Who among you reading this is not aware of the fact that I have been both over the moon and emotionally hit with a semi-truck in the last few days? Taylor Swift announced on Thursday she was dropping TS8 at midnight. It was a total surprise (even to me). Taylor is basically saving 2020 with this album and it has been on repeat for me since it came out. folklore is really the only thing I want to talk about with my friends and I honestly look and sound like a madwoman (ha) when I try to explain every little thing about this album. I narrowed down 13 things you may not know about this album in this post below. Hope you learn something and don’t forget to stream folklore.
- Who Aaron Dessner is: Dessner is from the Alt-rock band The National. He helped Taylor co-write and produce 11 of the 16 songs. Taylor has been a long time fan of his band and approached him in late April to work on this secret album. You can learn more about him here.
- Who William Bowery is: In Taylor’s Instagram post, she said she worked with a singer-songwriter “William Bowery” on two songs. Only problem is, no one knows who this William Bowery is! He doesn’t actually exist! There are quite a few guesses to who this is a pseudonym for, but most people think it is her boyfriend of almost 4 years, Joe Alwyn. Taylor has been a fan of pseudonyms in the past (RIP Nils Sjoberg) and more recently, Jack Leopard’s and the Dolphin Club, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Joe helped write on this album. Joe’s great-grandfather’s name is William and the couple is believed to have attended a Kings of Leon concert back in 2016 at the Bowery Hotel in NYC. Who ever this guy is, he co-wrote “exile” and “betty”.
- Jack’s favorite songs: Before the album was released, Jack Antonoff (who has worked with Taylor on 1989, reputation and Lover) said in a tweet that his favorite songs he’s every worked on with Taylor are “August and “My Tears Ricochet”. MTR is also the only self-written song on the album and the first song she wrote for this album.
- Working with Bon Iver: How many Swifties had to look up who Bon Iver is?? Be honest… Bon Iver is a band, but the guy who sings on this track with Taylor is Justin Vernon and he’s a good friend of Aaron Dessner. While Dessner and Taylor were working on the song ‘exile’, he thought to send it to Veron and it took off from there.
- How Secretive It Was: On her Youtube Live Chat before the album release, the entire album was recorded remotely and socially distanced. Even those who worked on the album with her didn’t really know what the final product would be. In some cases, they didn’t even know what they were creating was for Taylor. She also didn’t tell any of her friends or her management until right before her Instagram announcement. Taylor said she wrote most of the songs for this album after late April. So while the rest of us were baking bread and binging Netflix, Taylor made an entire secret album. “There was no outside influence at all,” Dessner said. “In fact, nobody knew, including her label, until hours before it was launched. For someone who’s been in this glaring spotlight for 15 years, it’s really liberating to have some privacy and work on her own terms. She deserves that.”
- Her Imagination Went Wild: In Taylor’s own words: “In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result, a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness. Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory. I’ve told these stories to the best of my ability with all the love, wonder, and whimsy they deserve. Now it’s up to you to pass them down.” Like always, there is a ton of speculation about who and what these songs are about. And while there are many hints at her own life and what she could be singing out (shoutout to the Taylor fans who have had to answer some version of ‘did Taylor break up with her boyfriend?’ in the last few days), the bulk of this album is centered around imaginary people or stories she made up. Personally, I’m very impressed she was able to implement such incredible storytelling and convey feelings and emotions from experiences she has never gone through before.
- The Teenage Love Triangle: This has to be my favorite thing about the album! When a fan asked Taylor on her Youtube Livestream if she had planted ‘Easter Eggs’ leading up to the album, Taylor said most of the Easter Eggs were actually placed in the lyrics. Taylor always has reoccurring themes/lyrics in her album (in reputation it was ‘gold’ and in Lover it was ‘blue’, just for two quick examples.) But for this album, Taylor purposefully tied three songs to each other. She even refers to three songs as ‘The Teenage Love Triangle” since each song is from a different perspective of each person in the love triangle. I think it’s brilliant and I’m pretty sure the three songs are “cardigan”, “august” and “betty”. Can you hear the references to the other songs?
- She Wrote About Her Rhode Island Home: “the last great american dynasty” is one of my favorite songs on the album, but at first listen I didn’t understand it. It wasn’t until a few fans did some research and discovered who the ‘Rebekah’ was singing about was that I was absolutely blown away by this song. TLGAD is about the infamous widowed heiress, Rebekah Harkness, who originally owned Taylor’s Rhode Island mansion. Harkness had a reputation around town for being ‘mad’ and throwing large, loud parties. Taylor has also had some ups and downs with Watch Hill in past years, so I think this song is absolutely perfect.
- She Reference’s Joe Jonas’s Baby: She makes several references in “invisible string” that fans could count as ‘Easter Eggs’ but the one that stands out to fans is the lines “Cold was the steel of my axe to grind / For the boys who broke my heart / Now I send their babies presents,”. Remember a time when Taylor wrote ‘Last Kiss’ and ‘Forever and Always’ about Joe? We love to see the character development. Also, apparently Sophie and Joe had their baby yesterday so congrats to them!
- Who is Betty? The night folklore came out I stayed up until 3am listening to the album. Randomly out of the blue, two of my best friends tested me and said “Betty is gay”. I didn’t know the context at the time but now I’ve read the theories. We already know the song “betty” is part of the love triangle but that song is actually from James’s perspective. At first listen, you may think that Taylor is singing to Betty, hence why everyone thinks it is about a queer love story. There is a lot of speculation about who Betty is, and some of the theories include Blake Lively’s 4th child, Rebekah Harkness, Joe Alwyn’s mom or Karlie Kloss. There is also a chance ‘James’ is James Taylor, since Taylor was named after him.
- She References Frontline Workers: In a foreword for the album, Taylor said she wrote about “My grandfather, Dean, landing at Guadalcanal in 1942”. The song she is referencing to is “epiphany”. But the second half of that song goes ““Something med school did not cover / Someone’s daughter, someone’s mother / Holds your hand through plastic now/ Doc, I think she’s crashing out / And some things you just can’t speak about.” Many fans think this is a tribute to the frontline workers of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- everything is lowercase for a reason: She has done this before with the title of her 6th album, reputation. While we know this is intentional, some fans speculate it is to correspond with the mellow and calm vibes of the album.
- The Cardigan Music Video: Taylor wrote and directed the music video for “cardigan’.The entire shoot was overseen by a medical inspector, everyone wore masks, stayed away from each other, and she even did her own hair, makeup, and styling. Taylor usually drops several ‘Easter Eggs’ in her albums’ first music video, and fans are already analyzing every little detail. One of the theories that sticks out to me most is “the crooked key” on the piano in the first scene of the MV. The broken key is B, which is the 7th note on the C scale. This could be a reference to her 7th studio album “Lover” which had a very short era (most of Taylor’s eras last 2-3 years) since it came out less than a year ago.
Anything I missed? Comment below!
Thanks for reading! xx