epiphany
folklore (2020)
Table of Contents
Background and Lyrical Theme
«I remember thinking, ‘Maybe I wanna write a sports story.’ Because I had just watched The Last Dance and I was thinking all in terms of sports, and winners, and underdogs. But actually, what I had been doing really frequently up until that point was I had been doing a lot of research on my grandfather who fought in World War II at Guadalcanal, which was an extremely bloody battle. And he never talked about it. Not with his sons, not with his wife. Nobody got to hear about what happened there. So my dad and his brothers did a lot of digging and found out that my granddad was exposed to some of the worst situations you could ever imagine as a human being. So I kind of tried to imagine what would happen in order to make you just never be able to speak about something. And when I was thinking about that I realized that there are people right now taking a twenty minute break in between shifts at a hospital who are having this kind of trauma happen to them right now, that they probably will never wanna speak about. And so I thought that this is an opportunity to maybe tell that story.»
Taylor Swift
«I often feel that there have been times in my life where things have fallen apart so methodically, and I couldn’t control how things were going wrong, and nothing I did stopped it. I just felt like I’d been pushed out a plane and I was scratching on the air on the way down. I just felt like the universe was doing its thing. It was just dismantling my life and there was nothing I could do. And this is a weird situation where – ever since I started making music with [Aaron] – I felt like that was the universe forcing things to fall into place perfectly and there’s nothing I could do. It’s one of those weird things that makes you think about life a lot. This lockdown could’ve been a time where I absolutely lost my mind and instead I think this album was a real floatation device for both of us [Aaron and her].»
Taylor Swift
Production
«For 'epiphany,' she did have this idea of a beautiful drone, or a very cinematic sort of widescreen song, where it’s not a lot of accents but more like a sea to bathe in. A stillness, in a sense. [...] To me, it’s like a nurse, doctor, or medical professional, where med school doesn’t fully prepare you for seeing someone pass away or just the difficult emotional things that you’ll encounter in your job. In the past, heroes were just soldiers. Now, they’re also medical professionals. To me, that’s the underlying mission of the song. There are some things that you see that are hard to talk about. You just bear witness to them. But there’s something else incredibly soothing and comforting about this song. My brother did really beautiful orchestration of it.»
Aaron Dessner
Live Performance
Critical Reception
Commercial Performance
Lyrics
[Verse 1]
Keep your helmet
Keep your life, son
Just a flesh wound
Here’s your rifle
Crawling up the beaches now
Sir, I think he’s bleeding out
And some things you just can’t speak about
[Chorus]
With you I serve
With you I fall down, down
Watch you breathe in
Watch you breathing out, out
[Verse 2]
Something med school did not cover
Someone’s daughter, someone’s mother
Holds your hand through plastic now
Doc, I think she’s crashing out
And some things you just can’t speak about
[Bridge]
Only 20 minutes to sleep
But you dream of some epiphany
Just one single glimpse of relief
To make some sense of what you’ve seen
[Chorus]
With you I serve
With you I fall down, down (Down)
Watch you breathe in
Watch you breathing out, out
With you I serve
With you I fall down (Down), down (Down)
Watch you breathe in
Watch you breathing out, out
[Outro]
Only 20 minutes to sleep
But you dream of some epiphany
Just one single glimpse of relief
To make some sense of what you’ve seen
Artist | Taylor Swift | |||
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Album | folklore | |||
Released | July 24, 2020 | |||
Recorded | May–July 2020 | |||
Studios | Kitty Committee (Los Angeles) Long Pond (Hudson Valley) | |||
Genre | Ambient | |||
Length | 4:50 | |||
Label | Republic Records | |||
Songwriters | Taylor Swift Aaron Dessner | |||
Producer | Aaron Dessner | |||
FOLKLORE CHRONOLOGY | ||||
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