YMMV / evermore (2020)

• Accidental Innuendo: "ivy" has this line in the chorus, which is especially notable since the song is entirely about the emotional angst of being in an affair and not the sexual aspect:
  My house of stone, your ivy grows
  And now I'm covered in you
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Much like "betty" before it, "dorothea" has Taylor singing a love song to the titular woman, and unlike its predecessor, "dorothea" never mentions the narrator's name, or gives any indication of their gender, leaving it up to the listener to decide.
  • "champagne problems" is about a woman rejecting her boyfriend's marriage proposal. The narrator's reasons for turning down the proposal are never revealed, but she notably never says it's because she doesn't love him. Is it that she loves him, but just doesn't love him enough to be willing to commit to spending the rest of her life with him? Is she struggling with mental illness or other personal problems that make her think he deserves better than her, or that she's not ready to make a commitment yet? Is she gay and thus only loves him as a friend, and realizes it would be wrong to marry him when she can't return his feelings?
  • Was The Mistress in "no body, no crime" complicit in Este's murder? Did she and the husband work together? Or did she Murder the Hypotenuse herself?
  • Also in "no body, no crime," when the narrator sings, "I think he did it," the backing chorus sings back, "He did it!" The murder victim is named after Este Haim, who's part of the backing chorus for the song. So, is the narrator's gut instinct telling her she's right about the husband, or is Este herself speaking from beyond the grave to ask her friend to avenge her?
  • "tolerate it" has the line: "If this is all in my head tell me now / Tell me if I was wrong somehow." with significantly different interpretation and how sympathetic the person who the narrator is singing about is. The first interpretation is that the narrator is simply a Nervous Wreck and doesn't voice any of her thought to the other person, making the other person came across as while still neglectful, more understandable and is severely not good with emotions. The other more sinister interpretation is the other person Gaslighting the narrator into thinking her worry and feeling are insignificant and inconvenient, turning them into an emotional abuser.
  • Some interpret "tolerate it" as a whole not being about a romantic relationship but about a child relationship with her father or caretaker, which made it even sadder for the narrator since she is very likely a minor and literally cannot leave the situation instead of just not wanting or willing to.
  • The most obvious interpretation of "ivy" is that it's about a married woman starting an affair, but some listeners have speculated that it could be about a woman's guilt about moving on after her husband's death, with the mentions of his presence in the house being metaphorical rather than literal.
    • A common view regarding the "affair" interpretation is that the affair is a specifically lesbian affair.
  • "evermore" widely varied in sadness depend on how literal you interpret the lyrics of the both narrators.
    • Is "catching my breath" and "catching my death" means a gasp of panic attack or the female singer is ill? Is the pain the female narrator sings about mental or physical?
    • Is "the frost" and "The violence of the dog days" the male narrator sings about metaphors for hard times or literal weather conditions he went through? Is the male narrator just feeling so hopeless and despair in the last two lines of his bridge or does he feeling suicidal?
  • Since Taylor put "right where you left me" on a playlist with all the songs off both folklore and evermore that were named after the female characters, people naturally wondered which of them it was supposed to be from the perspective of. The most popular reading is that it's from the perspective of Este, the murder victim in "no body, no crime," and that when she says she's "right where you left me," she's speaking literally—her soul can't move on to the afterlife because she was betrayed and murdered.
• Even Better Sequel: Some fans and critics consider evermore an improvement upon the work begun in folklore, with one headline naming the album "folklore's cooler little sister."
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Following the heel of the announcement of Taylor's break up with her boyfriend and collaborator for this album Joe Alwyn, "tis the damn season" sound incredibly harsh and less fictional than it might have been claimed at first glance. The reason for the break up is announced to be Alwyn's struggle to adapt to Taylor's explosive increase in fame between 2022 and 2023, mirroring the narrator's struggle to choose between pursuing fame or her old flame and torn whether or not giving up her fame was worth it.
  • "tolerate it" also gets the same treatment, as the narrator struggles with feeling that her love "should be celebrated" but her lover merely "tolerates it", as she struggles desperately to get his attention and sacrificial love back. Alwyn and Swift's relationship was kept extremely private, rather than shared (celebrated) in the press. Some metaphors in "tolerate it" have showed up in songs rumored to be about Alwyn: barbed wire and the war hero ("The Great War" off Midnights, "invisible string" off folklore (2020)), the lover's bowed head ("walking with his head down" from "Call It What You Want" off reputation), watching him breathe as he sleeps ("Paper Rings" off Lover), etc. While the song fits well with its publicly stated inspiration, the relationship between the unnamed narrator of Rebecca and her husband Maxim de Winter, it also feels informed by Swift's well-known artistic philosophy of Write What You Know.
• Les Yay:
  • If you take "dorothea" at face value and don't subscribe to the "male narrator" theory, it's a love song from a woman to a woman.
  • In a similar way to Taylor's previous song "Gorgeous," "gold rush" has the narrator describing their romantic interest as so beautiful, it's annoying, and making it clear she wishes she didn't like them, but can't help it. It's very easy to interpret it as the narrator having a crush on another woman, but—due to either being closeted or thinking the other woman is straight—getting frustrated and trying to push her away.
    I don't like anticipatin' my face in a red flush
    I don't like that anyone would die to feel your touch
• Magnificent Bitch: "no body, no crime" feat. Haim: At one of their weekly dinners, Este confides in her friend, the narrator, that she thinks her husband is cheating on her. Not long after, the narrator takes intense notice when Este's husband is suspected of killing Este and then begins to move on with his mistress despite no evidence pointing to him whatsoever. This results in the narrator killing Este's husband in the house, cleaning it perfectly to get rid of all evidence and disposing of his body out in the water by means of boat. The narrator avoids all other suspicion thanks to a false alibi provided by Este's sister. More crucially, the mistress coincidentally taking out "a big life insurance policy" just before the husband's death made it easy for the narrator to frame her for the crime. The mistress suspects the narrator's involvement, but just like in Este's murder, there is no proof.
• Memetic Mutation: "I think he did it but I just can't prove it" from "no body, no crime" was turned into a meme within days of the album's release to pit people seeking revenge against their enemies.
• One-Scene Wonder: Danielle Haim only has one line in "no body, no crime" and is not even a singing line (as opposed to Matt Berninger in "coney island" and Justin Vernon in the album titular track or even her sister Este) but her line is widely considered to be very memorable.
• Spiritual Sequel:
  • "tolerate it" is very similar to "Dear John" from Speak Now, both focusing on a young woman's conflicting feelings about her toxic relationship with an older man, to the point where some fans speculate "tolerate it" is also about John Mayer.
  • "gold rush" has drawn comparisons to reputation's "Gorgeous," with the narrators of both songs acting all tsundere towards their love interest, not wanting to admit she likes them when in reality, she's totally crazy about them. And just compare these lines...
    Gorgeous: You are so gorgeous, it makes me so mad.
    gold rush: What must it be like to grow up that beautiful?
  • With the release of the Fearless (Taylor's Version) Vault Tracks, "champange problems" has drawn comparisons to "We Were Happy" about a narrator who has a voice in her head to break up with a perfectly nice guy who is about to propose to her because she isn't in love anymore.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Spectrum Pulse points out that "no body, no crime" doesn't show the townpeople or society's reaction to the disappearances of Este and her husband, robbing the song of one of a Murder Ballad's biggest strengths.
• Tough Act to Follow: A number of fans and critics while still think evermore is among the better albums of her career, will admit that it really have a tough job measuring up to the massively beloved folklore.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The main love interest in the "willow" music video is an Asian man. Some Swifties have interpreted that this is a symbolic gesture to fight back against the anti-Asian sentiment that has risen in the US during the COVID-19 Pandemic, with some pointing out that this is the second love interest of color appeared in her music video after Lover's titular track.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: Par for the course for Swifties, they went nuts trying to decipher the meaning of "willow"'s music video.
• The Woobie:
  • The narrator and her (now ex) boyfriend in "champagne problems." She completely shatters his heart, not because she wants to, but because she feels she has to; he loses a woman he loved (in a particularly humiliating way, at that), and she has to live with people judging and demonizing her, and knowing she hurt a good man. By the end of it, you just want to give them both a hug and tell them this won't be the end of the world.
  • The narrator from "tolerate it" is the Giver half of an All Take and No Give relationship that she doesn't want to leave. That is tragic enough on its own, but different interpretation can make her even sadder if you believe she is a victim of emotional abuse or the song is about a parent / child relationship, make her very likely a minor and literally cannot leave the situation instead of just not wanting to.
  • The narrator and her love interest from "evermore" have their own Dark and Troubled Past separately and together. The narrator is especially Woobie-ish since she keeps replaying the scenario in her head to find how she got into those situations and feeling so desperate and hopeless. Her love interest is more of a Iron Woobie who never gives up hope; the mere memories of him brought the narrator out from her despair, spurring her to take the first step towards healing.
  • Jerkass Woobie: The narrator from "tis the damn season" is not the nicest person to her love interest: she hooked up with her former flame again despite knowing that it will not go anywhere but her inner monologue revealed that she is unsatisfied with her current life and is torn between wanting to go back (represented by her former flame) or keeping living that life in L.A. "dorothea" is stated by Word of God to be from the perspective of the former flame, reveal that they still have high affection to her and keeps worrying about her long after she left, making her coldness and "we can call this even" line to them even more callous and heartbreaking.
  • Este from "no body, no crime," who is cheated on by her husband and murdered when she tries to confront him. To add insult to injury, his mistress moves in mere weeks after she dies, and the police don't turn up any evidence—justice only comes when her best friend takes matters into her own hands. It gets even worse if you believe "right where you left me" is from her perspective; the lyrics imply her soul is still trapped on Earth because of her Unfinished Business.

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