搬運(yùn)自：微信公眾號【評論搬一堆】（在原文基礎(chǔ)上添加了英語原文與排版調(diào)整）

翻譯：Lynn Liu/Ryan-Chopin

校對：Ryan-Chopin

排版：Ryan-Chopin

Taylor Swift從沒聽起來如此放松或自信，從沒聽起來如此與世無爭?

So here we are again. The world was in the middle of the cruelest summer ever, just staggering through late July, when?Taylor Swift?decided to make it all so much messier — her specialty. In a move that nobody saw coming, she announced a surprise album on July 23rd, less than a year after her career-capping smash?Lover. (A year to the day after she dropped “The Archer.”) Like the rest of us, Swift had to cancel her summer, including her LoverFest shows, which would have been next week. Instead, she spent the quarantine season throwing herself into a new, secret project: her eighth album,?Folklore. But the real surprise is the music itself — the most head-spinning, heartbreaking, emotionally ambitious songs of her life.?

Taylor又發(fā)專了，而世界正處于有史以來最殘酷的夏天。好不容易快熬過七月下旬，可Taylor Swift決定發(fā)揮她的專長，讓這個七月再燥一點。離她上一張專輯《Lover》發(fā)行不到一年，Taylor在7月23號出人意料地宣布即將推出一張空降專輯（在她發(fā)行單曲“The Archer”的整整一年后）。Swift和我們所有人一樣，不得不取消她的夏日計劃，包括原定下周啟航的Lover Fest巡演。相反，她在疫情期間投入到了這個秘密項目之中——她的第八張專輯《folklore》。但真正讓人驚訝的卻是其音樂本身——她有史以來最令人思緒萬千、傷心欲絕且情感飽滿的歌曲。

It’s a total goth-folk album, mostly acoustic guitar and piano, largely in collaboration with the National’s Aaron Dessner. No pop songs at all. It’s as far beyond?Lover?as?Lover?was beyond?Reputation. She’s always relished her dramatic creative zigzags, but this is easily her most audacious move, full of story-telling depth she’s never come close to before. Some of us have spent years dreaming Taylor would do a whole album like this, but nobody really dreamed it would turn out this great. Her greatest album — so far.?

這是一張完全哥特式民謠風(fēng)格的專輯，主要使用了木吉他和鋼琴來伴奏。同時，Taylor也與The National的Aaron Dessner共同創(chuàng)作了大部分曲目。這張專輯一首流行歌都沒有，它遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超越了《Lover》，就像《Lover》超越了《Reputation》一樣。她非常喜歡戲劇性的曲折創(chuàng)作，這無疑是她最大膽的舉動，這樣的故事深度是她之前從未到達(dá)過的。我們中的部分人多年來一直夢想著Taylor能做一張這樣的專輯，但是沒人能想到這張專輯會這么棒?？梢哉f，《folklore》是她有史以來最好的專輯。

Lover?self-consciously summed up the first 30 years of her life, bringing all her musical passions together. But on?Folklore, she leaves her comfort zones behind. It sounds like she figured she wasn’t going to be touring these songs live anyway, so she gave up on doing anything for the radio, anything rah-rah or stadium-friendly. She just made some coffee, sat at the piano, and let her mind wander into some dark places. You can picture the candle on her piano flickering as the wax melts over her copy of?Wuthering Heights?and another song rolls out.

《Lover》不知不覺地為我們總結(jié)了她人生的前30年，匯集了她對音樂的所有熱情。但是在《folklore》中，她勇敢地邁出了舒適區(qū)。這張專輯聽起來像是她覺得自己永遠(yuǎn)不會在巡回演唱會上表演這些歌曲，所以她放棄了為迎合電臺而創(chuàng)作，也不愿做任何吸引人或是適合在體育場表演的音樂。她只是煮了一些咖啡，坐在鋼琴前，讓她的思緒游離到暗處。你可以想象到，鋼琴上燭光閃爍，蠟慢慢滴在《呼嘯山莊》之上，就在這時，一首新歌被創(chuàng)作出來。

Her sonic chemistry with Dessner is right in every detail; she also teams up with her longtime wingman Jack Antonoff, and duets with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon on “Exile.” The vibe is close to “Safe and Sound,” the rootsy gem she did with the Civil Wars for?The Hunger Games?soundtrack in 2013. As she explains in her Prologue, “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.”

Taylor與Dessner在音樂上的化學(xué)反應(yīng)在每個細(xì)節(jié)上都顯得妥當(dāng)，她與長期的音樂伙伴Jack Antonoff再次合作，也與Bon Iver的Justin Vernon合唱了“Exile”。這首歌給人的感覺很像“Safe and Sound”，她與the Civil Wars合作創(chuàng)作了這首熱單，收錄在《饑餓游戲1》的電影原聲帶中。正如她在序言里解釋的那樣，“在隔離中，我靈感爆發(fā)，這張專輯就是最好的證明，音樂與故事像意識流似的流淌著，而《folklore》就是它們的合集。提起筆來創(chuàng)作就是我逃向幻想、歷史和記憶的最好方法。”

Folklore?really feels like the debut album of a whole new Swift — her narrative scope has opened up, with a wide-ranging cast of characters for 17 songs, without a dud. Yet you can still hear that this is the same songwriter who dropped “Last Kiss” on the world 10 July-9ths ago. Here’s a Swift progress report on her quarantine: “I’ve been having a hard time adjusting/I had the shiniest wheels, now they’re rusting/I didn’t know if you’d care if I came back/I have a lot of regrets about that.” The power of her mind.

《folklore》就像是全新Swift的首張專輯——她拓寬了敘事范圍，17首歌中的角色各不相同且處處合適。但是，你也可以從中感受到，她依然是那個大家熟悉的、在10年前的7月9號發(fā)行“Last Kiss”的Taylor。以下歌詞仿佛是Swift在疫情期間的進(jìn)度匯報：“我經(jīng)歷了一段自我調(diào)整的艱難時期/我本有著最閃耀的齒輪/而現(xiàn)在它們布滿了銹跡/我不知道如果我回頭你是否還會在乎。（歌詞翻譯摘自網(wǎng)易云）”這便是她心靈的力量。

It’s amusing, in retrospect, how people actually worried that being happy in love might mean Swift would run out of things to write songs about. Not a chance. It turns out to be the other way around, as she lets these characters tell their own stories: A scandalous old widow, hated by her whole town. A scared seven-year-old girl with a traumatized best friend. A ghost watching her enemies at the funeral. Recovering addicts. A fumbling teenage boy. Three of the highlights — “Cardigan,” “August,” and “Betty” — depict the same love triangle, from all three different perspectives. Other songs tell both sides of a story: “The 1” and “Peace,” or “Invisible String” and “The Lakes.”

回想起來有趣的是，人們實際上很擔(dān)心沉迷于幸福的戀愛中的Taylor Swift可能會沒有寫歌的素材了。想都別想，事實證明情況正好相反，她讓這些角色講述他們自己的故事:一個可恥的遭到整個城鎮(zhèn)憎恨的老寡婦；一個嚇壞了的七歲女孩和一個遭到創(chuàng)傷的好朋友；一個在葬禮上看著她的敵人的鬼魂；一些正在康復(fù)的癮君子；一個笨手笨腳的少年。其中最突出的三部曲——“Cardigan”、“August”和“Betty”——從三個不同的角度描繪了一段三角戀。其他的歌曲則分別講述了一個故事的兩面:“The 1”和“Peace”，或“Invisible String”和“The Lakes”。

Folklore?hits overdrive halfway through, when it reaches a trilogy of heavy hitters. “August,” the album’s most plainly beautiful ballad, is a summer romance gone wrong: “I can see us tangled in bedsheets/August slipped away like a bottle of wine/Because you were never mine.” “This Is Me Trying” is the disturbingly witty tale of someone pouring her heart out, to keep herself from pouring more whiskey. “Illicit Affairs” is another tale of infidelity: “Take the words for what they are/A dwindling mercurial high/A drug that only worked the first few hundred times.” The tension explodes when she sings, “Don’t call me kid/Don’t call me baby/Look at this godforsaken mess that you made me.”?

《folklore》在序曲過半時達(dá)到了高潮，三部曲由此牢牢地抓住人心。“August”是這張專輯中最具有平鋪直敘之美的民謠，宛若夏日情愫錯付他人：“我望見我倆在床上纏綿/八月就像酒瓶里的紅酒轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝/因為你從未屬于我?！薄癟his Is Me Trying”中故事的詼諧感讓人煩悶，是一次個人的傾吐心聲之旅，只為止住她倒更多威士忌來解愁?！癐llicit Affairs”又是一個講述不忠的故事：“那些動情時的甜言蜜語/是一種變化莫測的刺激、漸漸退卻的快感/是一次性的致幻藥物，即使它首次效果就給你帶來無數(shù)刺激?！保ǜ柙~翻譯摘自網(wǎng)易云）緊張感爆棚伴隨著她的歌聲而來：“別再叫我乖孩子/別再叫我寶貝/你可以輕松脫身而去，而我陷入卑微情緒?！?/p>

It’s going to take weeks if not decades to puzzle out all the intricately interwoven narrative details of these songs. “Mirrorball” is about the same nervous dance-floor poseur of “New Romantics,” six years later, except tonight she feels like the disco ball that reflects everyone’s most desperate insecurities. “Mad Woman” expands on the familiar topic of witch hunts, but it also sharpens the feminist rage of “The Man.” “The Last Great American Dynasty” satirizes the upper-crust milieu of “Starlight” when she sings, “There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen/I had a marvelous time ruining everything.” (Taylor uses the word “marvelous” twice in her career, and both times it’s in songs about the Kennedys? No detail is too tiny for her to plan eight years in advance.)

要解開這些歌曲錯綜復(fù)雜的敘事細(xì)節(jié)，不用上幾十年，也需要幾周的時間。“Mirrorball”和“New Romantics”兩首歌中描寫舞池里搔首弄姿的人都差不多，只是在“New Romantics”發(fā)行的六年后，除了今晚，她都覺得自己就像一顆迪斯科球燈，反射的光芒中充斥著每個人最絕望的不安全感?！癕ad Women”再唱人們熟悉的獵巫主題，但也加劇了“The Man”里傳達(dá)的女性的憤怒情緒?！癟he Last Great American Dynasty”諷刺了“Starlight”中描寫的上流社會，她唱道:“這個鎮(zhèn)上有史以來最吵的女人來了/我用一段美好時光專門來毀掉一切。”(Taylor在她的職業(yè)生涯中兩次使用“marvelous/不可思議”這個詞，但好像兩次都出現(xiàn)在和肯尼迪家族有關(guān)聯(lián)的歌曲中？對她來說，不管細(xì)節(jié)有多微小，她都能提前八年計劃清楚。）

“Betty” is a first — she sings in the voice of the 17-year-old boy in a Taylor Swift song, reckoning with the fickle behavior detailed by the girls in “Cardigan” and “August.” It takes off from the harmonica solo in Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” — which feels appropriate for the only tale on the album where she goes back to high school. “The Lakes” is a bonus track for vinyl, CD, and (what a flex) cassette, but it’s a must-hear: Taylor walks in the footsteps of William Wordsworth, the Romantic poet who essentially invented the kind of introspective writing she does, wandering the Windermere Peaks of the Lake District.?

“Betty”是Taylor的首次嘗試——她在這首歌中扮演了一個17歲男孩來演唱，對“Cardigan”和“August”中的女孩們浮躁的情感態(tài)度作出回應(yīng)。整首歌是以Bruce Springsteen的“Thunder Road”中的那種口琴獨奏開始的——作為專輯中唯一一個她再訪高中的故事，這樣的處理是最好不過了?！癟he Lakes”是黑膠唱片、CD和盒式磁帶中的一首加曲，但這首歌是必聽之曲:Taylor步上William Wordsworth（著名詩人）的后塵，這位浪漫主義詩人實際上開創(chuàng)了Taylor這首歌里的自省式寫作，仿佛她漫步于英格蘭湖區(qū)的溫德米爾山峰之間。

Remember when she was threatening to spend this year rerecording all her old albums? She does the opposite here — she refuses to repeat her most reliable tricks. So many of the world’s favorite Swift-ian trademarks are missing. No country moves, no synth pop, no first dates, no “Taylor visits a city” song, not even a laugh. The references to fame are few and far Between, although they’re tasty when they do show up, as in “Invisible String”: “Bad was the blood of the song in the cab on your first trip to L.A.” She can’t resist adding: “Cold was the steel of my axe to grind/For the boys who broke my heart/Now I send their babies presents.” Touché.

還記得她下決心說今年要錄制她所有的舊專輯嗎？而她實則反其道而行之——她拒絕一直走在最有把握的路上。世界上許多最受歡迎的和Swift有關(guān)的標(biāo)簽都消失不見了。沒有鄉(xiāng)村音樂，沒有合成器流行音樂，沒有和誰初次見面約會，沒有“Taylor到訪一個城市”而創(chuàng)作的歌曲，甚至沒有任何泰式小品。提及Taylor名氣的歌詞少之又少，盡管相關(guān)內(nèi)容出現(xiàn)時依舊惹人眼球，就像她在“Invisible String”中唱到:“你第一次去洛杉磯時出租車上放著Bad Blood那首歌，”她又忍不住補(bǔ)充道:“我把斧子磨得閃寒光/為的是那些傷我心的男孩/而今我會給他們的孩子寄禮物。（歌詞翻譯摘自網(wǎng)易云）”有內(nèi)味兒了。

If?Lover?was the last album of her twenties,?Folklore?is the first of her thirties.?Lover?was styled as a well-rounded musical autobiography,?with everything from Nashville twang to electro-disco.?Folklore?takes a completely different approach, yet feels even more intimate, simply because it’s the sound of an artist with absolutely nothing to prove. She’s never sounded this relaxed or confident, never sounded this blasé about winning anyone over. It makes perfect sense that the quarantine brought out her best, since she’s always written so poignantly about isolation and the temptation to dream too hard about other people’s far-away lives. (“Last Kiss” is usually a summer favorite, but this year, “Hope it’s nice where you are” feels a little too close to the bone.) On?Folklore, she dreams up a host of characters to keep her company, and stepping into their lives brings out her deepest wit, compassion, and empathy. And it sounds like for Taylor Swift, her best is yet to come.

如果《Lover》是她三十歲之前的最后一張專輯，《folklore》便是她三十歲過后的第一張?！禠over》設(shè)計成了一部全面的音樂自傳，風(fēng)格多樣，從納什維爾的鄉(xiāng)村音樂到電子迪斯科曲風(fēng)。《folklore》采取了一種完全不同的制作方式，但讓人感覺更加親切，僅僅因為這是一位熟悉藝術(shù)家的歌聲，且完全沒必要拿什么來證明這一點。她從沒聽起來如此放松或自信，從沒聽起來如此與世無爭。要說是疫情隔離使她將才能發(fā)揮至極，這也說得通，因為她的創(chuàng)作總是深刻而尖銳，不管是她筆下的一人獨自生活，還是人心受到誘惑——即羨慕別人遙不可及的生活而做著黃粱美夢。(“Last Kiss”通常是夏天里人們最愛聽的一首歌，但是今年，這首歌的歌詞“希望有你在的地方都美好”聽起來就有點太極端了。）在《folklore》中，她虛構(gòu)了一系列人物來陪伴左右，她走進(jìn)了他們的生活，這展現(xiàn)出她最深刻的智慧、同情心和同理心。這張優(yōu)秀的專輯聽起來像是在暗示Taylor Swift的無限潛能：她最好的一面都還在后頭。