In The Quantity Ones, I’m reviewing each single #1 single within the historical past of the Billboard Sizzling 100, beginning with the chart’s starting, in 1958, and dealing my approach up into the current. Guide Bonus Beat: The Quantity Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the Historical past of Pop Music.
“It is a extremely unorthodox profession transfer.” That’s one thing {that a} record-label exec says in the trailer for Springsteen: Ship Me From Evil, the brand new biopic about some man who has by no means correctly appeared on this column. Biopics want guys like that to say issues like that. They inevitably transform incorrect. That’s the purpose. The basic albums are all extremely unorthodox profession strikes, made in defiance of this precise kind of record-label exec. You possibly can solely ascend into the pantheon by making extremely unorthodox profession strikes. When somebody inevitably makes a Taylor Swift biopic, or possibly a collection of Taylor Swift biopics, or possibly a Taylor Swift career-retrospective hologram-play that’ll be broadcast on the floor of the moon, some record-label exec will say the identical factor about Folklore.
Springsteen: Ship Me From Nowhere is in regards to the recording of Nebraska, the haunted acoustic four-track album that Bruce Springsteen made earlier than the blockbuster explosion of Born In The USA. Folklore isn’t a haunted acoustic four-track album, however it’s as near that mannequin as Taylor Swift is prone to ever get. Coming from somebody who actually solely ever made blockbuster explosions, Folklore was an enchanting transfer, and possibly even a extremely unorthodox one. When all the world went into sleepy lockdown mode, Taylor Swift known as up the man from the Nationwide and made a document of soppy, evocative, NPR-friendly indie people. It was the least knowingly pop factor that Swift had ever executed, however it nonetheless registered as pop as a result of it was nonetheless a Taylor Swift album. It additionally roped in individuals who had by no means actually taken Swift severely. And it’s a extremely good document. By completely any metric, Folklore was a unbelievable success.
A part of the magic of Folklore was that it didn’t have an infinite rollout full of name partnerships and televised pomp. No one had an opportunity to get sick of the document earlier than it got here out. No one had an opportunity to carve it up into potential singles, both. As an alternative, Swift merely introduced the album on Instagram mere hours earlier than its launch, sending the music critics of the world into mad-scramble mode. (I acquired my evaluation up at 4:35 p.m. on launch day, and I want I’d been a little bit sooner with it. For successive Swift album rollouts, I’d shave an hour or two off of that point.) “Cardigan,” monitor two on Folklore, was the music that had a music video, so it’s the one which went straight to #1. It’s not the very best or catchiest music on the document, however it’s the one which’s getting its personal column immediately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok-a8s8OLBSE
It might be ridiculous to say that Taylor Swift’s profession was in bother earlier than she made Folklore. Taylor Swift’s profession has not been in bother for one single second of her whole life. She’d joined the forever-legend realm earlier than she hit ingesting age. She’d offered kajillions of data, dominating commercially to an extent that solely somebody like Adele might plausibly problem. She had two Album Of The Yr Grammys. The Kanye West enterprise was behind her; she’d received that lengthy conflict of attrition fairly handily. Swift had then received one other PR conflict when big-deal supervisor Scooter Braun purchased the masters for the albums that she recorded for Large Machine, giving her the chance to highlight the fucked-up state of mental property regulation and setting the desk for her virtually unfathomably profitable venture of re-recording her previous music. Fame and Lover had been the biggest-selling albums of their respective years. Swift was doing simply high-quality.
However she wanted a rebrand, a special narrative, one thing. Her album 1989 had been so big, so dominant, that the 2 that got here after it felt by some means smaller. Fame solely despatched one music to #1, and that one, “Look What You Made Me Do,” wasn’t anybody’s favourite Swift music. Not less than within the second, Lover didn’t despatched any songs to #1, and her makes an attempt at massive singles, “Me!” and “You Want To Calm Down,” each felt like grating, pandering, tone-deaf nothings. Each of them peaked at #2, getting stuffed by the continued “Outdated City Highway” phenomenon. (“Me!” is a 3, and “You Want To Calm Down” is a 4. A distinct Lover monitor will finally seem on this column, however not for some time.) Swift moved far past her nation music origins solely to repeatedly lose out to a chunk of cowboy-themed kitsch. You recognize she didn’t like that.
Within the 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana, there’s a scene the place a pajama-clad, visibly bummed-out Taylor Swift finds out that Fame didn’t get a Grammy nomination for Album Of The Yr. She takes a second after which she tells the particular person on the opposite finish of the road — I believe it’s publicist Tree Paine — “You recognize what? Like, that is high-quality. I simply wanted to make a greater document.” When the opposite voice insists (appropriately, in my view) that Fame is a good document, Swift says, “No, I’m making… I’m making a greater document.” Lover is one other nice document, butt-ass singles however, however it didn’t get the Album Of The Yr nom, both. Which may not imply something to you or me, however it most likely means one thing to Taylor Swift. One factor that may imply one thing to you is Swift’s participation within the catastrophic 2019 Cats film, a pop-cultural punchline from the second that the primary trailer dropped. She actually ought to’ve seen that one coming.
Taylor Swift was nonetheless a dominant pop star, most likely the dominant pop star, however issues weren’t trending in the best course. She wanted a second to step again, rethink, and maybe alter her course simply barely. The world gifted her a possibility to do precisely that. Swift deliberate to do some gentle touring after Lover got here out in fall 2019, however COVID modified these plans. For a minute, Swift was like everybody else — bored at house, ingesting wine and watching previous films. For her, that section didn’t final lengthy. In April 2020, Swift texted the Nationwide’s Aaron Dessner about the potential of making some music collectively. Three months later, that they had a complete album prepared for a shock launch.
The Nationwide are the form of band that will get numerous protection on this web site however not on this column, if that is smart. They had been one of many defining indie rock bands of the ’00s and ’10s — dour hangdog good-looking males producing nice quasi-orchestral emotional swells about that disaffected middle-aged dad life. I first noticed the Nationwide in 2005, once they had been on tour with hype darlings Clap Your Fingers Say Yeah, famously blowing that band offstage each evening despite the fact that numerous individuals left earlier than their set. They grew into hard-touring pavilion act, and I heard their music at a number of dinner events. They proceed to make NPR-core indie rock. That’s not probably the most thrilling factor on the earth, however they’re superb at it.
The Nationwide had been a really massive band in 2020, however they weren’t actually at their inventive peak. Their 2019 album I Am Simple To Discover didn’t depart a deep impression on me. Aaron Dessner, one of many Nationwide’s two twin-brother multi-instrumentalists, had been producing for some time, working with fellow indie artists like Sharon Van Etten, Native Natives, and Frightened Rabbit. Aaron and his brother Bryce labored collectively to co-produce Darkish Was The Night time, a 2009 double-disc profit compilation of a lot of the massive acts in that second of respectable, prestige-heavy indie music. However the Nationwide weren’t about to bother the Sizzling 100, and neither had been any of people that Dessner was producing. (The Nationwide nonetheless don’t have any Sizzling 100 hits as lead artists, however they’re credited as featured visitors on “Coney Island,” the duet that Taylor Swift sang with bandleader Matt Berninger later in 2020. That one peaked at #63.)
Taylor Swift preferred the Nationwide. She wasn’t a hyper-vocal fan or something, however I bear in mind being when she included the band’s aspect venture El Vy on some playlist. Swift’s curiosity within the band wasn’t truthfully that stunning. Their music match proper into the snug, homey aesthetic that she typically cultivated. You possibly can think about her, after that scene in Miss Americana, consoling herself over Grammy snubs by throwing on Hassle Will Discover Me. Aaron Dessner first met Swift in 2014, when the Nationwide had been the musical visitors on a Saturday Night time Stay episode hosted by Swift’s pal Lena Dunham. She met him once more in 2019, when she went to see the band play a wet out of doors present in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. There, Swift and Dessner acquired to speaking about songwriting course of, and Dessner informed Swift that he and his brother work by placing collectively instrumental beds after which sending them to Matt Berninger. That lit a spark. Swift figured that she might possibly work like that.
Therein lies the extremely unorthodox profession transfer. Nearly each evaluation of Folklore, together with mine, referenced the “We Are By no means Ever Getting Again Collectively” line about Swift’s ex bumping “some indie document that’s a lot cooler than mine.” Eight years later, Swift made her personal indie document. However Folklore wasn’t essentially cooler than anybody else’s document. The Nationwide didn’t make intimidatingly cool music. In some methods, their sound is as comforting and reassuring as something that Swift ever made. Folklore was an enchanting particular person enterprise that got here out of a specific set of circumstances, however it labored as a end result of a course of that had already been occurring for years.
Final month, my pal and colleague Chris DeVille printed his e-book Such Nice Heights: The Full Cultural Historical past Of The Indie Rock Explosion. (Cop that shit.) Chris’ e-book lays out the lengthy technique of indie rock changing into some model of pop over the course of the 2000s and 2010s, and that story reaches its apex and inevitable ending with Folklore. The Nationwide weren’t precisely an underground band earlier than Taylor Swift acquired maintain of Aaron Dessner. They belonged to the touring-band center class, which looks like a pleasant place to be. However Swift had a imaginative and prescient, and he or she took the Nationwide’s type to absolutely the heights of pop music. Collectively, Swift and Dessner found that the world was prepared for precisely that.
When Swift texted Dessner, he was engaged on new music of his personal. He had a bunch of instrumental tracks that Matt Berninger hadn’t discovered how you can flip into songs. A kind of instrumental tracks was “Cardigan.” It quickly grew to become the primary music that Dessner and Swift wrote collectively. Dessner emailed Swift a folder stuffed with tracks, unsure if something would truly occur with them. Inside a couple of hours, she despatched again a voice memo of “Cardigan,” already totally written. Dessner later informed Pitchfork, “That’s once I realized that this was uncommon — simply the main target and readability of her concepts. It was fairly astonishing.” I wager it was! Each now and again, Taylor Swift will get a possibility to point out another person what a fucking songwriting machine she is. I like these tales.
For a couple of months, Aaron Dessner and Taylor Swift labored collectively in whole secrecy, emailing recordsdata backwards and forwards. Swift labored at her house studio in Los Angeles, and Dessner labored at his house studio in Upstate New York. Dessner introduced in collaborators like his brother Bryce, who did the string association on “Cardigan,” and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, his associate within the aspect venture Large Crimson Machine. However Aaron Dessner couldn’t inform anybody else in regards to the venture — not even his daughter, an enormous Taylor fan. Swift additionally labored on tracks together with her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff. Whereas everybody else went by levels of pandemic boredom and anger and acceptance, Taylor Swift threw herself into the making of Folklore. Inside a couple of months, the album was executed, able to go. Her personal label didn’t even know of its existence till the moments earlier than she introduced it. It was a real bolt of shock and pleasure — first the very concept that Taylor Swift made an album with all these indie-folk guys after which the precise album, which fucking slaps.
I don’t suppose Folklore is the very best Taylor Swift album. It may not even make my high 5, truthfully. There are undoubtedly some lengthy, sedate bits the place my consideration wanders. However there are additionally heaps and plenty of completely unimaginable songs — “The Final Nice American Dynasty,” “My Tears Ricochet,” “Mirrorball,” “This Is Me Attempting,” “Invisible String,” motherfucking “Betty.” Extra to the purpose, Folklore was a transparent sign, to anybody who’d ignored the various earlier clear alerts, that Taylor Swift was the actual deal. Her sparkly melodies and sensitively plainspoken vocals mesh fantastically with Aaron Dessner’s sweepingly tasteful manufacturing. To some critics, that was an issue, since that sweeping tastefulness leaves no room for normal pop-music abandon. However it opens up area for issues like tender, downbeat introspection, and Swift can do all that stuff amazingly nicely, too. It may not be the very best Swift LP, however I’d put Folklore above any album from the Nationwide. (My favourite Nationwide album is Alligator, which guidelines. Folklore guidelines tougher.)
A couple of years earlier than Folklore, the now-disgraced indie-ish man Ryan Adams launched a full-album cowl of Swift’s 1989, and I heard that album within the varieties of espresso outlets the place I by no means heard Swift’s precise music. With Folklore, it was like she made her personal Ryan Adams model of 1989 — a blockbuster pop album that will completely make sense taking part in over the audio system at a bougie bookstore or a craft brewery. A number of different dads in my circle, guys who don’t pay any consideration to present pop music, talked about that, you recognize what, that new Taylor Swift album is fairly good. They had been proper. Folklore was instantly an enormous deal, however it wasn’t made with the Sizzling 100 in thoughts. For actually the primary time, Swift wasn’t chasing radio play, and he or she didn’t actually get it. As an alternative, “Cardigan” debuted at #1 due to streams and downloads, pushed by Swift’s starpower and the aspect of shock.
Taylor Swift didn’t write “Cardigan” about herself. As an alternative, it’s the primary a part of what Swift calls her Teenage Love Triangle trilogy, a set of three Folklore songs about fictional child characters struggling heartbreak and drama earlier than getting lastly coming again to like. It’s like Swift realized that a few of her finest songs had been the teenage-frustration laments that she wrote when she was an precise teenager. Simply after turning 30, she went again to that nicely, doing her finest to recapture the stormy depth of these feelings. A few of these makes an attempt work higher than others. It’s laborious to summon that very same hearth while you’re not speaking about your individual life. Generally, she might do it. “Betty,” the ultimate music of the trilogy, is a Swift basic. “Cardigan” isn’t. It’s OK, although.
“Cardigan” plink-plonks away softly, with Swift intoning traces a couple of classic tee and a brand-new telephone over Aaron Dessner’s drum-machine ripples and plangent pianos. (The primary bunch of instances I heard it, I believed the opening line was about “classic tea,” and I used to be like, “Ew, who would drink classic tea? It might style all musty!” This isn’t a mirrored image on Taylor Swift. It’s simply me being silly.) Because the strings and mellotrons slowly unspool, Swift’s narrator describes the best way that an ex used to make them really feel: “Once I felt like I used to be an previous cardigan beneath somebody’s mattress, you set me on and stated I used to be your favourite.” So when that particular person leaves the narrator’s life, it stings that rather more: “I knew you’d linger like a tattoo kiss/ I knew you’d hang-out all of my what-ifs.” It’s a snug music and it’s about consolation, each in its central metaphor and the best way that feeling of safety disappears when issues disintegrate.
The writing on “Cardigan,” and on a lot of Folklore, is much more flowery than something that Swift had actually tried to that time. I believe that adjustment is the principle motive that she known as herself “your English instructor” when she introduced her engagement final month. These poetic affectations don’t all work for me. This line clangs off the rim: “You drew stars round my scars, however now I’m bleedin’.” Additionally, I don’t just like the bit about “Peter dropping Wendy.” I simply acquired executed with the primary Alien: Earth season, and I believe it’s time that all of us stopped utilizing Peter Pan metaphors. It’s executed. That keg is kicked. Depart it alone. Swift’s melodies on “Cardigan” by no means fairly seize me, however they’ve a pleasing grace, drawing little curlicues within the air. Vocally, she sells the character’s fond desolation. I really feel protecting of that character, even when the music principally fades into the background.
Swift all the time leaves me one thing to hold onto. On “Cardigan,” it’s that central sense of ache. She’s rendered that ache higher loads of instances, however it nonetheless resonates right here. The music seems like what it’s — an early, tentative step in a brand new writing partnership. Swift and Dessner rapidly cranked out a complete lot of labor that, at the least for me, hits loads tougher than “Cardigan.” However I ponder if Swift feels extra-strong about “Cardigan” as a result of it’s the music that unlocked the chances of that partnership. In any case, “Cardigan” was the Folklore music that acquired the nominal-single remedy. It’s the one with a video. Which means that it suits proper into the lengthy, proud custom of Swift selecting not-great first singles from her albums. This time, although, the selection was not a humiliation.
Taylor Swift directed her personal “Cardigan” video, working with a small staff beneath lockdown situations, and he or she’s the one one that seems onscreen. I believe the video is fairly dangerous. Swift is taking part in piano in a dusty attic, after which she’s amazed when she opens the lid and a glowing Spielbergian gentle shines out. So she climbs into the piano, after which she’s in a verdant inexperienced dreamworld, taking part in a piano that’s all lined in moss, with a CGI waterfall popping out of it. Then she climbs into that piano, and he or she’s floating in a river, and he or she has to go swimming after yet one more piano. Yet one more piano-portal later, she’s again in her dusty attic, pulling on a cardigan as a result of she’s all moist. I’m positive the video is all stuffed with delicate allegories and allusions to her personal mythology, however I believe it seems to be like a selfmade Etsy model of a Hallmark card. Additionally, Swift began promoting that cardigan on her web site immediately. She’s nonetheless threatening to direct an precise film, and this video doesn’t instill me with hope that we’ll all uncover that she’s actually a metaphorical third Coen brother.
“Cardigan” debuted at #1 due to gross sales and streaming; it acquired virtually no radio play. Two extra Folklore tracks debuted within the high 10, with the tentative opener “The 1” coming in at #4 and the Bon Iver duet “Exile” at #6. (“The 1” is a 7, and “Exile” is an 8.) Every week after Folklore got here out, “Cardigan” fell to #8 — not as excessive a drop as we’ve seen on this column currently, however fairly steep regardless. In a summer season when a lot of the #1 hits had been loud, crass collaborations from a number of well-known musicians, it felt like an enormous change to have this soft-thrumming singer-songwriter document on high, nonetheless briefly. However Folklore turned out to be precisely the proper of counter-programming. It was delicately bummed-out music that clicked with a bigger cultural temper, and it made sense as streaming-service temper music. It additionally helped construct a story about Swift’s understated artistry, one thing that was all the time there however possibly not fairly so apparent.
As soon as once more, Taylor Swift made the biggest-selling album of the yr. As soon as once more, she received the Grammy for Album Of The Yr in 2021 — her third victory, shifting her right into a four-way tie with previous Quantity Ones artists Frank Sinatra, Stevie Surprise, and Paul Simon. She would later win a fourth trophy and draw back from these bums, standing alone because the one true Grammy champion. Throughout that marketing campaign, “Cardigan” remained entrance and heart. Later in 2020, Swift filmed The Lengthy Pond Periods, a Disney+ particular the place she carried out the entire Folklore album straight by, backed up by Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, at Dessner’s studio. “Cardigan” was a part of that. On the COVID-distanced Grammys the place she received for Folklore, Swift, as soon as once more backed up by Antonoff and Dessner, sang a medley of the three Teenage Love Triangle songs in a stage set made to appear like a dewy, fantastical log cabin.
When Folklore got here out, I didn’t think about that its songs would make any sense in a stadium. For a minute there, I believed that possibly Swift was executed touring stadiums, that this type of chamber-folk merely couldn’t translate into grand spectacle. This is the reason it’s best to by no means hearken to me. What was I considering? Of course Swift discovered a solution to make that work. On the Eras Tour, Swift introduced the log-cabin set again, and he or she sang “Cardigan” whereas draped throughout its roof. It wasn’t the very best a part of the present, however it labored simply high-quality. Immediately, “Cardigan” has upwards of a billion Spotify streams, greater than another Folklore monitor, so I suppose not everybody agrees with me that it’s a little bit of an album lowlight. I might not put “Cardigan” within the grand pantheon of Taylor Swift singles, however that’s high-quality; that individual pantheon is crowded. And anyway, Swift is sort of definitely about so as to add one other Sizzling 100 chart-topper to her whole two weeks from immediately. Within the columns forward, we’ll discuss lots extra Taylor Swift profession strikes, orthodox or in any other case.
GRADE: 6/10
