Taylor Swift - Evermore [Green]

Five months after Folklore, Taylor Swift released its companion with less than a day of warning. Evermore arrived in December 2020, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and won nothing at the Grammys, which in retrospect looks like the year's clearest oversight. Aaron Dessner produced the majority of it, with Jack Antonoff and Justin Vernon returning as well.

Where Folklore was hushed and self-contained, Evermore is stranger and more willing to break its own rules. "No Body, No Crime" is a murder ballad with HAIM singing backup. "Coney Island" hands verses to The National. "Long Story Short" is close to a straight rock song, and "Closure" is built on a lurching industrial loop that has no business working. "Champagne Problems" and "Marjorie" are the emotional peaks, the latter a song about her grandmother that uses her actual recorded vocals in the mix.

Swift has called it the woods in winter to Folklore's late summer, and that holds. It is the more experimental of the two albums and, for a lot of people, the better one.

Double LP pressed on green vinyl, including the bonus tracks "Right Where You Left Me" and "It's Time To Go." Republic Records.