Taylor Swift shares live version of ‘exile’ with ‘folklore’ collaborator Justin Vernon


Taylor Swift Folklore artwork




Taylor Swift has just released a Disney+ documentary on her eighth studio album.

To coincide with the live album recorded at her ‘folklore’ collaborator Aaron Dessner‘s Long Pong studio in Hudson, New York being made available for streaming, Taylor Swift has shared a video of her ‘exile’ performance from the session, joined remotely by another album collaborator, Justin Vernon.

Each track from the album, which went number one around the world during the summer and has been Grammy-nominated this week, was recorded during the session, putting a fresh spin on a collection with Live4ever said is, ‘laced with clever intrigue and deft touches’, in our 8/10 review:

“With repeated listening all is not quite as cabin-in-the-woods as it seems though. Swift’s ability to sketch all-American love within the frame of innocence remains second to none (‘cardigan’, the frankly gorgeous, banjo picked ‘invisible string’), but suburbia glints; the pulsing ‘my tears ricochet’ and ‘august’ both underlining an effortless gift for sophisticated contemporary pop which neither lockdown nor inner peace can dull.”

“Inevitably however, some of the manipulative jockeying for leverage over her translates into sardonic one liners or an intentional slip for hacks to earn their pay over.”

“On ‘this is me trying’, the effacement translates into words like, ‘You said all of my cages were mental/so I got wasted like all my potential’, while if you aurally squint hard enough, ‘peace’ contains a middle finger extended to her uber-nemesis Kanye West.”


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