#( i come back stronger than a nineties trend ‣ willow. ) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

catty-words · 1 year

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@continuallyunexpected babygirl, i have too many thoughts on evermore (2020) to fit in my brain, but bless you for asking:

- enchanted by the way the album feels cohesive because of the way it’s fifteen songs reflecting on selves and people lost to time that all evoke wintry sparseness in both the music and lyrics

- relatedly, i got into this album at exactly the right time. it complements the liminal space feel of the week between christmas and new years and i was in exactly the right headspace to be utterly decimated by its interest in the feminine urge to callously move through time with little regard for the people who fall victim to you being so goddamn occupied with the narratives you’re constructing in your head

“willow”

- originally found the refrain of take my hand, wreck my plans, that’s my man annoying and undeserving of their hype but you know what? the rhythm of it wins i understand now that this is a brainworm from which i cannot escape

- i will Not come around on i come back stronger than a nineties trend though. i just won’t.

- verse three goes so fucking hard oh my godddd

- the underlying sultriness just works, man i dunno what to tell you except my hips love this song

“champagne problems”

- the diction of each repetition of champagne problems contains such an understated bitterness that is very sexy of the narrator considering she just left a dude mid-wedding, her being like ‘your problems are not that deep ok? grow up.’ is HOT. ruthless and HOT.

- and the flipping of the script to the narrator being the one who has not-so-deep problems they have to grow up about is just good writing. which is also hot.

“gold rush”

- this song often makes me think about you!! so, an honest answer to the question “what are your thoughts on evermore?” is “you, bestie” 😘

- the way this song is an Experience, though. like, the percussion and the bass et al make you feel your own anticipation-sick heartbeat and the lyrics of the chorus tumble down down down into the feeling they’re describing and “gold rush” is falling in love i will not elaborate further

“‘tis the damn season”

- in a bit of a love affair with this song right now it’s the latest to mash the 'think about d/b’ button in my brain and i’m feeling very

about it, y’know?

- ooohhoohoo the lyrics if i wanted to know who you were hanging with / while i was gone, i would have asked you / it’s the kind of cold fogs up windshield glass are a prime example of the wintry sparseness and the feminine urge to live up the ass of your own perspective and i feel very normal about them as a result!

- something about the instrumentation of the chorus makes me feel like i’m standing in the gently falling snow. which?? that’s witchcraft

“tolerate it”

- it’s a well-constructed story powerfully and emotionally evoked through music but my primary reaction to it is always something along the lines of: girl, get help fr fr

“no body, no crime”

- 👏 GASLIGHT 👏 GIRLBOSS 👏

- the way she thinks i did it, but she just can’t prove it hits!!! that’s it, that’s my whole thought!

- at first glance, it might seem that this self-contained murder ballad is a bit of a detour for the album, but i’d argue that the narrative is cold and brutal in such a way that fits right in. “champagne problems” and “‘tis the damn season” and “ivy” and especially “long story short” all feature narrators who are self-involved, painfully aware of that fact, and never stop themselves repeating their harmful patterns. gaslighting girlbosses the lot of them. 😍

“happiness”

- letting go of something that treated you well enough but you’ve outgrown, being wistful for change but also for the past... this song is so thematically on point i find myself needing to stare into the void about it

“dorothea”

- another wistful exploration of bygone relationships and whole eras of life. theme once again on point.

“coney island”

- i totally feel like i’m walking through an abandoned theme park in the dead of january listening to this song. i taste the ocean, or perhaps my own tears,,,

- obsessed with the lyric sorry for not making you my centerfold for the way it captures so succinctly the downfall of the romantic relationships on this album, makes my brain buzz

“ivy”

- this pop-country ballad simply is a jam

- why is the rhyme scheme of oh, goddamn / my pain fits in the palm of your freezin hand so fucking satisfying?? i wanna bite down on it

- also, the palm of your freezing hand image/sensation is so simple, yet i find it to be one of the most striking lyrical evocations of winter on the album

“cowboy like me”

- i really enjoy the way this one turns the ‘end of an era’ motif on its head. in most of the other songs on the album with similar interests - “champagne problems”, “tolerate it”, “happiness”, “coney island”, “marjorie” - a relationship is coming to an end and the narrator has to grapple with how that changes them. in “cowboy like me”, a relationship starting is the change that requires reflection on what’s being lost and i think that’s neat!

“long story short”

- this song offers a meta-perspective on the whole album and i have it between my teeth and i’m gonna grrhgrhhrhhhgrhhhgrhj

- the whole chorus fucking. it offers a birds-eye view of the cycle we’ve been seeing different facets of for eleven songs now!!

- relatedly, the line i always felt i must look better in the rear view shines a spotlight on why the speaker stays trapped in this particular cycle and i am unwell about it!!!

- looking at the song through this lens, the CHEEK of now i’m all about you!! (for how long, taylor? yeah, that’s what i thought, see you in the review, babe!!!)

- in any case, i find it delightful that even the album’s meta-narrative contains a flipped-script moment that’s powerful as all hell. long story short, i survived indeed!

“marjorie”

- it really gets to me that in the outpouring of the bridge, the speaker says i should’ve asked you questions / i should’ve asked you how to be in such a panic, yet the verses are proof that the speaker picked up on marjorie’s advice all the same!! heart-wrenching.

“closure”

- the lounge piano layered over the static gives the song a disjointedness that really works for me and somehow perfectly captures the chaotic emotional state of being suspended between letting something go (a relationship, a year of your life) and still being stuck with that something a little while longer. i.e. the perfect penultimate track to this album

- the petty delivery of it wasn’t right, the way it all went down / looks like you know that now delights and amuses

“evermore”

- album closers to sink into a fit of despair to!!! because this is the perfect album to sink into a fit of despair to and this closer is the perfect concluding statement for its album!!!!!

- truly, the way this song ends with the faintest whiff of rebirth yet is still melancholy the whole way through... name a better love letter to winter. you can’t do it. ❄️

#continuallyunexpected #replies #evermore (2020)#taylor swift

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olivieblake · 3 years

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I woke up at 5am, saw these in my inbox, and just started cackling to myself okay here are my thoughts (and I will also address these individually)

okay so this album is folklore but More Of It

there’s this line from a francesca lia block book I read as a kid:

“If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model with collagen-puffed lips and silicone-inflated breasts, a woman in a magenta convertible with heart-shaped sunglasses and cotton candy hair; if Los Angeles is this woman, then the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister. The teenybopper sister snaps bug stretchy pink bubbles over her tongue and checks her lipgloss in the rearview mirror, . . . Teeny plays the radio too loud and bites her nails, wondering if the glitter polish will poison her.”

this is obviously not perfectly applicable to the situation at hand but this is what popped into my head while I was listening, which is that evermore is folklore’s little sister and folklore is cooler and better/has stronger individual tracks but evermore is definitely welcome to come along and hang out (it’s also kinda like... folklore with winter vibes). I’m definitely not mad at getting more of the same!!! but if it were me I’d have been like “hey guys this is folklore part II: 2 folksy 2 loresome” or something like that, because while there are some experiments here in terms of sound, I don’t think it will ever be considered as a standalone work without comparison to folklore

I have tickets to loverfest west which has obviously been delayed, and now I’m like what concert am I even going to attend?? I’m down to go to a folklore/evermore concert OR a lover/past works concert but?? not both?? the atmosphere would be very confusing

which is topical because to the first anon who thinks taylor is leaving the music industry: I disagree and I know you’re probably getting that impression based on her saying she doesn’t know what she’s doing next, but to me that just meant more along the lines of what ts era we’re in or what she’s going to perform next or how she’s going to promote three untoured albums or what she’ll perform at her next tour. I think she made it quite clear music is her primary love, so I don’t think she’s going anywhere. she did say planning her sets and stuff is a separate creative energy that she hasn’t even begun to consider yet, so I personally think that’s what she meant—since yeah, some of us have tickets to a concert where we don’t even know what will be played

if anything, I think this album is further proof that songwriting is the love of her life and she’s not especially gearing up for anything in particular in terms of her career by releasing it; she just has time on her hands that she wouldn’t normally have had due to tours and promotion, so now she’s doing what she loves without much concern for its profitability (although I assume folklore proved there isn’t much concern to be had as far as profits)

my favorite song BY FAR is “’tis the damn season,” which initially reminded me of cecily and porter from Saints and Liars (one of the stories in The Answer You Are Looking For is Yes) but the third anon is right, by the time I was almost done with my first listen I was like oh shit this is totally Never-Blink! I can’t unsee that now and also i now want to go back and read my own damn story

other songs I enjoy are “willow,” “gold rush” (I love jack antonoff, any time I look to see who co-wrote the song and it’s him I’m like I frickin knew it)

“tolerate it” has really standout lyrics I think, as does “marjorie”

I enjoy “long story short” a lot because it’s a welcome break after songs that are pretty but sort of difficult to distinguish from each other

“ivy” initially kind of reminded me of Lover from Draught of Living Death, but I’d have to listen again since it’s one of the songs that keeps mixing with the others in my head

I think “no body no crime” is really fun although I sort of wish she went a little harder, maybe brought on the dixie chicks or something? ALSO if I were still in an a cappella group I would mash-up “no body no crime” and “should’ve said no” and it would be GREAT ugh I hope somebody does that like, asap. but I’m happy she collaborated with women and that the result is we killed a man! 🥳

I do NOT like “coney island.” I’m just really not into the national and I don’t think their voices blend very well (I also don’t think taylor’s voice is as compelling when she’s in that lower register) and I was glad bon iver sang in falsetto because I was kind of bracing for another low disruption and I didn’t want it on a track as delicate as “evermore”

@junipernott it’s so funny you say that because as I was listening to it I was like this sounds exactly like something I would write—I obviously write a lot of heists/con artists, both in books and fics (Prospero from Lovely Tangled Vices comes to mind) but then I couldn’t think of anything that exactly fit the parameters of the song, so now I’m like WELL looks like I’ll have to write something then!

overall I think folklore is the stronger album; a lot of the standout pieces on both albums are tay’s more personal songs and evermore is predominantly meandering fiction, so to me it’s less remarkable as a whole rather than simply proof that she’s very good at this. that being said I’ll probably combine the albums into one playlist and listen to them together henceforth, so I’m definitely not mad about it

Iong story STILL LONG: i like it a lot, it’s a vibe and an atmosphere and living in it is great

but also don’t overlook the fact that britney spears and the backstreet boys have a collab that came out today because okay, TALK ABOUT COMING BACK STRONGER THAN A NINETIES TREND

#taylor swift conspiracy theories #saints and liars #the answer you are looking for is yes #lovely tangled vices #never-blink #lover #draught of living death

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