No one is prouder to be a millennial than Taylor Swift. However, the megastar doesn’t always love fulfilling generational tropes. Swift recently opened up about the loneliness she felt while writing her surprise summer 2020 album Folklore.
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Taylor Swift Imagined Herself Writing Folklore ‘On Parchment With a Feathered Quill’
Swift, 34, painted a picture all too familiar for many women her age during the Australian leg of her “Eras” tour. The singer described herself as “a lonely millennial woman covered in cat hair drinking my weight in white wine.”
“[I was] imagining that… I was instead a ghostly Victorian lady wandering through the woods with a candle in a candlestick holder, and I wrote only on parchment with a feathered quill,” Swift said.
“That was not what I looked like when writing Folklore,” she continued, “but that’s all that matters, is the delusion.”
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Folklore Was a Departure From Taylor Swift’s Previous Albums
From that escapism, Folklore was born. The album was a surprise in both the literal and figurative sense. Swift dropped her eighth studio album in July 2020 with zero marketing or fanfare.
Sonically, Folklore took a hard left turn from the candy-coated pop of 2019’s Lover and the grungier electropop of 2017’s Reputation. Instead, Folklore saw Swift lean fully into “cottage-core” vibes, with mellow, stripped-down ballads about fictional love triangles and difficult women.
Taylor Swift Was ‘Lonely’ Even In The Company of Joe Alwyn
Swifties were quick to point out that despite feeling lonely, Swift wasn’t exactly alone during Folklore‘s conception.
The “Anti-Hero” singer shared a home with then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, who even earned a couple songwriting credits on the 2021 Album of the Year. This most recent revelation has many fans convinced that the Folklore era signaled the demise of Swift’s relationship with Alwyn — three years before it officially ended.
Swift and Alywn announced their split in April 2023, after six and a half years of dating. Five months later, the “Eras Tour” supernova was spotted at Arrowhead Stadium cheering on tight end Travis Kelce as his Chiefs faced down the Chicago Bears.
In the five months since, Swifties have witnessed significantly more of the “Eras Tour” star’s romantic life than at any previous point in her 18-year career — particularly during her intensely private relationship with Alwyn.
“Now she knows the difference between a boy and a man,” one user wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Featured image by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
