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I was listening to a recent episode of Every Single Album where the podcast hosts were discussing 1989 (Taylor’s Version). It was a “mailbag” episode and Nathan and Nora were taking listener questions. Somewhere in the discussion, Nathan mentioned that he considers evermore to be a Christmas album. This caught my attention and my intuition agreed, but I thought it’d be worth investigating further.

As research for this issue of so long daisy mae, I also listened to the evermore episode of Every Single Album where Nathan and Nora break down their favourite songs on evermore. They briefly touch on the “evermore as a Christmas album” concept but it’s certainly not the focus of the podcast episode. So, in honour of evermore turning 3 years old on Taylor’s 34th birthday today, December 13, 2023, let’s look at the track list, lyrics, and style of evermore through the lens of the Christmas season.

One of the most notable style choices of the folklore and evermore eras is the lack of capital letters in the album names and song titles. The argument I’ve seen online is that songs from these albums are less commercial, more experimental and a musical departure. Having the song titles lowercase is an attempt to appeal to the indie/alternative music scene.

I like to think it’s simpler than that. Using only lowercase letters or selectively capitalizing letters is a common stylistic choice in poetry (E.E Cummings and Rupi Kaur come to mind). I think of folklore and evermore as Taylor’s most lyrically complex albums, she builds worlds, creates characters, and combines autobiographic elements with fiction. These albums are poetry.

As mentioned at the top of this post, I’m not an expert, but I am on page 29 of Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook, and that’s something. In this brief introduction to understanding and writing poetry I learned about an important concept called: sound. See, it’s not just what your words look like on paper it’s about how they sound in your head and spoken out loud. Maybe this is obvious to you! The example Oliver gave in the book is “rock” vs. “stone”. “Rock” ends abruptly as you breath out. It’s sharp, jagged, a cliff, maybe. Whereas “stone", fades out as the word exits your lips. It’s a smooth surface that will lightly skim along the water.

At last, let’s look at the songs that feel christmassy!

champagne problems: 🎄a Christmas song about going home to your boyfriend’s house for the holidays and then he surprise proposes and you say no and it’s all very embarrassing.

Your Midas touch on the Chevy door
November flush and your flannel cure
"This dorm was once a madhouse"
I made a joke, "Well, it's made for me"

How evergreen, our group of friends
Don't think we'll say that word again
And soon they'll have the nerve to deck the halls
That we once walked through

“And soon they'll have the nerve to deck the halls, That we once walked through” - this lyric is a rock, not a stone, right? It digs in and pokes me in the ribs. The “nerve”.

gold rush: 🎄this song is the sequel to champagne problems. So it’s a Christmas song by default. In champagne problems we have “your midas touch on the chevy door” - Midas of course being the king with the golden touch. Then in gold rush we have,

But I don't like a gold rush, gold rush
I don't like anticipating my face in a red flush
I don't like that anyone would die to feel your touch
Everybody wants you
Everybody wonders what it would be like to love you

‘tis the damn season: 🎄a Christmas song about hooking up with your hometown boyfriend when you go home for the holidays. It’s straight out of a Hallmark movie.

So we could call it even
You could call me babe for the weekend
'Tis the damn season, write this down
I'm stayin' at my parents' house
And the road not taken looks real good now
And it always leads to you in my hometown

Pretty sure that sums it up? I do like the how casual she makes it sound when she with “‘tis the damn season” and then dropping the “g” in “stayin’ at my parents house”.

happiness:🎄 This one barely makes the cut. It doesn’t feel like a Christmas song at first, but it does fit the “heartbreak/depression Christmas” genre with this lyric, "

Across our great divide
There is a glorious sunrise
Dappled with the flickers of light
From the dress I wore at midnight
Leave it all behind

“Dappled with the flickers of light, from the dress I wore at midnight” sounds like a sequined new year’s eve dress to me. New year, new beginning, “leave it all behind”.

ivy: 🎄 an underrated supporting actor Christmas houseplant you might know from the carol “Holly and Ivy”. In ivy, the song begins with, a Dickens-esque scene:

How's one to know?
I'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones
In a faith forgotten land
In from the snow
Your touch brought forth an incandescent glow
Tarnished but so grand

Are we about to be visited by three ghosts with these lyrics? The “forgotten land”, “incandescent glows” and “tarnished” place me in a historical fiction setting. Of Christmas. In England. And your boss won’t let you take the day off.

The lyrics in this song continue on to span across seasons, we emerge from winter into spring, moving towards the ghosts of Christmases yet to come?

marjorie: 🎄 isn’t a Christmas song per se, but it is a natural fit on a Christmas album. The song was written as a tribute to Taylor’s grandmother who was an opera singer and her vocals also make an appearance on the song. It’s possibly my favourite song from evermore because it speaks to the longing you feel when you lose someone you still had so many questions for,

The autumn chill that wakes me up
You loved the amber skies so much
Long limbs and frozen swims
You'd always go past where our feet could touch
And I complained the whole way there
The car ride back and up the stairs
I should've asked you questions
I should've asked you how to be

I love the rhyming of “long limbs and frozen swims” - in A Poetry Handbook, Oliver describes words ending with an “m” sound as “liquids”, they sounds soft and fluent, which makes this such a pleasing rhyme.

The holidays also tend to be a time when nostalgia and memory of our loved ones feel the strongest. For that reason, it feels appropriate on a sad Christmas album.

evermore - 🎄The title track of the album opens with, “Gray November, I’ve been down since July”, interesting because folklore was release in July of 2020. If you dig deep in your brain, you might remember what July of 2020 felt like. We had a brief reprieve from the pandemic during the summer as people moved their social worlds outdoors, then cases began to rise again as we moved into fall.

Later in song, she sings,

Hey December
Guess I'm feeling unmoored
Can't remember
What I used to fight for

I also recall feeling unmoored in December 2020. It was maybe the worst year ever and I couldn’t see how it could get worse, but I couldn’t see things getting better. It was dark, I didn’t feel comfortable celebrating. I was an extrovert who was suffering.

I recall evermore’s release being such an immense surprise and relief to me. I was desperate to escape the world around me and I fully lost myself in some of these songs. I can’t believe it’s been 3 years.

Thank you for reading along as I make my Christmas album argument, and I think I’ve arrived at my conclusion: it’s a Christmas album, but it falls firmly in the “Christmas Depression” category with other greats like, “If we make it through December” and “Hard candy Christmas”.

so long daisy mae,

Gab

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