here isn’t exactly obscure, but I don’t know if everyone would draw the same connections that I did.
Full story here.