Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The balance of influence is such that a pop song heard on the radio will last an eternity as an earworm for the vast majority of the population, forever catching them unawares at the most inopportune of moments, but poetry, even in the greatest of hands will rarely, truly, be remembered in full verse by anything like the amount of people.
Even in the hands of the greats, the giants such as Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Anne Askew, Lady Mary Wroth, a group of people together in the same room will not start humming the tune at the same time and then allow the words to flow in unison, there will be no lighters sparked, no phones lit up to convey the feelings of emotions, just silent respect for the artist at work.
However, there is always a crossover, the two-piece Venn Diagram that shows the balanced scales on equal terms, that the pop lyric will inspire unity, but when broken down to its most intrinsic part, the lyric, is seen and heard to be a poetic wonder that captivates and holds beauty and respect Evermore.
In what will surely be seen in time to come as Taylor Swift’s indelibly stamped precious moment, the album in which she was more than just a current pop star of the time and embraced the poetic stance in all its glory, Evermore is filled with on the surface pop sentiment, the insistence of her incredibly talented mind on yet another driven pursuit. Yet underneath, the layers peeled back reveal a form of a ghost made substantial, whole, and as the music of the new album, Evermore, rides the waves and digs into the mind, it is the lyric, hard biting, softly spoken, a concrete glove holstering a velvet hand, that speaks to the soul and becomes recognisably pure poetry.
Across songs such as the opening stance of Willow and the excellent Champagne Problems, the superb Tolerate It, Dorothea, Cowboy Like Me, Long Story Short, and the finale of the album’s title track, Evermore, the poetry runs clear, it is almost as if the world-wide situation of 2020 did not just have a song-writing effect on Ms. Swift, but instead awakened an even deeper love, a more profound responsiveness to the idea of the sonnet in a form acceptable to the 21st Century listener.
Quite extraordinary, beautiful, haunting, passionate and deeply discerning; Taylor Swift’s Evermore is arguably her finest work to date, and it is one of true elegance.
Ian D. Hall