Taylor Swift Loves Indie, Too

The Pitchfork Review

Pitchfork

Music, Music Commentary, Music Interviews, Music History

3.3 • 844 Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2020

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last week, Taylor Swift surprised her fans with the announcement of the imminent release of a new 16-track album, entitled folklore. The National’s Aaron Dessner co-wrote or co-produced 11 of the songs, and it also features collaborations with Bon Iver and Jack Antonoff. “Most of the things I had planned this summer didn’t end up happening, but there is something I hadn’t planned on that DID happen,” Taylor’s announcement said of the making of the album. At its best, folklore reinforces something that has been true throughout Swift’s career: her biggest strength is her storytelling. On this week’s episode, Pitchfork Editor Puja Patel is joined by Senior Editor Jillian Mapes and Associate Editor Anna Gaca to discuss everything Taylor Swift—and her most recent release.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Pitchfork review. I am Puget Patel, the editor of Pitchfork, and I'm here with our associate editor, Anna Gautza.
0:07.1	Hi. And senior editor, Jill Mapes. Hey, how's it going? So today we're going to talk about Taylor Swift's newest album, Folklore. It was a total surprise, announced and released last week with less than a day of advance notice, basically
0:22.3	a music critic's nightmare.
0:24.3	And folklore came drenched in this really woodsy aesthetic to signify that this was Taylor
0:29.0	Swift's quote unquote indie album, or at least a break from what she was doing with pop.
0:35.1	She revealed that the album featured the National Bonnie, and her previous collaborator, Jack Antonoff.
0:40.8	And you can really hear all of them.
0:42.7	The result is a pared-down version of what you might expect from her.
0:46.0	The fact that so many people did work on the album
0:48.2	made the secrecy of the rollout that much more impressive.
0:51.8	Everyone here at Pitchfork was taken by surprise.
0:54.4	It was definitely a very interesting and stressful 24 hours, but I can't say that we were mad
1:01.1	about it.
1:03.7	I feel like whenever it's Swift season, whenever Swift is in the news, you can feel this excitement and like full glee.
1:14.7	And you can see parts of pitchfork activate, like which DMs start lighting up and like your switchboard just activates for Taylor Swift.
1:23.6	What was your like first feeling upon hearing that this was coming?
1:29.6	So this past Thursday, I opened my eyes at like 901 a.m.
1:35.1	And at 902, I got a Slack DM from our social media staff for Rinda who said, new Taylor.
1:42.8	I was like, what? Cool. Jill, what are you?
1:47.8	I was definitely, like, in bed looking at Twitter, seeing it and instantly being like,
1:55.2	are you fucking kidding me? Like, I just, that's the reaction that music journalists have.
2:00.1	Like, the surprise drop is one thing, but the like heads up for the surprise rob.
	...

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