17 Bryan Kirby – Ghosts, Blood, and Death: The Gothic Nature of Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore

Bryan Kirby (he/him/his) is a science teacher and technical theatre director in Connecticut studying English at Indiana University East to gain an additional 7-12 English teaching licensure. He is from Orange, CT.  This work was prepared for Kelly Blewett’s W620.  Professor Kelly Blewett notes,“ Bryan’s connection between Taylor Swift and Gothic aesthetic is persuasive and entertaining.”

Ghosts, Blood, and Death:

The Gothic Nature of Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore

On July 23, 2020, amidst the COVID-19 global pandemic, Taylor Swift took to social media to announce, “an entire brand new album of songs I’ve poured all of my whims, dreams, fears, and musings into” (Swift, 2020, “Surprise…”). Less than five months later, Swift announced another surprise: a second record. With Swift’s catalog, each album encompasses its own style or “era”; but this time, the two albums are “sister” pieces, living in the same era (Swift, 2020, “I’m elated…”). In this essay, I argue that in folklore and evermore, Taylor Swift uses gothic motifs and a whimsigoth-folk style to create another new era.

“Associated with the traditional Gothic Novel is an ivy-covered haunted ruin, a swooning heroine replete with sensibility… the concoction is a dark yet familiar brew– an uneasy and eerie dialectic between anxiety and desire”, as literary critic Mulvey-Roberts explains (1998, p. xvi). This time the swooning heroine is not Swift, as is normal in her songwriting, but a series of third person narratives or connected imaginary personas (Gerber, 2020). The themes of Swift’s two albums range from alcoholism, death, forbidden love, infidelity, romantic neglect, and mental health, all with a dark “overwrought emotion”, “anxiety and desire” that is also associated with gothic literature (Harris, 2015, p. 1; Mulvey-Roberts, 1998, p. xvi). On folklore, Swift’s “haunted ruin” comes in the form of the house of the character’s love interest, writing innocently, “I think your house is haunted / Your dad is always mad and that must be why.” Also on folklore, “epiphany” weaves her grandfather’s army experience at the battle of Guadalcanal in 1942 with the COVID-19 pandemic, hauntingly mirroring the two with parallel lyrics; “Sir, I think he’s bleeding out” and “Doc, I think she’s crashing out.” On the second album, in the song “ivy”, the gothic use of ivy metaphorically stands in for a woman’s deep-rooted attachment to her lover.

Swift exacerbates these gothic themes with even more disturbing lyrics. In “my tears ricochet,” one of the darkest tracks of the two albums, Swift writes, “You know I didn’t want to have to haunt you / But what a ghostly scene / You wear the same jewels that I gave you /As you bury me”. Another example comes from “this is me trying,” where Swift and co-writer Jack Antonoff write, “They told me all of my cages were mental / So I got wasted like all my potential / And my words shoot to kill when I’m mad.” Even in the more positively themed songs, Swift still includes keywords and phrases, shrouding the stories in darkness. In “peace,” Swift and singer Aaron Dessner write about the devil, death, and a nearing danger. In “happiness,” they write, “Past the blood and bruise / Past the curses and cries / Beyond the terror in the nightfall / Haunted by the look in my eyes / That would’ve loved you for a lifetime / Leave it all behind / And there is happiness”.

Swift’s lyrics even allude to the gothic novel Jane Eyre in multiple songs on folklore. She writes about an invisible string connecting two loves, alluding to Rochester’s confession of love to Jane (Bate, 2023). Brontë writes “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame”, that string alluded to by Swift’s title and lyrics (Brontë, 2014, p. 274). In “tolerate it”, there are parallels to when Rochester returns home and Jane studies him from across the room as well as to Rochester & Jane’s age difference (Farrow, 2021). This song has an even more gothic performance during the Eras Tour when Swift sings across a long table from an unknown man. Swift artfully sets the table, only to destroy it movements later as she crawls across singing, “You’re so much older and wiser, and I / I wait by the door like I’m just a kid / Use my best colors for your portrait / Lay the table with the fancy shit / And watch you tolerate it.” Moreover, in obvious comparison, Swift alludes to Berthe, Rochester’s first wife, in the song “mad woman” about people’s reception to her during the lawsuit with studio executive Scooter Braun over the ownership of her first seven studio albums. At the same time, Swift takes a similar opinion of Berthe as Jean Rhys did in her novel Wide Sargasso Sea; “Every time you call me crazy / I get more crazy / What about that? / When you say I seem angry / I get more angry / And there’s nothin’ like a mad woman / What a shame she went mad / No one likes a mad woman / You made her like that”.

However, Taylor’s literary gothic style is mixed visually with a “postmodern mélange of styles,” coined whimisgoth by Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute co-founder Evan Collins. When Taylor Swift took to the Grammy Stage in 2021 to debut the first live performance from folklore and evermore, the camera slowly zooms out from a close-up of Swift lying on a moss-covered house in a blue and gold dress by Etro (Charuza, 2021). This mystical scene emanates the “bright celestial warmness” associated with the whimsigoth style (Kapela, 2022). Fast forward to 2023 when fans got the first glimpse of the highly anticipated Era’s Tour in Glendale, Arizona, the moss-covered folklore cabin returned to the stage lighted by dark orange and purple backlights, reminiscent of Mulvey-Roberts “ivy-covered haunted ruin” (1998). Swift dons a flowing Alberta Ferretti chiffon dress, changing colors nightly from light purple to cream (Frischer, 2023; Pawa, 2023). “The mystical – yet moody – trend captures the grunge-ness and magic of soft rock glamor that mimics the whimsigoth queen herself, Stevie Nicks, and her signature style of earthy tones, sequin shawls, and layers of chiffon” (Kapela, 2022). This comparison is illustrated in Figure 1 when Swift sings surrounded by her backup dancers in custom-made black dresses, symbolizing the key line from “my tear’s ricochet,” “If I’m dead to you / then why are you at the wake?”.

Figure 1

Image of “my tears ricochet” from the folklore set of the Eras Tour

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images from (Swift, 2023, “I miss you…”)

During evermore, Taylor sits at a moss covered piano in a simple bohemian style burnt orange dress for most of the set. At one point, she ventures out to the center of the thrust stage, adding on a green velvet cloak for the performance of “willow” with her backup dancers in tow, each carrying a glowing orange orb, as seen in Figure 2 (Frischer, 2023).  This performance adds to the gothic nature by embodying a coven of witches participating in a forest ritual.

Figure 2

Image of “willow” from the evermore set of the Eras Tour

Photo from (@midnightstrack2, 2023)

With Swift, what matters amongst fans is ultimately the meaning behind the lyrics, the story the superstar is trying to tell, and these gothic elements are no coincidence. According to Sarah Gray, Assistant Professor of English at Missouri Valley College, “Gothic literature arose… during a time of social, political, and economic unrest. Thus, it was and continues to be described as a reactionary genre devoted to returning repressed societal fears to our attention so we might expel them” (Gray, 2019). Written in a global pandemic, amongst a period of social unrest due to racial discrimination, Swift removes herself from the lyrics; this isn’t about her. This is about universal themes, about the fears of COVID-19, of abuse, of unrequited love, and of failed relationships. It also can be viewed as reactionary when compared to her other albums – never has Swift written about other characters. She now takes a new approach, in a new genre, all matching, and at the same time reacting to, the darkness that had engulfed the world in 2020.

While the Reputation album may be viewed as the most goth in the cultural sense, utilizing black lipstick and snake symbolisms, Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore employ the most use of gothic literary tropes. Throughout the two albums, Swift lyrics hit upon classic motifs of power, anxiety, strangeness, and the supernatural (Bowen, 2014; Harris, 2015; Mulvey-Roberts, 1998). She uses references like committing suicide off a frozen cliffside— like the setting of Wuthering Heights— to covering up the murder of a cheating spouse, to haunted houses, bloody bruises, and scars. While listeners may be able to ignore the dark references in the lyrics, seeing her performance of the albums during the record-breaking Eras Tour, it is hard to miss the gothic references to witches, haunted houses, and the whimsigoth fashion trend. Even co-writer Aaron Dessner calls folklore “Taylor Swift’s goth record. Or, at least, it’s her most gothic record” (Gerber, 2020) while Rolling Stone argued that Swift “Deepen[ed] Her Goth-Folk Vision on the Excellent ‘Evermore’ (Schaffer, 2020). However, the Rolling Stones article only mentions the “Goth-Folk” motif in the title, suggesting a connection but never fully fleshing it out. Taylor Swift blends both the whimsigoth-folk style and gothic motifs to create folklore and evermore’s era. “I loved the ways you welcomed the dreamscapes and tragedies and epic tales of love lost and found into your lives. So I just kept writing them. (Swift, 2020, “I’m elated”).

Works Cited

Bate, J. (2023, June 4). Why Taylor Swift is a literary giant — by a Shakespeare professor. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/why-taylor-swift-is-a-literary-giant-by-a-shakespeare-professor-20230518-p5d9cn.html

Bowen, C. (2014, May 15). Gothic Motifs. British Library. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gothic-motifs

Brontë, C. (2014). Jane Eyre. Race Point.

Charuza, N. (2021, March 14). Taylor Swift performed at the Grammys wearing the dreamiest nap dress. PopSugar. https://www.popsugar.com/fashion/taylor-swift-grammys-performance-dress-2021-48216461

Farrow, A. (2021 August 19). Project 2 — Jane Eyre + “tolerate it” & “mad woman”. Rethinking British Literature. https://www.brit.lit.nrhelms.plymouthcreate.net/archived-projects/project-2-jane-eyre-tolerate-it-mad-woman/

Fischer, R. K. (2019). The Gothic Aesthetic. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 58(3), 143-148.

Frischer, B. (2023, March 20). Breaking down Taylor Swift’s “Eras” Tour wardrobe. Fashionista. https://fashionista.com/2023/03/taylor-swift-the-eras-tour-outfits-costumes#the-evermore-era

Gerber, B. (2020, July 27). The Story Behind Every Song on Taylor Swift’s folklore. Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/2020/07/taylor-swift-folklore-aaron-dessner-breaks-down-every-song.html

Harris, R. (2015). Elements of the gothic novel. Virtual salt, 15.

Kapela, K. (2022, July 28). Channel Your Inner Stevie Nicks: Unpacking the Witchy Bohemian Whimsigoth Aesthetic. Unpublished Zine. https://www.unpublishedzine.com/fashion-beauty/headline-channel-your-inner-stevie-nicks-unpacking-the-witchy-bohemian-whimsigoth-aesthetic

Gray, S. (2019). Gothic literature in the eighteenth century. In J. A. Laredo (Ed.), A guide to gothic. essay, The University of North Texas Libraries. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.pub/guidetogothic/.

@midnightstrack2. (2023, June 12). the willow performance at the eras tour is so aesthetically pleasing. [image attached] [tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/midnightstrack2/status/1668329302780432384

Mulvey-Roberts, M. (Ed.). (1998). The handbook to gothic literature. Springer.

Pawa, A. (2023, June 7). Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour outfits: See all the looks she’s worn on stage, divided by eras. Teen Vogue.

Schaffer, C. (2020, December 10). Taylor Swift deepens her goth-folk vision on the excellent ‘evermore’. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/taylor-swift-evermore-folklore-1101778/

Swift, T. (2020). evermore [Album]. Republic.

Swift, T. (2020). folklore [Album]. Republic.

Swift, T. [@taylorswift13]. (2020, July 23). Surprise 🤗 Tonight at midnight I’ll be releasing my 8th studio album, folklore; an entire brand new album of songs. [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1286270136006184960/photo/2

Swift, T. [@taylorswift13]. (2020, December 10). I’m elated to tell you that my 9th studio album, and folklore’s sister record, will be out tonight at midnight eastern. [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1337020334122397697?lang=en

Swift, T. [@Taylorswift13]. (2023, March 18). I miss you like it was the very first night. Good thing we’re about to go onstage and do the whole. [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1637272376244334592