Finding Connection, Understanding, Empathy, and Purpose in Sixteen Songs

My second time listening to Taylor Swift’s Folklore was spent on a one hour car ride, and after an hour, as I reached my suburban home and pulled into the dark blue garage, as my Spotify landed on the last note of hoax, I felt dizzily amazed, as if I’d greedily experienced too much of a good thing. And even so, I wanted to do it all over again. 

Ever since I began listening to Swift at age eight, I almost always knew that her albums held some sort of significance to her life. Whether it was the country album Speak Now, that held a reference to tragic romances with boys from John Mayer to Taylor Lautner, or the more recent Lover album allegedly referencing both her fallout with supermodel Karlie Kloss and finally falling into a stable, lasting relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, the songs almost always seemed to be about her or someone in her life. And while I usually couldn’t have cared less about which boyfriend Swift’s songs referred to, it was almost difficult to ignore who the song was about. Yet, Folklore didn’t seem to follow such a pattern.

 In Folklore, each song is its own story. The way we would feel by looking at a single photo charged with personal significance from someone’s past, each song has the same effect. In two to four minutes we are completely immersed in a moment of someone's life, just to fall into a different one sixteen times. Taylor’s impeccable use of first-person pulls us into the story with her and allows us to understand the characters she creates. A story about a madwoman, next to a story about a healthcare worker, next to a story about a teenager, are seamlessly held together by the strength of a string. Lines blur between fiction and reality, and we suddenly stop caring about the drama behind the lyrics and fall into the colors of her music. 

Swift begins her album with the breakup song, The One, setting the tone of colorful emotion and intangible realness for the rest of her album. Swift tells us that, in love, incompletion is okay as she sings, “You know the greatest films of all time were never made” and “You know the greatest loves of all time are over now.” The I character reminds us that something doesn’t have to last forever to be magical, without losing sight of the painfulness that comes with heartache. She taps into the specialness of an unfinished romance and gifts her listeners a glimpse of the passion and despair that comes with her discovery. 

In the song illicit affairs, she steps into the shoes of the “other woman (person)” in a marriage. She sings about how a relationship that blossoms from secrecy becomes less real each time. She reveals the gut-wrenching inner truth about secret relationships, comparing stolen glances and hidden moments to a language in itself. Starting at the surface, with each line, she delves deeper into the complexity of an affair, only to reveal how deeply and tragically immersed the I character is in her lover as she sings, “ You showed me colors you know I can't see with anyone else” and “You taught me a secret language I can't speak with anyone else.” She captures the seemingly impalpable and grey feeling of losing something that was never really there in the first place.

In Epiphany, Swift shines light on the struggles of healthcare workers, through imagery filled with both empathy and appreciation. With each verse she creates a different scene, singing “Holds your hand through plastic now/Doc, I think she's crashing out/And some things you just can't speak about,” each one bringing her audience to a deeper understanding of the lives of medical workers. While it would be easy to pay tribute to and appreciate the lives of the healthcare workers like many of us have been doing during the pandemic, she takes painstaking effort to see the world through their eyes in almost five minutes of music. And in doing this, she brings her audience to a new level of empathy and enlightenment.

Swift takes on a reminiscent and nostalgic voice in her song, cardigan, as she takes on the role of a teenager. Each line is filled with imagery that brings to life the experience of being in love young. When she sings, “And when I felt like I was an old cardigan/ Under someone's bed/ You put me on and said I was your favorite,” reminding us that when we are young, love can make us feel like a new person. Rather than looking upon the time with regret, she uplifts the mind of a teenager looking back on the age with a rare sense of admiration. Teens begin to feel seen and understood as this older, mainstream artist recognizes their voice as worthy of not only recognition but artistic value. 

In mirrorball, Swift relates her character to a mirrorball. When the song begins, we assume it to be a happy song, about a shiny, fun-loving person, but Swift takes the opportunity to manipulate the metaphor to be more complex. Like a mirrorball, a person that seems shiny and upbeat is truly changing themselves for the crowd they are around. She uses the idea of reflection, to showcase a lack of identity in her character, whose only intention is to be seen. Her use of metaphor is remarkable, as she takes hold of her ability with lyricism to develop a character. Not only does her strategy make these extroverts feel understood inside and out, but it validates others, reminding us that no matter how shiny someone may seem on the outside, there can always be messiness on the inside. 

Swift has shifted from connecting her audience to herself to connecting her audience to a greater purpose and understanding, which can only attest to her growth as an artist. Swift is known for constantly reinventing herself, and her musicality, especially by non-fans. Her “new self,” whether it was the relatable teen we saw in Fearless, the perfect, people-pleasing, “America’s sweetheart,” people assumed her to be in Red and 1989, the angry, vendetta-holding woman the media stereotyped her as in Reputation, and the finally happy and stable, rainbow and cat-loving woman we were all proud of in Lover, in a way, became a part of her album.

So, after continuous trial and error, the newly 30-year-old decided to let the album, it’s music, and its message, stand for itself, letting nature and sepia-toned filters substitute for an image. 

With each song, she creates a voice, with a purpose and a story, and no description but Swift’s voice and imagination could truly do them justice. The words fall effortlessly into her melody, and listeners can tell that the content fell straight out of her heart onto the page. When we listen to Folklore we feel understood and connected to something, and we might not even understand why. We feel as if truth has been revealed, and we want to laugh and cry because of it.