The Folklore Era · 2020
folklore.
A surprise album, written in isolation. Cardigans and cabin windows. The era Taylor stopped performing pop and started telling stories.
A surprise album, written in isolation. Cardigans and cabin windows. The era Taylor stopped performing pop and started telling stories.
Released July 24, 2020 with less than 24 hours of warning. No singles, no rollout, no radio campaign — just sixteen tracks that arrived in the middle of a pandemic and rearranged what a Taylor Swift album could be.
Recorded remotely with Aaron Dessner of The National and longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, folklore traded stadium pop for whispered indie folk. It went on to win Album of the Year at the 63rd Grammys — her third.
Hand-knit, oversized, slightly oversold. The cardigan became a literal merch object and a metaphor — for being old, but cherished. It sold out in minutes.
Black-and-white photography. A piano in the woods. Mist, moss, and Hudson Valley pines. The visual language abandoned glamour for solitude and soft focus.
For the first time, Taylor wrote characters who weren't her. Betty, James, and August — a teenage love triangle threaded across three songs — became the album's fictional heart.
In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result.