The singer collaborated with beau Joe Alwyn once again on her ninth studio album, sparking plenty of fan speculation.
Taylor Swift released her ninth studio album, Evermore, on Friday, thrilling fans with the surprise drop and immediately sparking plenty of fan conversation about her own relationship, given the album's various romantic storylines.
This isn't anything new for Swift, who ignited fan rumors about an engagement to beau Joe Alwyn with the release of her 2019 album, Lover, as well as her newly GRAMMY-nominated album, Folklore, which was released in July.
The lyrics on Evermore had fans on social media buzzing once again -- about everything from a breakup to a secret marriage -- and while Swift didn't address any of those rumors directly, she did share a look at her creative process upon Evermore's release, describing the album as a "sister record" to Folklore and explaining how she and her collaborators (which include Alwyn, once again under the pseudonym "William Bowery") put together the songs as "17 tales, some of which are mirrored or intersecting with one another."
"The one about two young con artists who fall in love while hanging out at fancy resorts trying to score rich romantic beneficiaries. The one where longtime college sweethearts had very different plans for the same night, one to end it and one who brought a ring. Dorothea, the girl who left her small town to chase down Hollywood dreams – and what happens when she comes back for the holidays and rediscovers an old flame."
"The ‘unhappily ever after’ anthology of marriages gone bad that includes infidelity, ambivalent toleration, and even murder. The most righteous motive, to avenge the fallen. The realization that maybe the only path to healing is to wish happiness on the one who took it away from you. One starring my grandmother, Marjorie, who still visits me sometimes…if only in my dreams."
Swift also admitted in her post that, like many in 2020, "I have no idea what will come next."
"I have no idea about a lot of things these days and so I’ve clung to the one thing that keeps me connected to you all," she wrote. "That thing always has and always will be music. And may it continue, evermore.”
Swift announced the surprise release of Evermore on Thursday morning, sharing with fans that Folklore's follow-up was born out of continued creative inspiration during her quarantine downtime.
"To put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs," she wrote on social media. "To try and put it more poetically, it feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of this music. We chose to wander deeper in."
Evermore includes creative collaborations with Jack Antonoff, The National's Aaron Dessner, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, and Alwyn -- all of whom also contributed to Folklore. The album also "welcomed some new (and longtime) friends to our musical kitchen table," including HAIM, and The National, officially.
"I’ve never done this before," Swift wrote. "In the past I’ve always treated albums as one-off eras and moved onto planning the next one after an album was released. There was something different with Folklore. In making it, I felt less like I was departing and more like I was returning. I loved the escapism I found in these imaginary/not imaginary tales. I loved the ways you welcomed the dreamscapes and tragedies and epic tales of love lost and found into your lives. So I just kept writing them."
Evermore is out now. See more on Swift in the video below.
RELATED CONTENT:
