Switched on Pop - folklore: taylor swift's quarantine dream

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

Taylor Swift has released folklore, her unexpected eighth studio album. It is an understated work that firmly puts celebrity gossip behind her (there are no who's-dating-who easter eggs to be found). Instead we're gifted Swift's greatest strength: songwriting. The lyrics blur "fantasy and reality." There are imagined teenage love trysts, recreated dynasties and intimate reflections on modern love. We break down the sounds and lyrics that make up Swift's strongest album yet. SONGS DISCUSSED Taylor Swift - the 1, illicit affairs, my tears ricochet, august, epiphany, cruel summer, this is my trying, hoax, peace, you belong with me, mirrorball, epiphany, our song, cardigan, the last great american dynasty, betty The National - Light Years Bon Iver - 666 BONUS The correct term for the piano line is a "turn" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The city needs us. What's the emergency? Taylor Swift has dropped a new album. Oh my gosh. To the Popmobile. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.

It's not every day that I drop everything to record a last minute episode with you. But this is special. Yeah. It's the first time we're recording in person through a window. Hey, buddy. It's really nice to see you. You too. But we're also here together because in our second episode, we made a prediction about Taylor Swift's career that has finally come true.

Like many of the great composers, we can already see that Taylor's work falls into a early, middle, late period. The early is the immature, somewhat derivative, but still showing sparks of genius. The middle is the transitionary stage. She's introducing new kinds of material, new genres. And then the late period is traditionally the experimental and avant-garde phase of a musician's career. The hint of what's to come. So we're not there. We're not there yet, but I'm very excited to hear Taylor Swift's late phase.

That's right. With this new album release, Folklore, I think we can say that Taylor Swift has stepped into the late period of her career. She wrote and recorded folklore in isolation and released it without any warning. And I think perhaps that solitude led her to step into a new phase of artistry. Folklore combines the country songwriting of her early period with the pop hooks of her middle period but with a new sound and set of subjects she's put behind the celebrity scandals of her past

and puts the songwriting first she tells us that folklore is meant to blur between fantasy and reality it's one that we get to interpret and so today we'll break down that sound see how she stayed the same, but most importantly see how she's changed, how she's confidently stepped into this role of master songwriter. I think a great song that highlights the beginning of her late period is the opening track, The One.

But we were something, don't you think so? Roaring 20s tossing pennies in the pool. And if my wishes came true, it would have been you. In my defense, I have none for never leaving well enough alone. But it would have been fun if you would have been the one. It's like sparse and lush at the same time. These kind of wistful but knowing lyrics. This is a cool side of Swift.

There's some really great turns of phrase here. Roaring 20s, tossing pennies in the pool. It's like wonderful reference to the jazz age, but also she's 30 now, moving out of her 20s, a nice little dual meaning. Mind blown, good stuff. And I love that line. In my defense, I have none. It's intimate, and yet there's none of that typical sort of autobiographical, Easter egg-y stuff.

I think so much of the narrative of Swift over the last many years has been her constant reinvention, who she dated, all this and that. Right. And folklore is not about that. I think this is an album that shows her stepping into her strength as a songwriter. Yeah. And while there are plenty of people who are going to dig for clues about what's going on in her personal life from these songs, as stands are wanted to do. Sure.

We're not going to do that. We're going to dig into the music. In fact, she invites us to. She says that a tale that becomes folklore is one that is passed down and whispered around. I've told these stories to the best of my ability with all the love, wonder, and whimsy they deserve, and now it's up to you to pass them down. Right?

Let's take her up on it. Where do we begin here? Well, as I said, that she's constantly had to reinvent herself, album by album. Something that the pop machine demands. Here, in many ways, we have a sound that both goes back to her roots and evolves it. I want to start with the sound of this record before we understand exactly what it means and what she's saying.

I was kind of expecting after her record reputation, which took a much darker term, that we would eventually get some singer-songwritie stuff. Maybe we would get another country album. And it seems like, well, on folklore, both the name, Folk, and some of the sounds are pointing towards those roots. Here's our song, Betty, for example. Make assumptions about why you switched your home room, but I think it's because of me. Finger-picked acoustic guitar and a plaintiff harmonica.

Yeah, this is like some good old folk music. Except it's not quite folk. Like, that's in there. I think this is kind of more in the, like, subdued, mullingolly pop world that draws from a lot of acoustic material. If we go back to the first song we listen to the one, and you just listen to the opening and the timbers that we're hearing, it's clearly not just country.

We have these lovely light pianos. Yeah. Those acoustic guitars, but also electronic drum programming. I'm doing good. I'm on some new shit. Interesting textures to layer on top of each other. And then her vocal drops,

and it's like very contemporary. I'm on some new shit. You know, that's not a, that's not a country line. Yeah, there's a lot of curses on here that are the first that she's ever put. There's a lot of F word that she had never done before in a record. Damn. This sort of melancholy thing, it's happening in pop. I think you can point to Billy Elish and Phineas and Lemon O'Re.

Yeah. There's also in here, there's older references to like Sarah McLaughlin and Natalie Merchant. Like, there's all kinds of things we could point to, but I think she's all, in many ways, making her. own sort of sound. It's really delicate. I want to highlight some of the timbers that really drew me into this record. There's this gorgeous subtlety in the way that this record is orchestrated. One of my favorite moments is in the song, Illicit Affairs.

That was lovely. It's almost like cinematic. What was happening there? Well, we have. had these really light saxophones. Oh, wait, really? Yeah, there's actually, in the liner notes, accordion. And at the end, some kind of maybe like slide guitar.

What? But each of them are played in this sort of really quiet, delicate texture. It feels like you can almost hear the read of the saxophone. It's very breathy. Yeah, there's an intimacy here. You feel like you're in the room with all these sounds, and they're sort of enveloping you. And I think the lyrics that we'll get to later speak to that exact same quality.

There's some other really beautiful arrangements. The opening of the song, My Tears Rcochet stands out. This wordless vocal with a ton of reverb sounds like it was recorded almost in a cathedral or something. It makes me think of like 15th century Renaissance polypony or something. That is our jam. But we move from that intimate to some big orchestration in the song August. And finally there's some really beautiful washed out moments where all of these sounds sort of recede into an endless echo. I can hear that on epiphany.

Whoa. That sounds like an orchestra slowly being lowered underwater. It kind of does. All these are very film-like. They're cinematic. And this arrangement sets an entire mood for the record. In fact, the record is incredibly consistent. Yeah.

It has a range of tempos, for sure, a range of instrumentation. But the mood has a melancholy anticipation, a reflective quality to it. This is a lowercase album. It's a lowercase album. You know, you think of the lead single of Love. lover was me, capital M, capital E, exclamation point. And this is like, folklore. It's like epiphany.

All of the titles are lowercase. Folklore is lowercase. Yes. The one is lowercase. No, you say it's like, so this sounds like a new sonic world for Taylor. How did she get here? Well, I think part of it is that she was very intentional in the collaborators that she

wanted to work with. and we can hear their influence in framing her songs. So there's a bunch of great folks on this album, but the main producers that are highlighted are Jack Antonoff, who is a longtime collaborator. Oh, yeah. Aaron Destner from the National, who is actually the majority of the songs.

And Boni Vares, Justin Vernon is on here as well. Just to highlight some of their influence, when you think Jack Antonoff, what do you think? I think blues in the verse, gospel in the chorus I get like a lot of big 80s synth vibes stuff like sure from his work on

Curl Summer on the last record Devils roll the dice Angels roll their eyes but doesn't kill me makes me want you more and it's new Antenov productions are like epic and yearning at the same time

I mean that goes back to We Are Young Yeah there's like here this is Anthemic but also a little melancholy. And he achieves a lot of that through nostalgic synth programming that's often very forward and in your face. All of that quality is on folklore, but totally washed out and in the background.

Right. Where do we get a taste of that new Antenov style? I hear it on the song, This Is Me Trying. I'm here in your doorway. I just wanted you to know. I just wanted you to be tried. Huh. There's like washed out high synthesizers that merge into strings and saxophones. Yeah.

And you have, he so often will have a steady bass line that dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun what you hear in Cruel Summer. You also hear in this song, but it's definitely taking a back seat to her voice, which is front and center. Antonoff Light. Yeah. Yeah, I like it. So for fans of the National, Aaron Dessner's influence is very clear on this album. One of the National's great tracks is Light Years. Yeah, this reminds me the first track on Taylor's album, the first track we listened to, the one, this kind of sparse, resonant piano kind of ringing out with a simple melody.

I really like on the piano here, the sort of flurry of notes that happens and then recedes. It's like, didla-l-lee. Yeah. Do-da-l-ly. Oh, man, there's a word for that, Chuck. What is it? You do it all the time in a show band. Dill-l-l-l-l-lee, it's a go br-r-repti-blum.

Why don't we call it a superondo? Really? No, I just made that up. Okay. It's highly irresponsible, but just say, say, do-litt-l-l-a. Every time. We can hear, did-da-da-da-de on Taylor's song, hoax. Oh, good.

Only one, my smoking gun, my eclipsed sun, this has broken me down. Genuinely, I really love, we talked about sort of intimate quality of this music. Yeah. You can hear the felt and the hammers and even the pedals of the piano in this. Oh, cool. It's not like you're in the room. It's almost like you are right next to Taylor at the piano hearing every little moment. Right.

The creaks and the swishes and all the little extra noise that usually gets filtered out of a recording. That's all in here for you to just sit in. Yeah, exactly. I said there's three main collaborators who are influencing the sound of this record. We also have Bono Veras, Justin Vernon, who is featured as a vocalist on the album. But the connection and the music that I hear is with his. song 666.6. Just compare that to Taylor's song, Peace. This is a synth

pulse that Justin Vernon recorded with some really beautiful bass by Aaron Desner. It's very pretty. Absolutely. The album cover is Taylor in the California woods, black and white, Ansel Adamsy kind of thing. She's very small, big redwoods all around. I think just the sounds that we've heard so far they evoke that mist, that California fog kind of quality that I think you and I know so well having lived in Northern California. Yeah.

So we've got a lineup comprised of luminaries of white male indie rock all of fame here. But I want to know more about Taylor's voice on this album. Like where do we hear Taylor Swift? I think that's a great question because all of that production work, it really is for me just the sort of frame for her painting, her songwriting. And there are so many ways that we can hear clear Taylor identifiers. In our second episode of the show ever, we looked at the uvra of Taylor Swift. Do you mean the uvre? Did you make that word up too?

Okay, now say it without rolling your eyes. The uvah. I can't say it without rolling my eyes. Fair enough. So maybe this episode is the continuation of exactly that. One of the things we know about Taylor is that she has a certain way of singing melodies, a certain way of constructing her songs that even with the words removed, her signature is all over her work.

And we're going to identify that when we come right back from the break. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. the best conversion of the world. The incredible system of Pago of Shopify facilitates the

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bar records. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly

Democratic cities for ICE raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ice.

When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want order at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Okay, so out with the Max Martin style top 40 pop, in with the indie acoustic vibe.

But what makes this consistent with her earlier body of work is how she writes melodies. T-drops, single-dell melodies, country melodic phrasing. There are lots of ways that Taylor sings a song that make it uniquely

her own. One of the things that we coined a while back was this idea of the T-drop. Yeah. There's certain signatures that she relies on. The T-drop being

the most identifiable. We can hear it on this record. Wee, I like to think of it as the Swiftian sigh, but please continue. Here it is. Check out her song, Mirabal.

I'm still on that tire row. I'm still trying everything you're laughing. I can still believe I've never been a natural. Do you is try, try, try. I'm still on that trapeze. I'm still trying everything.

Da-da-na. Do you have a favorite tea drop from the past? I mean, there's, I think, the kind of holy grail, which is, you belong with me. On the titular phrase, particularly the word me, you get that, and then one of the most luscious appearance, says is in the song State of Grace off red.

There's a lot of them. You could go on and on and on. You're showing off. Okay, so we have one of her signature melodic devices here, this kind of lacrimose descending, D. Yeah. But then you also dropped something about one-note melodies,

single-note melodies. Tell me more about that. I think one of the ways that she, likes to build tension in her song is to give you often verse material that just kind of rests on one note. You don't quite know it's going to go up, it's going to go down, just kind of just steady. The motion is flat. We call that the telegraph machine. And then, you know, it gives you room to go somewhere else in the pre-chorus and chorus.

And she does that on her song here on My Tears Rickishachish. That's the same note Over and over That's the same note But it feels good I don't even care That it's the same note Okay

It's good because the chords are changing And so it kind of gives that note A different feeling every single time the chords change The emotion is moving She does this all over the place From her back catalog An early example would be our song Yeah, but I'm done with my hair undone

In the front seat of his car He's got a one handbail on the stern wheel The other all my heart That's one of one note And it's just one note And don't even mind Just sing the one note over and over I don't care you

I just give one note sounds so good Wow And he says Our song is a slimmer screen door Yeah, it's effective I think your telegraphing joke actually kind of is on point. Yeah, because it's all about the rhythm, right? You know, there's got to be some interesting rhythmic variation that's going on that's keeping you interested.

T-drops, single-note melodies. What's the other kind of signature Taylorism we get on this record? Even though this is not a country record, there's this certain country style of writing a melody. I don't quite have my thumb on. Okay. But I hear it. See if you can hear what I'm hearing on the song August. I actually think I have my thumb on this one. Okay. It's like, it's the quality of jumping up. and down between two different notes where one's like staying the same and maybe there's like some variation in the higher note i hear this all over the place i actually think i even hear

it in you belong with me which you have brought up okay yeah sure i'm not hearing i'm i love it but i'm not hearing it i don't get the connection or what it has to do with country music of like singing a country melody that I can't properly theorize. I do think there's a way of singing country music where you sort of act the lyrics a little bit. Like you're telling a story and you're putting irony and earnestness and all this stuff into the performance

that in pop music is usually kind of a little flatter and a little more affectless and there's a little more distance between you and the lyrics. Here it's like you're really You know you're an actor and you're like I'm going to bring these lyrics to life with every kind of Scoop and growl and tick in my voice No for sure I mean it sort of maps on to the narrative

quality of country songs And these songs are full of narrative I think we've spent a lot of time breaking down sounds And the way in which she constructs her own signatures Right But they come together in the songs themselves. Good. This is an album about folklore.

These are stories. These are characters. It's not always clear. It's her, if it's someone else, if it's an amalgamation. And the fun thing is that we get to read into them. So what's a good example of that? I think the best example of just really fun storytelling is the song, The Last Great American Dynasty.

Like a great country song, this is one where, we don't end where we begin. Here's how the narrative starts. Sounds like a muted piano string at the very top of this. With some 808 drums. Rebecca rode up on the afternoon train. It was sunny.

Her saltbox house on the coast took a mind off St. Louis. Bill was the heir to the standard oil name. And money. Okay, so the town starts How did a middle class divorce? They do it The wedding was charming

If a little go shh There's only so far New money goes They picked out a home Okay, so the song starts off And we've got two different characters We've got Rebecca And she's on a train,

She's riding with Bill, Who's an heir to a fortune And in the song, they go And they buy this house called Holiday House It's in Rhode Island. They throw these great parties. Yes.

The public is very upset. They're a little too rowdy for the Rhode Island crowd. Uh-huh. There's this wonderful story that unfolds about Rebecca and her dynasty that she creates these wild parties that she throws. And when we get two-thirds into the song, we realize that this house has special significance to Taylor Swift. 50 years is a long time holiday house side quietly on that beach free of women with madness that men and bad habits dealer buys the house wow so there are autobiographical moments in this record but they're approached through this very narrative dramatic historical lens so it's like she's giving you a little glimpses of herself

but through these Baroque storytelling devices. So like you said at the outset, it's both providing insight and that obscuring. Yeah. It's fun. This is an amazing song. There's a trio of songs on the album that have that same song writerly approach.

It's this love triangle that gets told over three different songs. In Cardigan, we get the first lover's perspective. She's so good at a piece of a big Under someone's bed She's so good at taking a piece of clothing Some little object in life And turning it into a bigger metaphor She's done with a red scarf in the past

And here we have a cardigan that has been dejected Left under the couch standing in for someone Who is one of the two women in this love triangle hoping to be picked up to be chosen Okay, I have to point out really quickly that Cardigan has my favorite moment of text painting on the record

that really brings to life yet another inanimate object with a piece of clothing. You can catch it right at the very beginning of the song. Vintage tea, brand new form high heels on cobblestones

when you are young... Yes, those are heels on cobblestones. Very nice. nice. Anyway, back to the Love Triangle. Okay, so where do we go from here?

Okay, so then we go to the song August. Yeah. And we find out that there has been a trist. Ooh. Salt air and the rest on your door.

I never needed anything more. Or whispers of are you sure. Never have I ever before. But I can see it's lost in the memory. August lived away into a moment in time. Because it was never my. And I can see she's... Okay, so that's from the perspective of someone cheating.

Is that right? Yeah, exactly. Oh. Right. Plot thickens. Actually, this is the quote unquote, other woman song, a perspective that's so often demonized. but Taylor's version is quite compassionate to this young woman's desires.

Gotcha. Good stuff. Okay. Nice little metaphor there. So next song and what inanimate object will represent it? I'm not sure there's an inanimate object here, but we do get the conclusion to our story in Betty. Now we get the perspective of the cheater. Betty, I won't make assumptions about why you're saying.

I've switched your home room, but I think it's cause of me. I made a mistake. Betty, one time I was riding on my skateboard when I passed your house. It's like I couldn't breathe. You heard the rumors from Inez, you can't believe a word she says most times, but this time it was true. The worst thing that I ever did was what I did to you. Whoa, wait, I kind of know what happens next. That was so good.

Isn't that the power of good songwriting, right? It's like you actually need to keep going. Yeah. What is going to happen? I'm genuinely mad at you for stopping me. And there's so many sweet lines in there, right? It's like you can't trust a word, Inez says, except well in this case, actually she's telling the truth.

It's a well, well constructed song for sure. It really is. And it kind of makes sense that this is placed in that much more sort of focal, tradition because it has that quality of like someone sitting on their stairs, singing the song to the person being like, I'm really sorry, I'm trying to make this up to you. Right. The irony is that it takes the most sort of compositional acumen to craft the most direct and simple songs.

So this is like, you know, the most impressive. Though I have to say there's a moment where this becomes entirely unsubtle. Uh-oh. Oh, I sort of bet your party. Don't do that. Don't show up with the party. It's not going to work out. Yeah, I sort of bet you party.

I'm feeling a lot of suspense here. Very, very anxiety producing. Yeah, I sort of bet's your party. Will you have? Oh, my goodness. This is so good. Wow, a modulation. We changed keys.

I didn't see it coming. No. She loves to do this, right? In Love Story about Romeo and Juliet, she does the same thing, modulates up at the end, to sort of change the narrative. It's like, actually, we get a happy ending. Everyone is good.

Don't worry about it. And, you know, like, in some ways, I think that's really fun here, because these three songs really do feel like about a, like, silly, youthful trist of, like, three young people who are 17, they don't really know how to do with their own emotions or other people's emotions,

and everything is just like, I'm wearing it out of my sleeve, I made a mistake, feels like much more innocent. Speaking of wearing it all on your sleeve, the cardigan actually comes back at the end under a core progression that reminds me of the song, Sweet Jane.

It's a nice turn of phrase, cardigan, kissing in the car again. Barry Taylor. Wow. But as much as I love this crafty trio of songs, it's those more nuanced and delicate songs here that really resonate. And you get the sort of more adult perspective of this same issue in her song, Illicit Affairs. And that's the thing about illicit affairs and clandestine meetings and stolen stairs. They show their truth one single time.

But they lie, and they lie, and they lie A billion little time. Isn't that powerful? Yeah. So this album quietly covers the gamut of emotional experience. Yeah. Sort of youthful, fumbling to adults knowing. It's a lot.

It's a lot. A lot going on here. I think there's a lot of sense of, like, adult understanding of one's responsibility with someone else's heart. Damn, dude, you just wrote a freaking hallmark card. Give it that to me again. It's an adult understanding about our responsibilities of the heart, something like that. Oh, gosh. Oh, thank you.

You know, I just feel like one of the great things about aging and maturation is the deeper places of empathy that we can access and recognize that the way in which we feel is often the way in which other people feel. You can all feel put down. We can all feel hurt. We can feel completely and utterly heartbroken. And the way that we act when we're 17 shouldn't be the way that we act when we are looking into getting married, having children, topics that she is also interested in her songs. And you know that I'd swing with you for the fences,

sit with you in the trees. Give you my wild, give you a child, give you the silence that only comes on two people, understand each other family that I chose now that I see your brother as my brother. Is it enough? It's the song, peace. Yeah, lovely. The music is peaceful, but also the sentiment is too, right?

This isn't the kind of romance that is that wild Romeo and Juliet story. It's like, is this going to be enough? These are my intentions. I'm putting them out there for you. That's how I feel. I appreciate that perspective. Yeah, you know, if you'd ask me, what should Taylor Swift do next after Blubber came out?

I would say she should go back to her roots. She should release something that's stripped down and intimate and honest. And I feel like she's done that. It doesn't surprise me that everyone is listening and dissecting this record together. It almost feels like a national holiday. It's a really compelling step in the journey of an artist who, like you said, has been there with us from the very beginning. So I'm excited to listen to folklore. More.

Switch on Poff is produced by Bridget Armstrong, Megan Lubin, Nate Sloan, and me Charlie Harding. Our executive producers are Liz Kelly Nelson and Nishat Kurwap. We're mixed edited and engineered by Brandon McFarland. Illustrations by Iris Gottlieb and social media by Abby Bar. You can find more episodes of our show anywhere you listen to podcast. and we love hearing from you reach out to us at Switch on Pop. We're proud members of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Let us know if you find any T-drops, any single-note melodies, any country cadences in this album.

Remember, da-da-da, that's what we're looking for. Thank you, Professor. And what else? We'll be back next week. Cool. All right. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.