Taylor Swift’s ‘Willow’ music video is as glowing as her new album’s reviews
Taylor Swift’s second surprise quarantine album is already here, and you know what that means: So is a new music video.
Along with her acclaimed ninth studio effort, “Evermore,” the pop sensation released a video Thursday night for her latest single, “Willow,” directed by none other than Swift herself. The fairy tale concept sees Swift travel through a wooded wonderland, following a magical, glowing string (think Wonder Woman’s golden lasso) to her true love.
“Life was a willow, and it bent right to your wind,” she sings while diving into a glassy pond. “Head on the pillow, I could feel you sneakin’ in / As if you were a mythical thing / Like you were a trophy or a champion ring / And there was one prize I’d cheat to win.”
Taylor Swift’s second surprise release of 2020 is “Evermore,” recorded, as was the acclaimed “Folklore,” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The “Willow” video comes less than 24 hours after Swift stunned fans Thursday morning by announcing plans to release her second album of 2020 — and less than six months after she dropped her eighth studio collection, “Folklore,” which earned the “Cardigan” artist six Grammy nominations.
“I’m elated to tell you that my 9th studio album, and folklore’s sister record, will be out tonight,” Swift wrote Thursday on social media. “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.”
The songwriting machine, who turns 31 Sunday, has also been busy rerecording her first six albums after music mogul Scooter Braun acquired the master rights to her back catalog in 2019. In November, Braun again sold Swift’s music to a Westwood-based investment fund for more than $300 million.
Taylor Swift revealed the title of her second surprise 2020 album, “Evermore,” less than 6 months after releasing her quarantine collection “Folklore.”
Other titles on the “Evermore” track list include “Champagne Problems,” “Gold Rush,” “Tis the Damn Season,” “Tolerate It,” “Happiness,” “Dorothea,” “Ivy,” “Cowboy Like Me,” “Long Story Short,” “Marjorie” and “Closure,” as well as “No Body, No Crime,” featuring Haim; “Coney Island,” featuring the National; and a title track featuring Bon Iver.
“The more that you say, the less I know / Wherever you stray I follow,” Swift sings in the “Willow” chorus. “I’m begging for you to take my hand / Wreck my plans / That’s my man / You know that my train could take you home / Anywhere else is hollow.”
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