On November 25th, Taylor Swift released her American documentary concert film “Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions” available for streaming exclusively on Disney+. The film follows four months after the release of Swift’s eighth studio album folklore and finds her playing each track on the album live for the first time. The studio sessions also star her co-producers Aaron Dessner (The National) and Jack Antonoff (Bleachers), as well as Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) on the darker-toned “Exile.” Filmed during dusk in Long Pond Studios of Upstate New York, it sets a desolate scene for the themes of isolation, nature, and sleepless nights associated with the album. Swift, Dessner, and Antonoff all recorded and produced folklore separately throughout quarantine, and this film captures the first time they all collectively met in person. Warning, spoilers ahead!
Sitting under outside glittering string lights, the songwriters offer their opinions and stories about the songs between their live renditions. Swift finally reveals the identity of the mystery songwriter, named William Bowery on songs like "Exile" and "Betty" as actually being her boyfriend Joe Alwyn. Fans have toyed with this idea since they received signed folklore CD's containing permanent-marker mustache doodles on Swift's face with the initials W.B. Swift describes Alwyn as having written the piano and first verse to "Exile" during isolation, and how they collaborated to finish the song together. She explains to Dessner and Antonoff how she wanted a deeper male voice to open the record, and that is what led her to Justin Vernon as a feature. Swift and Alwyn are huge fans of Bon Iver and were thrilled to have Vernon sing on their track.
Further into their session, Swift breaks down songs like "August" and its naive haze of the album's teenage love triangle. She explains the perspective of a misunderstood character she imagines is named Augustine, and her dynamic with other characters mentioned on the album. The summer nights laying in bed with James, tracing the edges of his back, and how Augustine truly loved him. Swift's collaborators praise how incredible an experience it was to work with her, because of her love for the craft and attention to detail as she explains the writing for "August." Swift mentions that the inspiration for the song was a line she wrote on her phone months prior, a single lyric;
"Meet me behind the mall."
A glowing plead to be seen, a song peering anxiously over a cliffside, Swift comments on the aching pulse of "This Is Me Trying." Sitting down with co-writer Jack Antonoff, Swift describes addiction as the mechanism for illustration in the song's storytelling. Showing up at the doorstep of a former lover. Steering the car away from the edge of the lookout. "A whiskey bottle beckoning." She describes the frustration involved when overcoming addiction, and how people find themselves waking up every day fighting an internal struggle. Standing in the middle of a party and thinking "nobody has any idea how hard this is for me right now." Antonoff offers the statement regarding the first verse that "choosing not to drive over the cliff- in itself- is the ultimate act of trying."
Once Swift realized she wanted a moment with strings on the album, a place she felt Aaron Dessner specializes in, "Epiphany" was quickly born from visuals of bandaged bloody wounds and flashbacks of violence. She drew inspiration from the track after researching her Grandfather who fought in WWII. Swift explained how he never spoke of one particular battle to anyone, ever. She drew inspiration from the question "what would have to happen for you to never be able to speak about something?" She wanted to draw parallels between experiences from the war, and the nurses fighting around the clock during today's COVID-19 pandemic. A song that embodies the helplessness when watching someone lose their life.
Bringing the album near its close, Dessner and Swift discuss their song "Peace." A song tracing the more sharpened edges of Swift's celebrity status, while also commenting on aspects of human complexity. Swift found the music bed to sonically embody the theme of peace and wanted to lyrically challenge the theme itself. "What would it mean to never give someone peace?" Given her lifestyle, she explains that she only has control over so much. To where she raises the question;
"Would it be enough
If I could never give you peace?"
This film was a gorgeous glimpse of an album's writing process. An album in which Swift narrates tales of poetic escapism, a teenage boy learning how to apologize, and how much colder the graveled earth feels when walked by a man in exile. The folklore album is available now on all streaming services, and "Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions" is available exclusively on Disney+.
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