“‘tis the damn season” by Taylor Swift, Thursday, December 15, 2022
THE WARMEST BED I'VE EVER KNOWN. A initial thought from when I listened to evermore, I found that the record was even less cohesive than folklore. In my time with folklore, I began to realize that there was a cohesion to it, and I think the same is true with evermore. The next thing I noticed is that many of the tracks felt like b-sides to folklore, although the record was written and produced quickly after releasing folklore. I first listened to evermore with my AirPods Pro when they were buzzing, so the bass was distorted, but it made me wonder what evermore or any Taylor Swift record produced by Aaron Marsh, Aaron Sprinkle, or JT Daly would sound like because the instrumentation would compete with Taylor's voice. Finally, I found that some of the songs on evermore were immediately catchy compared to folklore which took me deeper listens to get into the record, yet with evermore the tracks that I didn't find as catchy have yet to come to life. Today, my biggest take away from my re-listen is that evermore is Taylor Swift's true return to country. Sure, the twang is mostly absent and country often uses less profanity, but the storytelling songs in "gold rush," "no body, no crime," and even today's song "'tis the damn season" feel like country hits that I would have heard at the grocery store or at work on summer vacation in the south.
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN LOOKS REAL GOOD NOW. Like folklore, Taylor Swift employs the tools of fiction to create the songs on evermore. In today's song, "'tis the damn season," the protagonist, likely Dorothea who gets a song about her later on the record, returns to her hometown for the holidays, "stayin' at [her] parents' home." The protagonist has come home from L.A. where she hopes to be famous. At home, over the weekend, she bumps into an old fling and the two reminisce about "the road not taken" and have a weekend fling. In this beautiful guitar-driven fantasy, listeners think about the "roads not taken," and who would co-star if their lives were made into the Hallmark movie premise of "'tis the damn season." But as much as this "big city movie star goes back to see the cute boy with mud on his tires" the universe rarely will set the two back on the same path. There's a reason greater than Hollywood and the distance between the small town that the romance didn't work out. It was fun for a weekend and maybe regrettable that it ended, but what does the small town hold for you these days? For me, I'm thinking about the feelings I get every time I go home, not that there's some fling waiting for me there. It feels so right to be around family that I realize that it's just a fantasy. I've found my purpose far away. I've built my life far away. I've found love far away. It's just nice when the universe aligns and I can cross back to my old life even if it's just for a few weekends.
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