MUSIC REVIEW: Taylor Swift Has Written the Best Music of Her Career with 'evermore' and 'folklore' [Preview]

For so long, Taylor Swift has been the girl who sang her heart out about her string of celebrity boyfriends, seemingly to their eventual detriment. (As if a teenage girl writing award-winning songs about her feelings was unworthy of consideration, as if it meant she had nothing else on her mind.)

But what happens when her love life is finally taken out of the spotlight, and her artistry stands alone, as on July's folklore and December's evermore? Will people (read: music snobs) finally be able to admit that she's an incredible songwriter when they aren't scoffing at the specter of tabloid fodder? (Still looking at you, Pitchfork, for only deigning to review the Ryan Adams cover of 1989 rather than the original.) Do we require Swift to excise the personal and turn to the explicitly fictional, to consider her craft as mature and sophisticated? Folkore eases us into this new world of narrative, of historical and make-believe alike, each rendered with the detail and emotional honesty that Swift consistently has delivered. "The last great American dynasty", as has been discussed, tells the story of a real-life woman who married into old money, while the trio of "cardigan", "august", and "betty" drew us into a high school love triangle across three musical genres and varying moods in shades of pensive, wistful, and rueful.

You can read the rest of this review here!