... there’s no denying that Folklore, easily the most subdued and monochromatic Swift album yet, paints a rich inner landscape with just that one color (iron gray), and it rises to the grim occasion of sinking into a maudlin reverie worthy of this terrible year of global unease and self-quarantine. It’s a Cling to a Grand Piano Bobbing in a Stormy Ocean album for a Cling to a Grand Piano Bobbing in a Stormy Ocean era. Never a bombastic singer as either country stars or pop stars go, Swift sounds as muted as ever here, contemplative and relatably downbeat even when she’s singing a whole-ass song about the vibrant woman who used to live in her $17.75 million Rhode Island mansion.
Yes, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” as upbeat and propulsive as this record gets, is a very explicit tribute to Rebekah West Harkness, the eccentric multiple divorceé and Standard Oil heiress/widow who filled her Rhode Island mansion’s pool with champagne and her fish tank with scotch; “stole her neighbor’s dog and dyed it key-lime green,” a splendid detail after Swift’s own master-songwriter heart; and upon her death in 1982, had her ashes placed in a $250,000 urn designed by Salvador Dalí. (This song is also your first opportunity to hear Swift sing the word “bitch.”) Naturally, Harkness has inspired multiple lengthy explainer blog posts in the past 72 hours, because Swift wrote a song about her, because Swift owns her house now. (The refrain “She had a marvelous time ruining everything” becomes “I had a marvelous time ruining everything.”) And wow is it impressive, genuinely impressive, how charming this song is given the fact that it’s a white pop star, in July 2020, singing a song about her $17.75 million Rhode Island mansion.
[ed. The song Cardigan has nearly 30 million YouTube views, five days after it's release. I've never been much of a Taylor Swift fan but you have to admit she does have her hands pretty firmly grasped on the throat of American pop music and culture these days (and the songs on this album are actually pretty good).]
