“exile” by Taylor Swift ft. Bon Iver, Thursday, December 2, 2021

Taylor pulled a Beyoncé in late July of last year. Pulling a Beyoncé is a record industry term for releasing a studio record without any promotion or explicit social media hints. The term comes from in December of 2013 when Beyoncé released her self-titled album on iTunes without warning. The album quickly shot to number one, and so did Swift's folklore, an album written and recorded at home during quarantine. Swift worked on the project with producers Jack Antonoff and The National's Aaron Dessner. For me on the first few listens, the album was underwhelming. I knew that there was something there, and I was pretty sure that this album would be a defining record of the new decade, but it was hard to get into the right mood for this album, much like other Jack Antonoff's masterpiece, Lana Del Rey's Norman Fucking Rockwell. However, the catchy ballad "exile" featuring Bon Iver was a good excuse to dive into the record today.
 

YOU NEVER GAVE A WARNING SIGN. Bon Iver was one of the cool artists exchanged on my mixed tape disaster in college. While technically Bon Iver is a band, the moniker is synonymous with lead singer Justin Vernon, a singer who locked himself in a cabin in 2006 in his home state of Wisconsin after leaving in Raleigh, North Carolina, when his former band, DeYarmond Edison broke up. After watching Northern Exposure, a '90s comedy-drama set in Alaska, on DVD, he chose the name Bon Iver for his band name after a French greeting the townspeople use to greet the snow in one episode: Bon hiver--meaning "Have a good winter." After three months, Vernon emerged with Bon Iver's debut album. Fast forward to 2020 and Taylor Swift was working on her own home-record. Writing "exile," she needed a male vocalist to bring the alternate perspective in a duet about former lovers who could not communicate, thus bringing an end to the relationship. According to Disney+'s folklore: the long pond studio sessions, Dessner suggested the Bon Iver collaboration, but Swift was worried that Vernon would say no or pull out before the album's release. However, Vernon enthusiastically obliged and contributed vocals and in writing the bridge of the song. 

YOU'RE NOT MY HOMELAND ANYMORE. "Exile" is such a different Taylor Swift song on a very different Taylor Swift album. Folklore takes Taylor back to her country roots without the twang. There's no EDM and no contemporary radio singles. Swift writes more metaphorically about her life, often creating characters who aren't the former teen singer. Previously, listeners spent so much time dissecting her lyrics, trying to figure out which relationship each song was about. The songs on folklore, though, seem to be about other people, even if they are sung in first person. The collection of songs that is folklore seems to come together after listening to the album as a whole several times. It's a long album, and it certainly could have been cut down and refined. But for me, when I get to track 4, the album makes sense. We're taken even further outside of who Taylor Swift is with the baritone voice of Justin Vernon leading the track. This bold artistic decision is seldom a choice for young musicians who usually give their features the second verse. Vernon's voice isn't familiar until the end of the first chorus, when he finally adds his signature falsetto to the production just before Taylor begins her verse. Today this song speaks to me as I'm struggling with some decisions at work. I realized that there's a lot of decisions that I'm not in control of, and I have to realize that, even if I think that they're making a mistake, if my voice isn't valued, it's not my homeland, not my town anymore. So, the sad break up songs in late November, early December are me trying to process this loss of control.

Lyric Video:

folklore: the long pond studio sessions version:

Read “​exile” by Taylor Swift on Genius.