in her glittering prime

July 24, 2020 - Taylor's album, folklore, was released

"It started with imagery. Visuals that popped into my mind and piqued my curiosity. Stars drawn around scars. A cardigan that still bears the scent of loss twenty years later. Battleships sinking into the ocean, down, down, down. The tree swing in the woods of my childhood. Hushed tones of "let's run away" and never doing it. The sun drenched month of August, sipped away like a bottle of wine. A mirrored disco ball hovering above a dance floor. A whiskey bottle beckoning. Hands held through plastic. A single thread that, for better or for worse, ties you to your fate. Pretty soon these images in my head grew faces or names and became characters. I found myself not only writing my own stories, but also writing about or from the perspective of people I've never met, people I've known, or those I wish I hadn't."

In April 2020, Taylor had planned to launch a concert tour to promote her seventh studio album, Lover (2019), but it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On July 23, 2020, she posted nine captionless, black-and-white photos on Instagram that together formed an image of her standing alone in a forest. Shortly afterward, Taylor shared a message across all her social media platforms announcing the midnight release of her eighth studio album. She explained: "Most of the things I had planned this summer didn't end up happening, but there is something I hadn't planned on that DID happen. And that thing is my 8th studio album, Folklore." She confirmed that the forest image was the album’s cover and revealed the tracklist. The Wall Street Journal noted that the unexpected release "caught fans and the music business off-guard," while Billboard described it as having "blindsided the pop music world" and provided a welcome surprise during the lockdown. Folklore arrived just eleven months after Lover, marking the quickest release turnaround of her career at the time, surpassing the previous one year and nine months between Reputation (2017) and Lover. In a separate post, Taylor also announced that the music video for the song “cardigan” would premiere simultaneously with the album.

During the YouTube premiere countdown for the "cardigan" music video, Taylor teased that the album's lyrics were filled with many of her trademark Easter eggs: "One thing I did purposely on this album was put the Easter eggs in the lyrics, more than just the videos. I created character arcs and recurring themes that map out who is singing about who... For example, there's a collection of three songs I refer to as the Teenage Love Triangle. These three songs explore a love triangle from all three people's perspectives at different times in their lives." She referred to the album as "wistful and full of escapism. Sad, beautiful, tragic. Like a photo album full of imagery, and all the stories behind that imagery." Described "cardigan" as a song that explores "lost romance and why young love is often fixed so permanently in our memories," and pointed-out the self-written track, "my tears ricochet", as the first song she wrote for the album.

Singles on folklore (2020):

cardigan

exile