The maddest woman this town has ever seen - she had a marvellous time ruining everything

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Best Albums of 2020 list...

#9 : folklore - Taylor Swift

A year of cancelled tour dates allowed Swift to make an album without having to consider the nosebleed seats. The result is wistful, romantic and adorned with entrancing melodies. Making few references to the lockdown that brought about its existence, Folklore expands Swift’s focus from her personal relationships to imagined characters, widening the emotional and narrative range of her already considerable songwriting. Occasionally, reality intrudes as she sings about the final moments of a person’s life, and her own battle to gain ownership of her back catalogue. Yet Folklore found a moment of stillness in the turmoil, turning even the darkest musings into something sparkling and beautiful.

The march of the lower case albums continues unabated...  

Now, even I've managed to hear some of Taylor Swift's music (I think I've even heard one of her tracks which isn't about an ex-boyfriend, but can't be 100% sure) and I've viewed it as "nice enough" but hardly earth-shattering.  So expectations here were for an album that didn't make my ears bleed, but didn't have me running to replay it either.  But actually, it's really rather good - The Guardian's description of "wistful, romantic and adorned with entrancing melodies" is about right.

The allbums starts with an incredibly strong selection of tracks - it does tail off in quality somewhat, but there are 17 tracks on it and they're all very listenable.  I think "the last great american dynasty" and "exile" (yes, she's gone full lower case!) were probably my favourites, with her voice working very well with Bon Iver's on the latter track.  I was also drawn to the lyrics on "my tears richochet"

I didn't have it in myself to go with grace
And you're the hero flying around, saving face
And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake?
Cursing my name, wishing I stayed
Look at how my tears ricochet

Wikipedia gives you a good idea as to exactly how famous she is - the entry for the album almost tells you what sandwiches they had every day whilst recording, so I can't claim to have read it all (the section just on how many "end of year" lists it features in is bigger than most album entries).  However, there are several comments along the lines of how this isn't a usual Taylor Swift album - so maybe that explains why I liked it more than I was expecting to, but I'm expecting to get to listen to some of them on the other list, so I guess we'll see.  

She sounds much more like a classic singer-songwriter on this album than I was expecting - Lana Del Ray and Nerina Pallot (Fires-era, obviously!) both jumped out at me at times, but I'm sure there are a million other names bandied around like Ellie Goulding, Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus which "other customers listened to".  So yeah, I liked it and picked out further details the second time I listened to it - and if you've avoided it because "you know, Taylor Swift" then I recommend you have a go.

#10 - Now this is an odd one
#8 - Another one that was a lot more enjoyable than expecting