Taylor Swift, our Lover, has just saved 2020 again by announcing her 9th studio album evermore, officially out now.
Taylor Swift has truly been the saviour of 2020. She’s helped struggling fans by supporting them financially, dropped folklore (2020’s first album to sell 1 million copies), allowed her political anthem Only the Young to be used by current president-elect Joe Biden, and remained unafraid to call out Donald Trump.
On Thursday, Taylor announced her next act as saviour: a new “sister” album to folklore, titled evermore.
In the same way that she announced folklore earlier this year, yesterday her Instagram became populated with 9 seemingly random posts to ultimately reveal this image:
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This is Taylor’s second album of the year because “to put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs…it feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of music. We chose to wander deeper in.”
She revealed that she’s “always treated albums as one-off eras and moved onto planning the next one after an album was released” but “there was something different with folklore. In making it, I felt less like I was departing and more like I was returning.”
Just like folklore, evermore was produced by Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, WB, and Justin Vernon. On folklore, WB (aka William Bowery aka Taylor’s long-term partner Joe Alwyn) helped with her songs exile and betty, whilst Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) featured on exile too.
This time around, Bon Iver has partnered with Taylor on the title track, evermore, whilst Haim is featured on no body, no crime, and Aaron Dessner’s band The National will appear on coney island.
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Featuring 15 new songs (or 17 in the deluxe edition), evermore is Taylor’s birthday present to her fans. Swift gushed that she’s excited about turning 31 on Sunday, the 13th of December “because it’s my lucky number backwards, which is why I wanted to surprise you with this now. You’ve all been so caring, supportive and thoughtful on my birthdays and so this time I thought I would give you something.”
She’s giving Swifties more than just a new album though, alongside its release, evermore’s lead single willow will have a music video dropping at the same time (which is sure to be immediately dissected for multiple Easter eggs).
There are fan theories that suspect willow will reveal the latest on her relationship with long-term boyfriend Joe Alwyn – especially considering a promo photo depicts Swift in a white Zimmerman dress, rather reminiscent of something one might wear on their wedding day…
Either way, if evermore is the ‘sister’ album to folklore, then we can certainly expect masterful songwriting that revels in subtlety. Having received 5 Grammy nominations, including Album and Song of the year, folklore has been her most critically acclaimed release since the iconic pop record 1989 – so a ‘sister’ album is likely to garner the same response.
evermore is out now. Check it out, along with the video for willow, below.
