Taylor Swift attends the NME Awards 2020 at O2 Academy Brixton on February 12, 2020 in London, England. (Photo by Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)

Taylor Swift shows shes ever-evolving with her latest album, folklore.

Taylor Swift has become the rare pop star who seems too big to fail. In a music world that is more fractured than ever, composed of a number of microcultures that are often isolated from one another, Swift, over a decade into her career, still manages to transcend it all, making each new record release a true event.

Her latest record, released last Friday with just one day of advance warning, is no exception. Folklore, her eighth record and second in less than a year, is a change of pace for her, a sharp shift from last years Lover, which was an hours worth of pure bubblegum pop. Meanwhile, folklore is a more somber, understated affair, full of piano-based ballads that grapple with what happens when one loses the sort of love depicted throughout Lover. Largely produced by Aaron Dessner of The National, this new record is her best in several years and also shows a desire to break out of the pop world she has resided in the last decade and enter into a new, more decidedly mature arena.

This is not well-trod territory for her, but its not unfamiliar either. Tracks from Red especially give nascent signs of this more folk-based sound, most notably State of Grace, Treacherous, and All Too Well, which uncoincidentally are three of the best songs shes ever written. What is new is her commitment to it for an entire record. The difference is one of scope and aesthetics as much as one of mere instrumentation. Also notable is that while these songs almost certainly arose from personal experiences, they are not made specific to her in the lyrics. Here, she is more willing to tell stories that are not necessarily related to the experience of being Taylor Swift, making it seem more expansive even as the sound is more insular.

What separates folklore from her previous records then is less the stylistic trends she embraces musically than it is her stepping outside of this solipsistic vision and telling stories that may be about herself, but not explicitly. The mere fact that such a question can arise speaks to the difference between this and, for example, 2017s Reputation, which largely consisted of her trying to settle scores, coming off as the worlds sorest winner in the process. This tendency can make her work feel self-contained in spite of its popularity. Here though, Swift lets go of the binary narratives that have defined so much of her work in the past. The songs here are not about vindicating past behavior or excoriating former lovers, but trying to make sense of the way love arises and vanishes, the ways one tries to fill the spaces left when another leaves. If folklore is her most mature record yet, its not because of the more subdued acoustic style shes embraced, but because of the willingness to step away from her own life and imagine the lives of others, while still giving her own emotions room to breathe.

Take the last great american dynasty, which is about the heiress Rebekah Harness and betty, wherein she sings from the perspective of a teenager named James, ruing what he did to lose the titular Betty and fantasizing about winning her back. These songs arent unqualified triumphs, but they do show a promising way forward for her. More successful are songs like cardigan and hoax, which may be autobiographical, but are sung by a narrator who is at least distinct enough from the public persona of Taylor Swift, allowing anyone who has lost love to be able to find themselves in them. Its a fine line, but one she has walked in several of her best songs, here and elsewhere.

In spite of all this, folklore is less of an actual transformation than it is a gesture towards seriousness. Working with Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon functions as a way to signal that she has grown up and wants a new type of artistic, and not merely popular, success. Perhaps this is cynical, but considering Swifts continual evolution as a public figure, it seems like the new record is as much a calculated attempt to establish herself as a more serious artist, and judging by early reviews, its a gambit that appears to have worked.

folklore is a good record, her best in nearly six years, but it seems more like a solid Taylor Swift record than a fully successful attempt at an indie inflected folk record. Its hard to come up with a reason for this record to receive more acclaim than Phoebe Bridgers recently released Punisher or similar records like Julien Bakers Turn Out the Lights, though of course, what is being praised is not merely the music itself, but the evolution of Swift as an artist. Her unspoken demands to be taken more seriously have been well heeded. While the songs are good, it seems as if the novelty is being praised as much as the quality.

The most accidentally revealing lyrics on the record comes on mirrorball, when she sings, Ive never been a natural/all I do is try, try, try. Swift has consistently been one of the better pop songwriters of the last decade, but in light of how carefully crafted every aspect of her persona and her records are, little has ever quite felt fully organic. As much as she reveals of herself in her lyrics, it still feels like something is being held back; as clearly as she depicts her emotions in her songs, it nevertheless remains hard to know who she is behind the public presence. folklore may succeed as a record, but it comes no closer to solving that mystery, instead functioning as just another step on a carefully crafted trajectory.

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Folklore is another step in Taylor Swifts continuing evolution - FanSided