Evermore is…perhaps my favorite album of all time. Released in December of 2020 as a sister album to folklore, evermore was dedicated to people losing family members during the pandemic. Like its sister, evermore was an album of vignettes: short, descriptive songs about sometimes interconnected moments in time.
It’s all lost loves and failed marriages.
It’s an album that questions itself in every verse of every song.
Evermore is a word that literally means “forever and always.” Yet, evermore the album is an exploration of endings in every form. Swift has written an album that rejects its name and forces you to wonder why that is.
Lost Loves and Stagnance
Evermore’s second track, “champagne problems,” is the most classic of the breakup songs on the album. Detailing a proposal gone wrong, the speaker expresses all the guilt in the world for not being able to give her former lover what they wanted. This is one of the central themes of evermore: not just impermanence, but stagnancy.
The bridge of the song contains a lyric that, in many ways, sums up the song: “Your Midas touch on the Chevy door.” The myth of King Midas is one I personally remember (from my first-grade Starfall days, for those feeling nostalgic): A man cursed to turn everything he touches to gold. A beautiful thing, sure, but for a car? It’ll never move again. Swift describes the speaker’s relationship to their lover in the subtlest of ways: yes, it was beautiful, but it was never going anywhere.
Stagnancy is a core theme of evermore. One of the more poignant examples is “tolerate it:” a speaker in a relationship where, as she acknowledges, her partner will never give her what she needs: not love, but ambivalent tolerance. (And, not to get to music theory on you all, but the song is in 10/8, which is a weird time signature! The song unsettles you from the beginning, placing you on the speaker’s unsteady ground! Ugh, Aaron Dessner was a genius for that.) Even as the speaker contemplates leaving, the song ends the way it began: “I sit and watch you.” She won’t go anywhere. Hauntingly beautiful, but exactly what the album is grappling with: what is forever?
Swift continues to detail these lost loves all throughout the album: track 9, “coney island,” literally has a bridge dedicated to all Swift’s past romances; “dorothea” and “tis the damn season” detail the same hometown love affair from either perspective: the one who stayed, and the one who left. When Dorothea returns, they fall back into old patterns. Lost love is found again, but never for long. Even the reunions aren’t forever!
Then there are the marriages: “happiness” details a woman coping with divorce, realizing the best way to move on is to wish happiness on the person who took hers, while “no body, no crime” details the story of a marriage shrouded in infidelity, and its deadly consequences.
Even the happy endings have…caveats, so to speak. In “cowboy like me,” two con artists fall in love! It’s surprisingly romantic. But even then, the speaker adds conditions, an awareness of uncertainty: “forever is the sweetest con,” she sings. Ironic on an album titled after the concept of forever. That is, unless you’re Taylor Swift. Then, it somehow finds a way to make perfect sense, of course.
(High) Infidelity…Lots of It
The easiest way to question permanence? Cheating. Indeed, evermore has its fair share of affairs; all of them messy, each one an unfairly beautiful song. They’re not from the perspective of the scorned lovers, though: “no body, no crime” details its speaker getting revenge for her friend Este’s murder at the hands of her cheating husband. The song is complete with sirens in the background, HAIM background vocals that are (literally) to die for and a murder with only the most righteous of intentions.
On the other hand? We get one from the perspective of an unfaithful in track 10, “ivy.” Detailing a thrilling affair, “ivy” is cursed from the beginning. Stolen glances and hands clasped behind closed doors, the lovers are literally “on borrowed time.”
There is a clear issue, though, with the central imagery of “ivy” the plant itself is toxic. It kills everything it grows upon! Including, in this case, the speaker’s “house of stone,” her relationship.
Nothing says “nothing is forever” like an affair doomed from the beginning. And Swift definitely delivers.
Further Into the Woods…
Halfway through the album, though, the speakers of evermore start shifting. Instead of deceptive titles like “happiness” and plain acknowledgments of nothing being forever, Swift begins to toy with the idea of it.
This begins in “long story short:” as a welcome break from the bleak nature of the album, this is a song about resilience. You can go through it all and survive. Still, the story is “over,” so to speak. Another ending, but a more hopeful one! (Also, our first title drop is in this song!) For the first time, forever is presented as something real, tangible, something that you can reach at the end of a journey.
One of my personal favorites, “marjorie,” deals with grief; specifically, Swift’s grief over her grandmother. A death is, in maybe the most undiluted form, an ending. But the song isn’t about that, is it? It’s about memory. Maybe you’re not around anymore, but I can feel you, and maybe that is enough. Swift’s speaker “knows better,” but her lost family member is “still around.” What died did not, in the end, stay dead. It’s a subtle departure, a subtle sign that we are learning to cope with endings.
One more weird time signature for the road? Of course! Right before our title track, we get “closure,” in 5/4. Weird. Unsettling. Jarring, even if you can’t recognize why that is. Which makes sense, as closure is a weird concept to grasp, and the song keeps it just out of reach. Swift’s speaker rejects closure. An explicit rejection of an ending? Unheard of thus far, but important. Sometimes you don’t need it. Sometimes things end in ways that are unsatisfactory, and you have to learn to deal with that!
We’re moving from acknowledging impermanence to coping with it!
The Title Track & What It All Means
Finally, the reason I wrote this article: my favorite song in the album (and one of my favorite songs, period): “evermore.”
Now, let’s go back for a second: what has Swift been teaching us this whole time? Love isn’t forever. Trust, family, friendships, life and even marriage aren’t forever.
But…in “evermore”? She reminds us of something more, if not equally important: if nothing is forever, neither is pain. Neither is suffering, heartache, the darkness that feels endless, the grief that makes you feel like you’re drowning. “Pain wouldn’t be for evermore,” she says, and if that isn’t the craziest way to flip an album on its head, I don’t know what is, honestly.
She even offers you two courses of action in the bonus tracks: “right where you left me” is about the stagnancy we’ve come to find familiar. (Even if you’re not a Swiftie, I’m sure you’re “still at the restaurant” about something). Whereas “it’s time to go” offers hope. Escape. “Sometimes to run is the brave thing.” More importantly? It reminds us of one of the only things that is for evermore: the self.
If folklore was a walk through the woods of escapism, evermore is an acknowledgement that you can always keep walking, because eventually? You’ll find your way out. Maybe to a reality that’s easier to face.