Taylor Swift, just five months after releasing Folklore, has dropped yet another surprise album. Evermore is her ninth studio album, which was released on Friday with about 12 hours’ notice. She’s decided to release a whole new collection of 17 songs as a sequel to her outstanding Folklore, unleashing it unto the world with as little warning as the last one. Evermore may be its own album, but it’s also very much an extension of Folklore – a “sister record,” as Swift calls it.
She works again with producers Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, and although Folklore’s moody, the “indie”-inspired sound is still the dominant feature of Evermore, there’s room for more variety and experimentation this time around. I was a huge fan of Folklore, and Swift shows us there was more chapters in her storytelling to explore. If Swift seems hesitant to give her stories happy endings, or endings in general, it may be because she’s still figuring out her own next chapter right on the page.
Evermore is out now.
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