Taylor Swift surprised fans on Thursday with a new, emotionally raw album, “Folklore.”
Her eighth studio album, “Folklore,” is a departure from the upbeat pop we’ve come to expect in recent years from the 30-year-old singer-songwriter.
Each track, released with lyric videos, is evocative and feels almost like reading the pages of someone’s diary.
And that’s exactly what Swift says she intended. In a tweet on Thursday night, she said each song was inspired by certain imagery that she wrote a story around.
“A tale that becomes folklore is one that is passed down and whispered around. Sometimes even sung about” she wrote, in part. “The lines between fantasy and reality blur and the boundaries between truth and fiction become almost indiscernible.”
Swift also dropped a music video, which she directed, for the album's single, "Cardigan."
She said they took extra precautions while filming it to stay safe amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"The entire shoot was overseen by a medical inspector, everyone wore masks, stayed away from each other, and I even did my own hair, makeup, and styling 😂," she said earlier Thursday.
Swift said her “imagination has run wild” in quarantine and that the album is meant to flow “like a stream of consciousness.”
“Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory,” she said. “I’ve told these stories to the best of my ability with all the love, wonder, and whimsy they deserve.”
Swift is known for the storytelling quality of her songs. She even appeared on an episode of VH1’s “Storytellers” in 2012.
"Songs happen in really weird, strange, quirky ways, and to explore the start of them, where they were first brought into the world, where you first got that first little idea, it's wonderful to get to share that with a crowd of 3,000 people," she told VH1 at the time.
