Evermore Christmas

 

The 21th century has meant a great deal of change for the music industry: for starters, the near end of physical distribution, save for a few markets (Japan) and niche products (see: the resurgence of Vinyl, helped in no small part by Mr Jack White); then, the rise of streaming as the main source of audio consumption out there, whether that fares well for artist earnings or not (see: Bob Dylan’s recent catalogue sale and the ensuing debate on streaming royalties); finally, the interesting way releases are being handled these days: the conventional wisdom used to be that, in order for a new release to work, you should announce, promote, tease it first. Now, that may only take a day…

And it’s exactly what Taylor Swift is doing today: having announced this very morning that a new album, evermore, was about to be released, she also specified that this release would happen… at midnight. Talk about a Cinderella (musical) moment: in less than a day, the entire Taylorsphere got from discovering a new album was in the works to, hopefully, getting it in their (virtual) hands in a matter of hours. What makes it even more remarkable is that Swift had only just put out her 8th album, folklore, this summer — to great fanfare, might we add: she garnered a number of nominations (the Grammys are not out yet) and awards, not to mention setting a couple of commercial records along the way… To top it all off, she’d only just released a live version of the set back in late November (i.e. ancient history by these new standards) complete with a documentary…

To date, we still don’t know anything about evermore except for its title, artwork and track listing. That and the fact that Swift presents it as a “sister” album to folklore, likely meaning that this new crop of songs (pun intended: the lady has been found to show a new affection for fields) follows in the same vein as its predecessor. Which is just as well, since that album was a bit of a departure for the lady, somewhat steering away from her usual pop roots into more of a folk-infused universe. Let’s see if the artist will surprise us once more with a Christmas album…