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Taylor Swift Didn’t Write Folklore
At least, not alone. Her process can teach us ad industry folk a lot about how collaboration leads to the best work.
Full disclosure: I’m an inveterate Swiftie. I’ve been a fan since teardrops were falling on Taylor’s guitar, way back in the curly-locked country days, and I’ve loved every song since. But Folklore, Swift’s first alternative album–a moody and decidedly dark departure from her pop oeuvre–knocked me off my feet. It’s her most talked-about album yet.
Fans instantly attributed her songwriting genius to the confines of quarantine: a latter-day Shakespeare (who may have penned King Lear during the plague), Swift was a genie in a bottle, trapped in her mansion with only a guitar and a piano, and emerged with her most brilliant work to date. Taylor herself underscored the quarantine genius narrative, writing on Instagram, “In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result, a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness. Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory.”
While most of us peaked at sourdough loaves in quarantine, Swift gave rise to a career-defining masterpiece.
Except she didn’t.
