Taylor Swift opens up about her lockdown album experiment on special anniversary

Virgin Radio

26 Jul 2024, 09:52

Taylor Swift celebrated the fourth birthday of her eighth album, folklore, earlier this week.

While performing her final Eras Tour show in Hamburg, Germany, on Wednesday 24th July, the ‘Betty’ singer paid special attention to the album (sometimes jokingly referred to as her favourite child by fans) as it turned four years old.

During her show’s surprise song segment, the multi-Grammy award-winning artist delighted fans by bringing back the popular folklore track ‘The Last Great American Dynasty’ to her show, after it was axed from the folklore portion of her Eras setlist during a shakeup ahead of her international shows.

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Swift mixed the song with her track ‘Run’ from Red, just as her other surprise song of the evening was a medley of fellow Red song ‘Nothing New’ and her Midnights hit ‘Dear Reader’.

But as well as bringing Swift’s Rhode Island Holiday House-focused song back onto the setlist for folklore’s anniversary, the singer also opened up during the show about her experience of experimenting with and releasing folklore during lockdown in 2020.

The ‘Love Story’ singer called Covid “such a challenge” for creators used to be able to entertain and interact regularly with their thousands of fans, but added “it was so fulfilling” in the end for her. 

Opening up about how she worked on creating the album art for folklore without her usual team of stylists and hair and makeup artists, she added: “I ordered all these nightgowns online and brought them and then did my own hair and makeup.

“It just makes me happy to look back on that period of time because we never made anything in that way before that and it was cool to know that we could.”

She also praised the way fans “embraced this album and the storytelling on this album,” gushing about how the support it received “just warmed my heart. I'm so appreciative of it.”

After the success of folklore, Swift was inspired to keep creating during lockdown, and ended up releasing a second similarly story-focused album evermore in December 2020.

And while her next two albums Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department returned to Swift's more traditional style of album design and release, the enduring inspiration of folklore and evermore’s different approach can still be seen on both.