Vintage tee, brand new phone, Taylor Swift has recorded yet another surprise album to make you feel less alone.
Less than five months after she dropped her eighth studio album, “folklore,” without any warning, the Grammy-winning singer has announced the surprise release of her new record titled “evermore,” which will be made available everywhere at midnight eastern time on Thursday night.
For the album, Swift again collaborated with her “folklore” co-writers Aaron Dessner of The National, Bleachers frontman and producer Jack Antonoff, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and, of course, songwriter William Bowery, who she recently revealed is a pseudonym for her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn.
“To put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs. 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,” Swift wrote on Instagram early Thursday morning. “I’ve never done this before. In the past I’ve always treated albums as one-off eras and moved onto planning the next one after an album was released. There was something different with folklore. In making it, I felt less like I was departing and more like I was returning.”
She added, “I loved the escapism I found in these imaginary/not imaginary tales. 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.”
“Evermore” will span 15 tracks, and the deluxe digital album will include two bonus songs. Haim, The National and Bon Iver will all feature on the record.
The singer said that the album serves as an early present for her fans meant to coincide with her 31st birthday on Sunday, noting that the milestone is her lucky number 13 in reverse.
“You’ve all been so caring, supportive and thoughtful on my birthdays and so this time I thought I would give you something,” she added. “I also know this holiday season will be a lonely one for most of us and if there are any of you out there who turn to music to cope with missing loved ones the way I do, this is for you.”
Swift also revealed that she’ll be releasing a music video for the album’s lead single, “willow,” along with the record, adding that “every precaution was made” to ensure the safety of cast and crew members on set.
In a photo announcing the video, Swift is wearing a cream-colored lace dress that resembles a wedding gown — which is sure to fuel speculation that she’s already engaged to Alwyn.
“Folklore” is undoubtedly Swift’s most universally acclaimed record to date, appearing on the top spot on many annual “Best Of” lists, and nabbing the singer five Grammy nominations last month, including Album of The Year and Song of The Year.
The album was also a personal triumph for Swift, who said the process distilled her songwriting into its purest forms, as she crafted the songs almost entirely in isolation.
In November, Swift released a documentary on Disney+ that chronicles the making of “folklore” and features her first performances with with Antonoff, Dessner and Vernon.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly released earlier this week, Swift expressed that she couldn’t entirely shake the experience of writing the album, hinting that more songs of similar ilk might be on the way.
“I have this weird thing that I do when I create something where in order to create the next thing I kind of, in my head, attack the previous thing. I don’t love that I do that but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I just still love it,” she told the outlet. “I’m so proud of it. And so that feels very foreign to me. That doesn’t feel like a normal experience that I’ve had with releasing albums.”
And if she wasn’t busy enough, Swift is also currently at work rerecording her first six albums as part of an effort to reclaim ownership of her masters amid an ongoing fight to control her musical legacy.
Earlier this month, she whetted fans’ appetite for the rerecorded songs with a snippet of the new version of her hit ballad “Love Story.”