It is no secret that Taylor Swift is a global phenomenon. She has released nine albums over the course of her career and has managed to effortlessly transition between different genres to create an empire of pop, country, and indie music. I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve taken to The Bagpipe to discuss her success—don’t worry. I’m simply ensuring that by the time you finish reading this article, you will be as obsessed with her as I am.
Swift left the 2010s on a high. She had just released her paradisiacal seventh album, “Lover,” which earned her six American Music Awards. According to The Guardian, this brought her total number of AMAs to 29, which beat out Michael Jackson’s previous record of 24. Having created the soundtrack that defined the 2010s, Swift was also named Artist of the Decade at the AMAs.
Those unfamiliar with Taylor Swift might be wondering—how could Swift possibly top a decade of pouring out her heart into Shakespearean-level lyrical masterpieces? Surely her career must have become stunted in this new decade. Surely there was nowhere else for her to go.
Well, if you find yourself asking that question, you clearly lived under a rock in 2020 (which would be understandable considering the year we had, so no judgment from me). Swift started off the new decade strong with an earth-shatteringly introspective and thought-provoking documentary, “Miss Americana,” that Netflix aired in January and which The New York Times called “85 minutes of translucence with Taylor Swift.” “Miss Americana” allowed Swift to address all the ways that she had been mistreated by the media and gave Swift the room to share her story on her own terms.
2020 was also a year that brought us such masterful, poignant and heart-wrenchingly beautiful music from Swift that, if we were pagans living in Ancient Greece, we would have no choice but to recognize her as all of the nine Muses wrapped into one. An unstoppable force of nature, talent, and genius, Swift dropped two surprise studio-length albums in one year.
Swift took to her Instagram page on July 23 and released the album cover for her eighth studio album, “folklore,” with a heartfelt caption directed towards her fans: “Tonight at midnight I’ll be releasing my entire brand new album of songs I’ve poured all of my whims, dreams, fears, and musings into.” Upon its release, “folklore” quickly began climbing the charts—according to Music Business Worldwide, “folklore” was streamed 80.6 million times on Spotify in its first 24 hours, the largest debut by a female artist in Spotify history. “Folklore” is a triumphant, bewitching masterpiece of 17 songs. Swift explained her creative process behind “folklore” by saying, “In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result.”
Full of surprises, Swift announced on social media on November 24 that she had collaborated with Disney Plus and was releasing a film called “folklore: the long pond studio sessions.” She and some of her collaborators on “folklore” played through the album and discussed the meaning behind each song, revealing the magical, endless depths of Swift’s creativity and talent. The film received 100% from Rotten Tomatoes, which was truly an understatement. Watching “folklore: the long pond studio sessions” is like watching a monarch butterfly unfold its wings and fly for the first time—every mesmerizing lyric of each song takes you further into the achingly beautiful summer air.
While “folklore” was still busy dominating the entirety of the music industry, shattering millions of records and expectations and sending every person who listened to it into a cardigan-buying frenzy, Swift shocked her massive fanbase with yet another surprise. On December 10, she once again took to social media to reveal that she’d written another album and was releasing it at midnight. This new album, “evermore,” became her ninth studio album.
Swift wrote, “To put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs. To try and put it more poetically, it feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or travel further into the forest of this music.”
“Evermore” is every bit as magical as its sister, “folklore.” Full of songs so sad they could coax a tear out of Ebenezer Scrooge's eyes pre-Christmas ghosting, it is not an album for chasing away the blues. However, it also includes whimsical songs that entice every listener to search out groups of dancing nymphs in dark woods, and nostalgic lyrics that inexplicably invoke a yearning for the past.
According to Billboard, the release of “evermore” ensured Taylor Swift’s queenly reign over the music industry. “Evermore” and “folklore” respectively became the top one and two albums of the Billboard Top Album Sales Chart, which made Swift the first woman to ever have held the top two albums simultaneously.
Even as 2020 came to a close and a new year dawned, Swift continued to roll out reasons why she is the only artist that matters in all of the music industry. On February 11, 2021, she announced that she will be releasing a re-recorded version of her second album, “Fearless.” Swift cannot be stopped—she is an unstoppable force of musical talent, lyrical ingenuity, and iconic bridges. All hail Miss Americana.