Five Years Slipped Away: A Love Letter to folklore

take me back to the lakes where all the poets went to die

2020 was a blur and blocking it out a survival instinct. There are really only two days out of that whole year that I can still recall vividly five years later.

I remember every detail from the day the world shut down. I remember my mom, sick and bedridden after my little brother’s birthday trip a few days before, was starting to worry about the pandemic. She told me to carry around a surgical mask in my backpack just in case any of my classmates seemed sick. I remember talking to my best friend at lunch as we complained about the Trump administration’s response to the looming threat. I remember the exact classroom and seat I was in when our principal’s voice came over the speakers and announced that the school was shutting down for the next two weeks. We thought the pandemic would end in two weeks.

I giddily said my goodbyes, excited to get a few extra weeks of spring break, and little did I know, I would never see most of those classmates again. My life would be forever changed. All of our lives would. The only other day I remember from that year is July 23rd when I woke up to the announcement of a new Taylor Swift album dropping that very night.

A soon-to-be favorite album from my favorite artist was on the horizon and I only had to wait a few hours to hear it for the first time. Just a year earlier, I was chatting with my friends about Lover as we waited to get our yearbook photos taken at the start of the school year. That school year would be cut short, and with this era, things were very, very different. Everything was. This time it was just me and the music. I pressed play, unsuspecting that I was pressing play on my favorite album for the first time.

folklore was a light in a very dark year to say the least, and Taylor Swift would be a constant during the most uncertain and unprecedented times in recent memory. While I am admittedly an avid hater of TTPD’s “The Alchemy,” I think Swift herself inadvertently and unintentionally articulated her legendary 2020 run perfectly when she wrote:

This happens once every few lifetimes
These chemicals hit me like white wine

What if I told you I'm back?
The hospital was a drag
Worst sleep that I ever had
I circled you on a map
I haven't come around in so long
But I'm coming back so strong

2020 was a weird year for the music industry. Tours were cancelled, albums were postponed, but the artists who marked their presence made an utterly unforgettable mark on music — After Hours, Chromatica, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Future Nostalgia, How I’m Feeling Now, Sawayama, Ungodly Hour, Women in Music Pt. III.

In a year where social interaction was scarce and we were all six feet apart, they were the ones who brought us back down to Earth and brought us back together. We were drowning in fear and grief, but when we played those records, it felt like we were given the okay to dance and the space to cry. With folklore, Swift, fresh on the heels of a bubblegum pop album, choose to pursue the latter, going out of her way to remotely write and record an entire album and going above and beyond to gift us with seventeen tracks chronicling the five stages of grief that we had come to know all too well.

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Stage One: Denial

The album’s stellar opener, fittingly titled “the 1,” dives head first into the grieving process and lays out the album’s thesis: “I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit / Been saying ‘yes’ instead of ‘no / I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn’t though.” Swift is cursing now, yes, but she’s also entering unfamiliar territory by writing largely fictionally and taking a risk with her sound, choosing to set aside the synths in favor of pianos, guitars, and the sounds of an empty cobblestone street on a cloudy summer’s day.

“But it would’ve been fun / If you would’ve been the one.” It’s an album about missed connections and wrong timing because that’s all anyone could think about that year. folklore is about grieving what could’ve been and grappling with the ripple effects that result from love slipping out of our fingers due to the twisted tricks of time.

The first of the love triangle trio, “cardigan” is as much of a warm hug as Swift’s lyricism promises it to be. Aaron Dessner’s production illicits the image of rain on a window pane as the song’s storyteller, Betty, looks out from the inside and grieves the loss of innocence and understanding. It’s one of Swift’s best bridges to date, filled to the brim with ghostly imagery as Betty insists, “‘Cause I knew everything when I was young.” It’s a song about the messiness of young love, but at its core is about knowing everything at eighteen, but nothing at twenty-two. It’s about looking back on your coming-of-age and wishing you had been trusted and believed. It’s about wondering what could have been if people just listened instead of “Leavin’ like a father / Running like water.” It’s about being in a moment and knowing you’re going to miss it, that it’ll “linger like a tattoo kiss” and “haunt all of my what-ifs,” about realizing one day you’ll both find yourselves looking for each other at the bus stops and in the grocery lines, about young love gone too soon that lives on through the hope that all that innocence and childlike wonder will come back someday.

I still think about my first mutual crush a lot, maybe even a little too much. We went to kindergarten and elementary school together, but it wasn’t until the sixth grade right before I moved that he finally confessed he liked me. Whenever I’m back in my hometown, I’m constantly wondering what I’d do or say if we ran into each other. Who knows? Maybe we’d call it even and ‘tis the damn season. I wonder if he still thinks of me, if he even remembers my name. I only realized he was my first true love when all these later, he’s still the only kid I grew up with whose full name is still etched into my brain. I wonder if someday he’ll come back to me or if we’re meant to try again in our next life. Frankly, I don’t have the courage to look him up now and see what he’s been up to because I’m fearful that would shatter the one fragment of my childhood that I’ve been able to cling to for so long — my first love, gone too fast. That sense of longing wonder is the true essence of folklore to me.

While Swift is often (and often rightfully) cited as an example of White Feminism 101, folklore is subtly one of her strongest political and societal statements yet. With the album, she grants women and their stories a grace that they’re so often refused. “the last great american dynasty” tells the story of Rebekah Harkness who was blamed for her husband’s death. “It must have been her fault his heart gave out,” the townspeople say in response without a hint of irony. It’s their denial that’s evident here. Swift, however, understands the irony in blaming an innocent woman to avoid talking badly about a man since it’s happened to her countless times as a pop star in the public eye. She knows she’s not alone and knows that the mindset used against Harkness and that is now being used against her will continue to be used until the end of time as long as the patriarchy has something to say about it. She can’t end misogyny, but she can reclaim the title of “the loudest woman this town has ever seen” with a knowing smile.

Then, with “exile,” Swift tells the story of a woman trying to move on as her ex tries to hold onto the broken pieces left of their time together. They go back and forth, eventually singing over each other as she desperately pleads, “I gave so many signs, so many signs, so many signs,” and he still can’t accept it, drenched in the kind of denial that inevitably leads to anger.

Stage Two: Anger

The haunting track five of “my tears ricochet” finds the shell of Swift giving a eulogy for a relationship that’s come to an end, working as both a heartbreak ballad and a public callout to Scott Borchetta for betraying her. Having lost her masters the year prior, Swift channels that frustration into the lines “And I can go anywhere I want / Anywhere I want, just not home.”

She couldn’t go back to Pennsylvania or Nashville or New York City or any of the places she once called home and dedicated her music to. She didn’t wallow in anger for long though. All she could do was wander around the forest looking for shelter from the storm, and luckily for her and for us, folklore turned out to be the album and the cabin that provided just that for her with a cup of cocoa, a cozy cardigan, and a fresh start.

Stage Three: Bargaining

Quarantined in the folklore cabin and a long way from her fans and any sense of normalcy, Swift did the only thing she knew how and started writing like she was running out of time.

And they called off the circus
Burned the disco down
When they sent home the horses
And the rodeo clowns
I'm still on that tightrope
I'm still trying everything to get you laughing at me
I'm still a believer but I don't know why

“Are there still beautiful things?”

In grief, we often turn to the past in search of nostalgia. With “seven,” Swift finds herself transported back to a childhood summer spent running around in nature with a best friend as they attempt to preserve their innocence and escape from the turmoil back home.

“seven” is perhaps my favorite song on the album because of how much it reminds me of my own childhood best friend. I haven’t seen her in nearly a decade now. I can’t even really remember her face, but I can remember her laugh, her smile, her braces, her braids, her dog’s name, and the day she told me her parents were getting a divorce. She told me things I could never forget, and it was then, with my arms wrapped around her as we cried together, when my childhood innocence ran dry.

How someone could be so cruel to such a sweet little girl I didn’t know and still don’t. That grudge I hold against the one who wronged her has never gone away. It came back to the surface with “seven” and again, the next year, when Lucy Dacus released “Thumbs” and left me in a puddle of tears. “Your nails are digging into my knee / I don’t know how you keep smiling.” It’s the grown-up version of “seven” but proves that kind of resentment and grief never really goes away. I think of my friend often, I’ll love her to the Moon and to Saturn always, and it’s by this folk song through which our love lives on.

“august” is the second song of the love triangle threaded throughout the album and is told through the perspective of a girl grieving a summer love and a boy who was never really hers, a perspective often frowned upon due to our society’s tendency to vilify women and pit them against each other. Swift finds the humanity in the situation and treats the song’s narrator with respect, painting the picture of innocence flying away in the windy salt air as the girl grieves the love that she learns was never there to begin with. As folklore exemplifies, grieving something that was never there is a wound that can never be fully healed.

Stage Four: Depression

Halfway through the album, Swift finds herself exploring the fourth stage of grief with “this is me trying” and “illicit affairs,” undoubtedly two of her most vulnerable songs with or without the fictional context taken into consideration.

The former track is a lot like Lorde’s “Liability” in that I’ve cried to it so many times that it’s difficult for me to verbalize just how much it means to me. It’s one of the most authentic portrayals of depression — the regret, the fear of regression, the alcoholism, the addiction, the anger, the academic struggles, the longing for understanding. Trying is a quiet act that often goes unnoticed, but man, is it the hardest thing in the world. When you’re depressed, all you want is for someone to notice that you’re struggling so that they can reach out first when you don’t have the strength to cry out. To drive away from the cliff all on your own like that is truly the ultimate act.

“illicit affairs” is another one of my favorite folklore tracks, painting the picture of an affair that dies out slowly and painfully. She once again grants grace to a subject who would otherwise be shunned by society for ever opening up like this, brutally describing the relationship as “a drug that only worked the first few hundred times,” and that also lies “a million little times.”

And you wanna scream
Don't call me "kid"
Don't call me "baby"
Look at this godforsaken mess that you made me
You showed me colors you know I can't see with anyone else

Stage Five: Acceptance

“Hell was the journey, but it brought me heaven.”

Coming in with the biggest tonal shift on the album is “invisible string,” a song that effortlessly ushers in the “acceptance” stage that makes up the back half of folklore. Acceptance comes in many forms, but “invisible string” epitomizes the textbook definition of the word as Swift allows herself to fall deeply in love and even make peace with her exes, going so far as to send their babies’ gifts.

The It Girl to Internet Punching Bag Pipeline

After this brief moment of joy, Swift turns to explore the nuances of acceptance on “mad woman.” I’ve analyzed this song at length previously, but I think it’s useful to think about within the context of acceptance. It’s a song riddled with anger, but it also follows the route of reputation by reclaiming the title of a “mad woman.” It’s evident in Swift’s tone when she sings, “What a shame she went mad” and later, “And there’s nothing like a mad woman” that she has come to fully embrace the role of the villain. They’ve brought out “their pitchforks and proof, their receipts and reasons” again, so she might as well play into it. If they want her to be the villain, she’ll be the villain and she’ll take back the power and the narrative while she’s at it.

“epiphany” contains the most direct references to 2020 and the pandemic on the album, making it a powerful piece on living in unprecedented times. It’s less about accepting the circumstances we find ourselves in with war or sickness than it is about accepting the fact that we won’t always have the answers or the energy or the time. Sometimes words just fail. Sometimes all we can do is breathe, for ourselves and for those we have lost.

The “betty”-“peace”-“hoax” run continues to explore the complexities of acceptance. A teenage boy named James accepts that he’s in the wrong for cheating on the titular girlfriend and begs for forgiveness as he insists, “I’m only seventeen, I don’t know anything.” The story of “peace” is seemingly refracted through Swift’s lens of celebrity as she asks her lover to accept that “the rain is always gonna come if you’re standing with me.” As someone who has always believed myself to be unlovable, this kind of acceptance that I’ll never be perfect, but that I’ll be able to find people who love me in spite of all my faults means the absolute world.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

On “hoax,” Swift contemplates the idea of defeat as another form of acceptance, finding herself hunched back over her piano as she swears, “Don’t want no other shade of blue but you / No other sadness in the world would do.” With “hoax” (and “the lakes” as well), it’s a pointed and powerful choice to end the album on such a defeated note. folklore came out in July of 2020 with no answers and certainly no happy ending in sight for any of us.

folklore doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending either. There are sad songs, retrospective songs, angry songs, even hopeful songs, and it’s all up to the listener to choose their own adventure and decide which chapter and stage of grief they want to turn to today. It’s okay to hate it here. Taking it one step at a time is all we can do, but if you need to lie down in defeat for a while, spend some time in the secret gardens in your mind, take some time for your body to rest and your tears to empty out, that’s okay too. Choosing to eventually get back up, to put one foot in front of the other, to love, to try, that’s what matters most. At least you’re trying.

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Truthfully, I don’t know where I’d be without folklore and Swift’s music. Her words were like gifts that pushed me to keep going when I had lost so many of my teen years to the pandemic, stuck inside my room wondering when my life could begin again. folklore meant absolutely everything to me. It promised me that one day I could leave the secret gardens in my mind and find my place in the real world, but that I always had that fantasy home to return to when things got to be too much. Sometimes it still gets to be too much. My brain gets overwhelmed when I think about everything I’ve lost and everything that could’ve been, and I wonder why the prophecy couldn’t be undone and why that fate had to be mine. But then, I turn on folklore and Swift’s voice is the big, warm hug I’ve been missing.

I’m really, truly glad I kept going. I’m glad I had folklore to get me through even the toughest of years when I didn’t know if things would ever be okay again. I’m glad I’ve made it to 2025. Five years later, all I wish I could do is tell my 2020 self that everything would be okay, that I’d leave my bedroom, I’d get out of my hometown, I’d grow up, I’d go to my top college, I’d achieve so many of my wildest dreams (including running this newsletter and being supported by all of you).

Everything would be okay, but in 2020, I just needed a good cry. Well, many good cries. folklore gave me all of that and more and then, it wiped my tears, wrapped me in an old cardigan, and offered me a place to stay until I was ready to leave the woods. Five years later and come morning light, I’m finally safe and sound and forever grateful for the album that was and always will be my lifeline.

“You know why this is my favorite tree? 'Cause it's tipped over, and it's still growing.”

The Florida Project (2017)

For more cozy albums like folklore, I highly recommend the following:

And of course, to celebrate folklore’s anniversary, feel free to share with me your folklore story, favorite tracks, favorite lyrics, favorite moments. I’m so glad you’re all still here five years later and that some invisible string has tied you to me. What a wondrous, mystical thing time is.