“Passed down like folk songs”; An Analysis of Story and Character in Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore

This dissertation strives to explore the curation of stories and character in Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore. Swift’s albums, created from “dreams” throughout the pandemic, explore individual characters and their stories in ways that previous albums released by Swift do not – through self-contained tracks, storylines running throughout an album that merge to create an overarching narrative, exploration of the negative aspect of celebrity and Swift’s own personal life.

I will seek to thoroughly examine the stories presented and how they serve to establish both isolated characters with their own stories and also characters shared throughout several tracks. This will begin with the examination of structure on the two albums, with Swift using both linear and non-linear structures to portray the stories of the characters. Following this, I will analyse the converging storylines that feature across both albums in songs such as betty, august, cardigan, gold rush, dorothea and ‘tis the damn season. I will then move to focus on the use of character in stories, both fictional and non-fictional. The fictional characters examined will be nameless and their stories are self-contained, excluding similar themes, with all stories involved with tales of heartbreak and lost love. Finally, I will draw upon the idea of Taylor Swift herself as a character in the albums. Although Swift has previously used her personal life within her discography, she claims that the two albums were all about approaching music and storytelling differently, thus the way Swift appears across the albums and presents her personal stories contrasts to her previous work.