| The song becomes a duet as Justin Vernon from the indie folk band Bon Iver chimes in during the bridge. “Can't not think of all the cost and the things that will be lost,” he says. “Oh, can we just get a pause? To be certain, we'll be tall again – whether weather be the frost or the violence of the dog days. I'm on waves, out being tossed.”
“When I was shipwrecked, I thought of you,” Swift continues. “In the cracks of light, I dreamed of you. It was real enough to get me through. … I was catching my breath, floors of a cabin creaking under my step, and I couldn't be sure. I had a feeling so peculiar this pain wouldn't be forevermore.”
The album became available at the end of a day with as many ups and downs as the song. A record 3,347 covid-19 deaths were reported by state health departments, putting America’s death toll on course to surpass 300,000 in the coming days. “We are in the time frame now that, probably for the next 60 to 90 days, we’re going to have more deaths per day than we had at 9/11 or we had at Pearl Harbor,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said Thursday to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Evermore” is a follow-up to “Folklore,” which came out on July 24. Swift said the isolation and inability to tour during the pandemic has made her prolific. “To put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs,” she wrote on Instagram. “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. … “I loved the escapism I found in these imaginary/not imaginary tales,” she explained. “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.” Swift, who turns 31 on Sunday, has spoken publicly about past periods of apparent depression. This is her ninth studio album. “Folklore” came out just 11 months after “Lover,” her previous album. That prolific run of new content comes after Swift took three years to release “Reputation” in 2017 after her previous album, “1989,” was a smash success. In a radio interview last year, Swift said that the long delay was because she needed a mental break and was not feeling “fresh” enough to create new music. “There have been times where I needed to take years off because I just felt exhausted, or I felt like, really low or really bad," she told Zach Sang in April 2019. “One thing to always keep tabs on is the fact that we have to know that there is no ‘happily ever after’ where we’re just happy forever. Happiness is always going to be a struggle and a challenge that we have to try and meet. … That's not naturally how we're going to feel all the time.” Swift has evolved from country to pop to something that sounds more like alternative rock in these two most recent albums. One of the reasons many sophisticated people admire Swift, despite her bubblegum Top 40 background, is because her lyrics often allude with clever imagery to classic literature and poetry. “Evermore” is no different. In an unusual move, Swift puts the title track as the 15th and final song. The kicker is her saying: “This pain wouldn't be forevermore.” Emily Dickinson ended her poem, “One Sister Have I in Our House,” this way: “I spilt the dew / But took the morn, / I chose this single star / From out the wide night's numbers / Sue - forevermore!” Dickinson’s birthday was Thursday. Taylor Swift was named artist of the year at the American Music Awards for the third consecutive year — even though she was not present at the ceremony because she has been rerecording her early music. [AP / Mesfin Fekadu] | 
