Evermore
Evermore is the ninth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was surprise-released on December 11, 2020, through Republic Records. Swift conceived Evermore as a "sister record" to its predecessor, Folklore, which had been released in July. She recorded Evermore mainly with Aaron Dessner at his Long Pond Studio in the Hudson Valley.
Evermore expands on Folklores escapist fantasy songwriting with fictional narratives and delves into the imaginary world Swift had ideated while self-isolating during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lyrics depict uneasy emotions like longing, grief, nostalgia, and regret, which stem from unhappy endings caused by complications like forbidden love, divorce, and infidelity. Evermore features an acoustic and atmospheric alternative pop, chamber rock, folk-pop, indie folk, and indie rock soundscape. Its spare arrangements and orchestrations consist of fingerpicked guitars, pianos, strings, subtle synths, and programmed drums. Haim, the National, and Bon Iver appear as featured artists.
Evermore was supported by three singles that were each released to a different radio format in the United States. "Willow", released to contemporary hit radio, peaked atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart, while "No Body, No Crime" and "Coney Island" were released to country and alternative radio. Evermore reached number one and was certified platinum in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In the United States, it was Swift's eighth consecutive number-one debut on the Billboard 200 chart and was the best-selling alternative album of 2021, being certified four-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Music critics opined that Evermore was musically bold and experimental while expanding on the styles of Folklore. Many reviews lauded Swift's songwriting, deeming the character studies intricate and the narratives well-constructed; several were more reserved in their praise and considered the album not as groundbreaking as its predecessor. Evermore appeared in various publications' rankings of the best albums of 2020, and some listed it alongside Folklore. At the 64th Annual Grammy Awards in 2022, Evermore was nominated for Album of the Year.
Background
wrote and produced her eighth studio album, Folklore, while self-isolating during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. It was released on July 24, 2020, via Republic Records. Swift worked on half of the album with Jack Antonoff, whom she had collaborated with since 2014, and the other half with Aaron Dessner of the National, a first-time collaborator. Swift had been fond of Dessner's works for the National and reached out to him to collaborate in April 2020, without requesting a specific sound. Dessner thought that the National's 2019 album I Am Easy to Find could have been a subconscious influence.Other first-time collaborators were Dessner's brother Bryce Dessner, who orchestrated several tracks; Justin Vernon of the indie folk band Bon Iver, and Joe Alwyn —her boyfriend at the time—who co-wrote several songs. Due to lockdown restrictions, Swift recorded her vocals from her home studio in Los Angeles and sent audio files to Dessner and Antonoff, who operated from their studios on the United States East Coast. Folklores indie folk and alternative rock sounds and fictional songwriting with imaginary characters and narratives were new aspects to Swift's artistry. The critical acclaim that Folklore received encouraged Swift to continue experimenting with its styles.
In September 2020, Swift, Antonoff, and Dessner convened to film the documentary Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions in person at Dessner's Long Pond Studios in the Hudson Valley, one of the recording locations of Folklore. After filming, the three continued writing songs spontaneously during their stay at Long Pond. Dessner described their collaboration as a "weird avalanche" and a natural extension of their works on Folklore, but with more room for experimentation, as the two did not subject themselves to limitations. He would send Swift instrumentals, and she would write the lyrics to them and send the songs back to him. After Swift, Alwyn, and Vernon had written the song "Evermore", Dessner concluded that they were working on a new album.
Writing and recording
On Evermore standard edition, Dessner produced 14 tracks, and Antonoff co-produced one with Swift. According to Dessner, he was attuned to Swift's way of structuring a song with verses, refrains, and bridges, and thus did not edit her outputs much. While her vocals were processed remotely for Folklore, Swift recorded most of her vocals for Evermore in person at Long Pond, using Dessner's Telefunken microphone and Siemens preamplifiers. Other collaborators, such as Vernon and Bryce, collaborated virtually due to pandemic restrictions. Given Swift's international popularity, they recorded the album in secrecy, using passwords, data encryption, and specific communications when sharing mixes of the tracks. For songs that feature orchestration, Dessner sent Bryce chord charts, and Bryce orchestrated the songs from his studio in Biarritz, France, before sending them back to Dessner, who then coordinated other musicians to record instruments individually from their home studios.Several Evermore tracks were created from scratch. Swift wrote two tracks, "Closure" and "Dorothea", for Dessner and Vernon's supergroup Big Red Machine; the songs were eventually recorded for Evermore. For "Closure", Vernon played a drum loop and Dessner added piano to it, imagining it as a track in 5/4 time. Dessner pinpointed "Closure" as the track that opened up more possibilities for the album, in that Swift and the production team did not subject themselves to any limitations. Dessner composed "Westerly", an instrumental track named after the town of Westerly, where Swift's Rhode Island home is located. Swift subsequently took an hour to write what became "Willow" on that instrumental. "No Body, No Crime" is the only Evermore track that Swift wrote without collaborators; she wrote it on a rubber-bridge guitar and sent Dessner a voice memo, which he produced upon. The track's feature artist, the pop rock band Haim, recorded their vocals at Ariel Rechtshaid's Los Angeles home and forwarded it to Swift and Dessner.
Other tracks were Dessner's works he had created for his own projects or Folklore. "Tis the Damn Season" was a product of Swift's songwriting when she was drunk and Dessner's instrumental track that he had written "a long time ago". "Coney Island" was based on a track that Dessner and Bryce had written for the National. Swift and Alwyn wrote the lyrics to it, and the National's lead singer, Matt Berninger, duetted with Swift while other members played instruments, including the drums, pocket piano, and bass. The bridge of "Marjorie" samples the drone from Folklores "Peace"; Swift wrote "Marjorie" about her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, whose operatic vocals were also sampled. Dessner had started composing "Right Where You Left Me" and "Happiness" for Big Red Machine in 2019. Swift finished writing and recording the two songs as the last two for Evermore; "Happiness" was completed six days before the album was mastered. All 17 tracks were mixed by Jonathan Low at Long Pond.
Composition
Music and production
Swift envisioned Evermore as a nostalgic fall and winter album, as opposed to Folklore as a spring and summer record. As with Folklore, Evermore explores atmospheric folk and indie rock styles that were different from Swift's previous country and synth-pop releases, showcased through the subdued and nuanced production and relaxed pacing over straightforward, arena-friendly hooks. The album incorporates acoustic and atmospheric alternative pop, chamber rock, folk-pop, indie folk, and indie rock styles, with chamber pop embellishments, bringing forth an introspective listening experience. The music critic Steven Hyden wrote in Uproxx that the album exuded "wintery-country vibes". Comparing Evermore to Folklore, Stereogums Tom Breihan opined that the music of Evermore is straightforward "indie", while that of Folklore is "indie"–styled pop music.Dessner's compositions are based on both acoustic and electronic instruments, largely characterized by programmed drum sounds using the iOS app FunkBox or analog drum generators such as the Vermona DRM1, the Roland TR-8 and TR-8s, and the Teenage Engineering OP-1; layered electric guitars; and piano-based arrangements using a Yamaha U1 upright piano. Bryce added orchestration to 13 songs. Compared to Folklore, Evermore retains the minimal soundscape and spare arrangements but is less consistent and more experimental: it has a more spacious ambience and its songs contain looser structures and textures and use varied instruments, namely fingerpicked or plucked guitars, glockenspiel, modular synthesizers, strings, and subtle layers of Mellotrons, French horns, and flutes.
Swift's vocals in Evermore are generally breathy and soft, accompanied by layered backing vocals, and deliver the songs in a conversational tone. In a profile for Sound on Sound, Tom Doyle wrote that Swift's voice "is very much front and centre and high in the mix, and generally sounds fairly dry". Dessner processed Swift's vocals such that they retained what he described as a "warmth" that he found lacking in "pop-oriented records" to sound "very bright and cut really well on the radio". The final song mixes were often the unedited mixes, such as the case of "Willow": Dessner said that the production team "settled back almost to the point where it began". According to the music theory professor Alyssa Barna, both Swift's singing and the song's arrangements embrace flat dynamics with little shifts in tempo or volume, and a static timbre that remains consistent throughout each track: her timbre sounds "breathy and bright" when she sings in her upper register and "full and dark" in her lower.