开头讲了这张专辑的创作初衷。这张专辑因为疫情的缘故，采用的是远程协作的方式完成的，是一种“chart a new path”积极面对的方式。除此之外Taylor也希望用这张专辑和那些焦虑的心灵一起度过这段不确定的时光。 这张专辑既有执念、焦虑，又表达了希望。

Jack Antonoff: I feel like it’s also one of the reasons why it resonates with me so much is because, in the dismantling of all our systems of life that we’ve known in the pandemic, you’re left with two options. You either cling to it and try to make it work, or to just say, “well I guess I’m just gonna chart a new path” and kinda get a frontier mentality. And I think it was such a thrilling use of quarantine to say like, “Well, everything’s a blur, so I’m just gonna rewrite it."

Taylor: There’s something about the complete and total uncertainty about life that causes endless anxiety, but there’s another part that causes sort of a release of the pressures that you used to feel.

1 The 1

“I’m doing good. I’m on some new shit, been saying yes instead of no”, it applies to the situation that the song is written about where you’re updating a former lover on what your life is like now and trying to be positive about it. But it was also where I’m creatively where it’s like, I’m just saying yes, I’m just putting out an album in the worst time you could put one out.

2 Cardigan

3 The last great American Dynasty

这首歌是写给Rebekah Harkness的。她和石油大亨Bill结婚，选了一处房子名叫“假日乐园”。她是Taylor罗德岛Watch Hill豪宅(Holiday House)的前任主人。

Rebekah家中本就富裕，加上四任丈夫都非富即贵，她成为了顶级名媛，非常有名、有钱、有才。很多艺术家都是她的座上宾，她也组建了自己的芭蕾舞团。但光鲜亮丽的她也有一些怪异的举动，比如歌词里提到的用香槟刷泳池、把邻居养的狗偷来猫染成绿色等等。像歌词里写的"she had a marvelous time Ruining everything."

歌的前半段写的是Rebekah的故事。然后bridge里最后一句是 "and it was bought by me”，故事的主人公变成了Taylor。这座豪宅把两个有着相似经历的女人的故事串在了一起。这首歌hold an entire story of somebody’s life and move between generations.

Jack: That song is such a folklore moment to me, because it’s not about you, but it is all about you.

4 Exile

这里在讲另一个co-writer William Bowery的时候好可爱，每次看我都要笑。真的很酷，钢琴部分、第一部分的verse的词居然都是Joe写的。我真的惊了。Bon Iver(Justin Vernon)写的bridge，厉害！

5 My tears ricochet

最好的朋友反目成仇是最可怕的，因为他们知道怎么样才能最快、最狠地伤害你。

In all of the superhero stories, the hero’s greatest nemesis is the villain that used to be his best friend.

6 Mirrorball

这首歌我之前没想到是这样解读的。Mirroball是被观赏的客体，是娱乐的产物，本质是碎片，却在光的照射下光彩耀人。我们也像反光球一样，被切成不同的碎片，shimmering beautiful，向不同的人展示不同的面。这是大多数人的现实，更是艺人的现实。因为疫情，Taylor的演出被取消了，失去了光照的mirrorball，还是trying everything to keep you laughing at me.即使得到的可能是嘲笑，还是迫切地希望你的注意力在我身上。

另外，I’ll show you every version of yourself tonight在我看来也别有深意，你是怎么样的，你看到的mirrorball就是怎么样的，每个人见到的mirrorball都是不一样的。我们怎么看待这张专辑，觉得它是疗愈还是觉得它让你悲伤，那都是从mirrorball千万面中见到的、独属于你的那一面。你见到的，是你自己。

这首歌和This is me trying是可以相对照的。

They reflect light, they are broken a million times and that’s what makes them so shiny, we have people like that in society too. They hang there, and every time they break, it entertains us. And when you shine a light on them, it’s the glittering, fantastic thing, but then a lot of the time when the spotlight isn’t on the, they’re still there, up on a pedestal, be okay.

It was a metaphor for celebrity but it’s also a metaphor for so many people.

You have to be different versions of yourself for different people, everybody has to be duplicitous. That’s part of the human experience but it’s also exhasting. Everyone of us has the ability to become a shape-shifter.

Jack: it’s a great piece of pandemic-time work, but it’s not about pandemic, it’s about the experience of what happens to an artist when you’re living through the pandemic.

7 Seven

Taylor谈这首歌时候说到，她已经不在生气的时候狠狠摔在地上耍赖，把东西扔到妈妈身上，不会放肆尖叫了。但是她觉得有东西随着她的被教育、文明化而流失了。

When did I stop doing that when I was upset? When did I stop being so outraged that I would throw myself on the floor, and throw the cereal at my mom? So the idea is, please picture me before I learn civility, like I used to scream anytime I wanted. Obviously we can’t throwing tantrums all the time, and we learn that that’s not the right thing to do, but there’s something lost too.

8 August

谈到august就一定要讲讲cardigan和betty这两首歌了。男主角James在和betty谈恋爱的同时，出轨了august。它们也是相互对照的，跟连续剧一样，从不同人物的角度去写这段故事。

august是从这段三角恋中“小三”的视角去写的。Taylor说，这种“小三”角色看起来都是十恶不赦的，但是从“小三”本人的角度来看，这是一段非常卑微的爱情故事。她想要争取到自己喜欢的人，甚至因为一丝James可能和她约会的希望就可以取消所有的计划，只是等着他随便打电话过来说一声“meet me behind the mall”。被深深吸引的同时，她很清楚，她和James在八月的短暂情愫，会随着八月的逝去而消失殆尽，他会回到betty身边。August slipped away into a moment in time, cuz it was never mine, and you were never mine.太卑微了，太让人心疼了。

August was obviously about the girl that James had this summer with, so she seems like she’s a bad girl, but really, she’s not a bad girl. She’s a sensitive person who really fell for him and she was trying to seem cool and seem like she didn’t care because that’s what girls have to do. She was trying to let him think that she didn’t care, but she really did and she thought they had something really real. He goes back to betty. The idea that there’s some bad, villain girl in any type of situation who takes your man is actually a total myth because that’s not usually the case at all. Everybody has the feelings and wants to be seen and loved.

9 This Is Me Trying

这首歌是写给“失败者”的。有很多人每天都在抗争着，和自己内心的抑郁，和某些瘾。努力地往前爬，但这种努力只有自己看得到，而无论若何努力，结果仍是别人眼里的乱七八糟。Taylor还讲到有些人在学校里表现得非常出色，但离开了学校，没有学校规定好的课程，他开始失去方向，用酒精麻痹自己，然后每一分钟都trying not to。

I’d been thinking about people who, if they’re either suffering through mental illness or they’re suffering through addiction or they have an everyday struggle. No one pats them on the back everyday, but everyday they are actively fighting something. But there are so many days that nobody gives them credit for that, and how often must somebody who’s in that sort of internal struggle must wanna say to everyone in the room, “you have no idea how close I am to going back to a dark place”.

Jack: “You have no idea how hard it is to get to the point where you guys think is still shitty.” When you’re doing your damn best, and it’s not good enough. We’re all doing our best and feeling like it’s not even close to good enough.

The second verse is about someone who felt like they had a lot of potential in their life in our school days to excel and to be patted on the back for something, and then I think a lot of people get out of school and there are less abilities for them to get gold stars. You have to make all these decisions and pave your own way, there’s no set class course you can take. I think a lot of people feel really swept in that. This person is lost in life and then starts drinking and every second is trying not to.

10 Illicit Affairs

这首歌不是Taylor自己的亲身经历。她知道粉丝想要知道她的近况，让她讲出自己的感受，但她慢慢发现全自传的创作有点局限，于是她从书、电影里找别人的故事，跳脱了自身局限。

11 Invisible String

Taylor在给前男友的宝宝送礼物之后写的这首歌。这首歌有点宿命的味道，有点浪漫主义色彩，往前走的每一步，无论是欢喜还是苦难，都让我们离命定的最终价值更近了一步。

I kind of love the romantic idea that every step you’re taking, you’re taking one step closer to where you’re supposed to be, guided by this little invisible string.

Aaron Dessner: It is all about fate.

12 Mad Woman

我第一次听专辑的时候，我对这首歌的印象最深。女性面对男性的过线行为，没有权利表现愤怒。愤怒就是小气、斤斤计较，是羞耻的，没有人会喜欢歇斯底里的女人。女性的自我保护行为会被认为是攻击本身。

For centuries we’ve been expected to absorb male behavior silently. Oftentimes when we in our enlightened state and our emboldened state, respond to bad male behavior, or somebody just doing something that was absolutely out of line. That response is treated like the offense itself. It’s like I have absolutely no right to respond or I’m crazy, I have no right to respond or I’m angry, I have no right to respond or I’m out of line.

13 Epiphany

这首歌又是一首非常非常特别的歌。这首歌前半部分讲的是Taylor的祖父在二战期间于作战前线服役的故事。祖父从不跟儿女，不跟妻子讲自己的作战经历，Taylor在想，经历了多大的创伤才会一生都不愿再谈起那段回忆。后半部分讲的是疫情期间的医生护士们，他们和她的祖父一样，正在经历可能一生都不愿再提起的苦难。虽然悲怆，但这悲怆中也有一丝欣慰的色彩， “only 20 minutes to sleep but you dream of epiphany, just one single glance of relief, to make some sense of what you’ve seen.”。

I realize that there are people, right now, taking a 20-minute break in between shifts at a hospital, who are having this kind of trauma happen to them right now, that they will probably never want to speak about.

There have been times in my life where things have fallen apart so methodically, and I can’t control how things were going wrong, and nothing I did stopped it. And I felt like I’d just been pushed out of a plane, and was like scratching at the air on the way down.

This lockdown could’ve been a time where I absolutely lost my mind, and instead I think this album was a real floatation device for both of us.

14 Betty

讲到william我又要开始笑了。整个chorus都是Joe写的，真的服气。他们调侃william的时候好好笑哦。

“Betty”是连续剧中用James的视角写的，James向Betty忏悔自己的出轨，说“和她在一起却一直想着你” 。bridge那里的“When she pulled up like a figment of my worst intentions, she said, James get in， let’s drive”真的把august刻画成一个那种很坏的抢人男朋友的诱惑女郎，把自己描述成一个无辜的被蛊惑的形象了。当然，这也是上帝视角了，每个人都有这种“不道德”的时刻。

可怜的august通篇没有她的姓名，通篇只有James向betty告白。在他看来那段出轨的时间是邪恶的，可是对于august来说就是一切啊。

He was singing the chorus of it from a man’s voice, from a masculine perspective. I’ve written so many songs from a female’s perspective of wanting a male apology. We decided to make it from a teenage boy’s perspective apologizing after he loses the love of his life because he’s been foolish.

15 Peace

这首歌讲的是Taylor无法控制因为自己的艺人身份给家人、朋友、爱人带来的各种不便，这让她非常不安。如果我无法给你带来peace，你仍然愿意接受我吗？即使我很可能不是你最好的选择，你还愿意选择我吗？

It kind of goes against the title, like I could never give you peace, over the most peaceful sounding instrumental track. I can’t stop from you getting a call in the morning that says, the tabloids are writing this today, I can’t help it if there’s a guy with a long lens camera two miles away with a telescope lens taking pictures of you, I can’t stop these things from happening. Is the stuff that I can control enough to sort of block out the things that I can’t?

Aaron Dessner: I have in my life suffered from depression, and I’m a hard person to be in a relationship with because I go up and down, and I can’t help it. It’s a chemical thing that happens sometimes. Somehow the song captures the fragility fo what that’s like to be in a relationship with someone who may or may not have peace.

You want them to have as much peace in their life as possible and reconciling the fact that you might not be their best option for that, but is it still a deal they wanna take?

16 Hoax

Taylor原本把这首歌放在了最后一首，因为她认为这首歌是主题性把所有歌串联在一起。虽然我不是很懂。也许在她看来，所有的爱都是不安定的、随时可能变成切身伤害的吧。

With this song being the last song on the album, it kind of embodied all the things that this album was thematically like confessions, incorporating nature, emotional volatility and ambiguity at the same time, sort of love that isn’t just easy.

I think the part that sounds like love to me is, “don’t want no other shade of blue but you, no other sadness in the world would do”. It sounds like what love really is, like who would you be sad with, and who would you deal with when they were sad. And like, grey skies everyday for months, would you still stay?

17 The Lakes

这是一首关于逃离的歌，逃离到一个美丽的、富有诗意的、宁静地方。我觉得这首歌比Hoax更适合做这张专辑的结束歌曲，因为它充满了希望。她可以继续自己喜欢的创作，但同时可以摒弃名气而来的副作用，就像所有拥有exit plan逃到 Lake District的英国艺术家一样。

“也许我没办法现在就到The Lakes，或者哪都去不了”，但她找到了逃离的理由，和一个能和她一起逃离的人。

The Lakes is really talking a lot about relating to people who hundreds of years ago, had the same exit plan and did it. I went to William Wordsworth’s grave and just sat there, and I was like, wow, you did it. You just went away and you kept writing, but you didn’t subscribe to the things that were killing you. That’s really the overarching thing that I felt when I was writing folklore is, I may not be able to go to the lakes right now, or to go anywhere, but I’m going there in my head. This escape plan is working.

Jack: To me, the hope in this body of work is that it’s not "I can’t do this, I’m out”, it’s “I’ve found something worth escaping with” and a person to escape with. That’s a huge sincere statement of hope that everything I’m naming is completely small compared to this love.

第三刷了，还是边看边哭。第一次看没有字幕，靠着蒙和猜一知半解，现在看了两次带字幕的，对这张专辑有了更多的理解，越哭越凶。

首先贡献一段自己超级赞赏的一位豆油@七姐Claudia对于folklore的解读：

Taylor Swift《folklore》 特殊时代的产物（歌词赏析持续更新中...

看完迪士尼的folklore纪录片之后来补充几个Claudia没有cover到的歌曲：

The One：社畜在摸鱼或者工作间隙长舒一口气时突然想起roaring twenties时和自己一起往许愿池丢硬币的人。歌词中大量虚拟语气的使用加重了这首歌的悲凉色彩。we were really something,但已经过时了。

Exile：本砖我除了Betty（老霉粉的自然选择）最喜欢的一首。一直觉得霉霉的Bridge是最厉害的。这首歌可谓登峰造极。完全可以想象我一对已经分开的couple在深夜里背对背复盘这段失败的恋情，双方在内心里都各执一词。“I never learned to read your mind/You never gave a warning sign/I gave so many signs.”糟糕，想起来几年前被男孩质问：“你所有的不满意为什么不和我说出来”…行吧。

Mirrorball：反映浮躁的社会中每个人忙于扮演自己、父母、爱人、朋友、同事心中不同的角色。每人都是演员，然而每人都像舞池中间的mirrorball，当灯光聚焦在自己身上时，用一个绚丽的形态折射出别人最美好的形象（想让身边所有人开心并不自觉用different versions of me来迎合），而当一切黯淡下来，只留下角落里粉身碎骨的躯壳。

Seven：霉回忆起儿时的一位朋友而创作。个人认为这首歌和我超级喜欢的Puff the Magic Dragon有异曲同工之妙，“神龙长生不老，而小孩却终要长大”。失去的不止是一位童年挚友，而是整个童年。

August：与Cardigan和Betty是同一个故事。讲的是一段从一开始就能够预见到没有任何结果的illicit affair. 最终James回到Betty身边，而热烈上头的八月已经过去了。But we were still changing for the better. Wanting was enough.疫情期间的绝望和空虚让人容易做蠢事，但回头看看还是很感激生命中出现了这一段插曲，让我如此丧失理智地迷恋你。

Peace：霉霉的Cowriter Aeron在抗击抑郁症之后的反思。“可能我这种敏感、矫情又缺乏安全感的人永远都不能成为一个可以依靠的人，不能给你带来片刻的安宁。但你还会选择和我共度余生吗？”

Hoax：霉霉在纪录片里袒露这首歌的名字来源于自己对x出现在词汇中的一种偏爱。Your faithless love is the only hoax I believe in.怎么说呢，希望自己别再体验这种比悲伤更悲伤的事。

才发现之前完全没有认真听这张专辑，只是草草地“泛听”。看了纪录片才发现每首歌立意这么高。例如epiphany多线程包含了疫情和泰勒斯的家族历史两个主题，cardigan, august, betty从三个人的角度写下了一个三角关系，还有很多歌从不同人的视角和非常小的点切入……folklore是她第一张不是写自己的故事的专辑，而站在各种各样人的立场讲各种各样的故事。到这里我才明白专辑名“folklore”的真正含义。

作词上绝对达到了泰勒斯的巅峰，其深度也不是一般的创作者能企及的。之前泰勒斯的词作给人的感觉是，细腻，能引起共鸣，story-telling一流。而folklore则是在此基础上把诗意和思考发挥到了极致。在讲别人的故事同时，能够完全以第一人称代入地将每一点细小的情感捕捉并用准确的文字叙述。

第一次被一个流行歌手的思想高度震撼到，泰勒斯现在说起话来也是文气邹邹。她在纪录片说了，她每天都要看书和看电影，并思考其中的一些问题，这可能也是她创作的灵感源泉。这也说明真的要多看书多看电影，有积累才有输出。（但是我现在太忙了😭

2021.7.28，2:25，看完了。

这是她送给粉丝们的礼物，一场疫情期间的线上演唱会。 没有像预料中那样落泪，以看巡演纪录片和美国小姐的经验来推测自己这次的反应，却忘了要以时间地点条件为转移。 这支纪录片的底色很温和，具有生命力。温馨，是我看了后想到的第一个形容词。两个人或三个人坐在一起交谈，挨个讲自己关于这首歌的想法，然后镜头切到他们一起表演这首歌的情景，之后再是交谈，循环往复。 表演地点是一幢立在林中水畔的木屋，就该是在这样一所小屋里演奏这样一支专辑，在这样静谧的森林中，在平静的水面边，叙唱着一首又一首民间故事。 但在听羊毛衫和流放时还是忍不住红了眼眶，既是这两首歌的底色令人控制不住地有些忧郁，又因为对自己有特别的意义，它们。 乔真的太厉害了，一直感觉流放的旋律非常流畅，情感递进很自然，到桥段时更是有令人心颤的力量（但那段好像是贾斯汀写的，好吧）。没有想到他还参与了贝蒂这首歌的创作，这首歌是他先想出桥段，然后霉霉提出一起写首歌，就有了完整的贝蒂。 霉说乔：“他就是个傻瓜”时，杰克强调“我没见过他，不太清楚”，但霉一直重复说“他就是”，很可爱，动态的恋爱状态，不再仅限于照片中，更加鲜活了。 语言匮乏，无法完整描述整场看下来的感受，只能说心底一直都很柔软，看她这样舒服地创作，无意间从几首歌到一张专辑，太美妙也很自然，是水到渠成的事情。 演出完成啦，“要来点威士忌吗？”

看到一个博主说她听到过的一个观点：很多艺术家的代表作是在二十多岁的时候写出来的，他们作的词谱的曲画的画，到六十岁听来还能共情，还真跟当时就经历了一生似的。

Folklore就给人这样的感觉。

这张专辑对我而言的关键词就是：共鸣感。第一次听，是夏天的一个暴雨夜，一口气听完了一整张专，第一印象就是觉得歌词太美了，泰勒斯女士是诗人吧！而且选在这样一个时间听，认真看歌词的时候脑袋里也会不自觉地又回想起自己生活中的一些碎片和感受，淅淅沥沥的雨配上抓耳的旋律，真的太美好了。

看他们讲述创作背后的故事和经过就像是自己考完试之后对答案的过程，自己的很多想法和感受都从制作人的口中一点点得到了印证，真的是一种很奇妙的感觉。当然，还有好多他们讲述的长久以来积累的巧思和灵感迸发的瞬间，会觉得真的太会想太会写了吧。

这张专辑刚开始听到就觉得和以前的很不同，表面上甚至像是回到了《1989》时期，可是认真看歌词仔细听旋律又觉得比那个时期“丰富”了很多。就像霉霉自己说她很喜欢这张专辑的一个原因就是，她从之前的那个体系跳脱出来了，不再只写自己的故事和经历，去回应八卦和媒体，而是用一种观察者的角度去抓取和记录我们普通生活中每一个瞬间的感受和体验，可能这也是这张专辑极易让我产生共鸣的原因。

看完纪录片之后觉得对这张专辑和霉霉的喜爱又上了一层。这张专辑真的太细腻了，细腻到纪录片里霉霉说到自己创作其中一些作品时所说的话就像曾经在我的头脑里出现过，只是当时很混乱或者只是一闪而过，我还来不及整理就被她这样清楚地表达了出来。所以她更像一个冷静的生活观察家，讲了太多太多每个人可能都会有的经历和思考：生活不确定性所引起的焦虑、打破僵局的途径、人们面对不同群体的多面性、对生活的掌控感、女性的生存环境和女性反抗、评价体系消失之后的迷茫、自我内卷和自我拯救、社会和自我的苛责。

霉霉在这张专辑中站在了一个更高的视角去创作去思考去表达，所以初听时感觉它不事雕琢旋律和乐器甚至显得过于朴实无华，却又把生活中每一个serendipity娓娓道来。可是这就是生活呀，大体平稳流逝而过，可是总还是有各种心碎时刻和aha moment跳出来，这样才有趣嘛。

在看这个纪录片之前，我是对folklore不屑一顾的，因为我本身就不是country music的死忠粉，而且整专没有什么起伏，听起来很催眠，而且氛围是属于比较丧的那种。这使得我第一次在霉女士出新专之后没有立马把专辑完整的听一遍然后给出评价，因为……我真的没有耐心和心情去听完这样一张专辑。

然而转折来了。

要不是这么一部片子，我相信在很长一段时间里我还会保持在点进专辑页面只听exile和august的状态。

这个live版本完全仅仅就是录音室版本的acoustic+变调+重新编曲，但是我就是感觉每一首歌都好听了起来，并且对每首歌的灵感讲述是我觉得最棒的部分。

我一直认为当你从创作过程开始了解一首歌到听完它看完歌词之后才是对一首歌做到了百分之百的了解.然而这很难实现，因为如今你面对的大多数是一首首已经封装好的歌曲，这样就很难从“灵魂”层面把握一首歌，但是Taylor在这一方面给听众以满足。从1989的vocal memo到这部“纪录片”（私以为不能叫做纪录片因为内容含量其实不多），能让我们一窥歌曲的创作过程。当你了解了一首歌的灵感，相应地就会更认真的欣赏这个作品，folklore就是极好的例子。

从一开始的听不进去，到我在这部106分钟的纪录片中听完了整专并且了解了每首歌的灵感，folklore的地位在我的心目中迅速升高。也许它没有1989的标志性流行风格，没有Lover的独特主题，但是它具有前两者都没有的深度和故事性。Folklore适合一个人的静静的什么也不干的时候欣赏，而不是作为生活的bgm（想起了在三里屯Apple Store曾听到过invisible string），因为它背后的情感和故事不适合分享，适合一个人的感受。

在疫情的封锁下，Taylor Swift推出这么一张专辑，让我看到了她感性的一面，并且这张专辑的质量和灵感，让我看到了她艺术家和创作天才的一面。

folklore是一张值得潸然泪下的专辑。

P.S.folklore年专给爷冲！！！

循环了一天录音室版本的《folklore》，比正式版更加充满感情和生命力，重新爱上了之前很多无感的歌。但不知为何，最爱的永远都是《the 1》，霉霉很擅长用轻描淡写的笔触描写人生的错失和遗憾，以及那些永远无望的悲剧浪漫。

I guess you never know, never know, and if you wanted me you really should’ve showed.

But it would’ve been fun, If you would’ve been the one.

If one thing had been different, would everything be different today?

Rosé flowing with your chosen family, and it would've been sweet, if it could've been me.

等有空的时候再来写乐评吧，先挖个坑。