Long story short, Evermore should be remembered as Taylor Swift’s magnum opus.
The singer-songwriter released her ninth studio album on Dec. 11, 2020, less than five months after the critically acclaimed Folklore. Labeled by Swift as a “sister record” to its predecessor, Evermore is just that: a free-wheeling, more unhinged counterpart to Folklore’s subdued wistfulness. As a second act, it was also destined to live in Folklore’s shadow — especially after the latter took home Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards.
Revisiting the 15-track LP on its fifth anniversary, the forgotten child of Swift’s discography contains some of her strongest songwriting and most immersive soundscapes, acting as a portal to a wintry holiday house in the mountains. Above all, its thematic cohesion gives the album a timeless quality — though its message felt particularly poignant in the midst of quarantine.
The thesis of Evermore lies in the record’s final moments, in its title track featuring Bon Iver. Swift sings over a somber piano sequence, “I had a feeling so peculiar/That this pain wouldn’t be for/Evermore.” In the context of the song, the last verse acts as a cathartic twist to melancholic “gray Novembers” and Decembers “feeling unmoored.”
To grasp the impact of the closing lines on the record as a whole, consider the heartbreaking stories she sings about in the album: a woman who rejects a proposal because she feels unfit to be a bride (“Champagne Problems”); a wife in a loveless marriage who sticks around hoping for her spouse’s approval (“Tolerate It”); the end of a seven-year relationship (“Happiness”).
All deal with a suffocating pain that feels like it will last a lifetime. These situations are inescapable because “she’s f—– in the head,” she sings on “Champagne Problems,” or because she chooses to “sit and watch” in “Tolerate It.”
Taylor Swift/Republic Records
Even in entirely fictionalized songs, Swift grapples with different kinds of permanence, such as a recurring hometown hookup with a childhood sweetheart in “‘Tis the Damn Season,” the eternal yearning for a lover who left you behind in “Dorothea” or an unquenchable thirst for vengeance in “No Body, No Crime.”
She spends the majority of the album despairing over being stuck in never-ending cycles and unable to move forward. Near the end of its one-hour runtime, however, she begins to disassemble that narrative.
“Forever is the sweetest con,” Swift croons in track 11, “Cowboy Like Me,” a twangy country ballad about two lovers who end up together despite their checkered pasts.
From then on, Evermore becomes more future-facing. She details how love helped her put a bad time behind her (“Long Story Short”), reckons with how she carries on her grandmother’s legacy (“Marjorie”) and moves on from a long-held grudge (“Closure”).
The parting words of the closing track, then, serve a more significant purpose. They are her reminder that the pain inflicted on you, by yourself or by others, does not have to last forever. What does endure is the life you create for yourself — what and who you choose to hold onto.
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When Swift released Evermore, we were eight months into the Covid-19 pandemic, stuck at home and, in many ways, fractured versions of ourselves.
While Folklore offered an escape from the chaos with its appeal to nostalgia, memory and the past, its sister album asked us to reckon with our inner lives and look forward. Five years out, it’s still not too late to take her hand and wreck your plans.
