Taylor Swift’s folklore: Part I
This love is treacherous, but we’re not liking it anymore.
"And in a feud with her neighbor she stole his dog and dyed it key lime green" - the last great american dynasty
Part 1: Salt air and the rust on your door
In folklore, relationships start out easy. But no one in the album will get out unscathed.
Most songs are told from the perspective of looking back. The beginning of a relationship is sweet at the time, but recounted as dangerous. What seems like harmless lust, “tell yourself you can always stop,” is later seen as “a dwindling, mercurial high” (illicit affairs). The memory of a summer fling is stained by the loss to come: “so much for summer love, and saying ‘us,’ Cause you weren’t mine to lose” (august). The exhilaration of feeling seen by a lover, “you put me on and said I was your favorite,” diminishes when you’re discarded for another: “chase two girls lose the one” (cardigan). It might have been nice at the time, “but now I’m bleeding” (cardigan). There is no recounting “what started in beautiful rooms” without remembering how it devolved to “meetings in parking lots” (illicit affairs). Even the innocence of childhood is dimmed by forthcoming adulthood, “Please picture me in the weeds before I learned civility” (seven). Throughout folklore, good memories only exist in the shadow of what’s to come.
Lover beware: there is no high without the comedown
This new-romance sweetness turns to euphoria. But lover beware: there is no high without the comedown. Some characters rely too heavily on the relationship, “I never needed anything more” (august). Some lose themselves in the relationship, “leave no trace behind like you don’t even exist” (illicit affairs). Some are flat out drunk in love: “rosé flowing,” “drunk under a streetlight,” “august slipped away like a bottle of wine,” “a drug that only worked the first few hundred times,” and “right into that dive bar,” (the 1, cardigan, august, illicit affairs, invisible string). The lovers are too enamored to notice the harmless lust is growing into a wave of love, yielding power and impact. In short, they did NOT know their lovers were trouble when they walked in.
Before the wave crashes, I want to map out the relationships in the album.
cardigan, august, and betty recount a love triangle from three perspectives. James and Betty fall in love. James leaves Betty for an affair with another girl, before reuniting with Betty in the end.
"Leave the perfume on the shelf that you picked out just for him" - illicit affairs
the 1 is about running into an ex and whimsically wondering what could have been. In exile, a bitter on-again-off-again might finally die for the last time. In my tears ricochet and mad woman, two people tied together for better or worse fight through obsession, rage, and vengeance. In this is me trying and hoax, a devastated narrator bears her heart to an ex. In illicit affairs, a young woman is in turmoil after being duped by a man who played her.
A few relationships are recounted in the present. In peace and mirrorball, characters try and fail to give another the contentment that can only come from within themselves. In invisible string, a character finds bliss in her present relationship after enduring painful past relationships. Finally, in the lakes, our narrator escapes a cruel world for the romance of poetry, heartbreak, and a new muse all to herself.
At this point, characters pass the point of no return. The betrayals are so vast and vitriolic I don’t even know where to begin. But in each, trust was given before it was shattered.
Check out Part 2 to see who will throw the first stone.
“I want you to know, I’m a mirrorball”
