who is tell me why by taylor swift about

After the pandemic interrupted Swift’s promotional plans for her 2019 album, Lover, she reached out to the multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dessner to help produce two new albums, Folklore and Evermore, the latter of which featured all five members of The National-whom she called her “favorite band”-in some capacity. So some listeners have been surprised to see the two emerge, in recent years, as close collaborators. Read: The National further complicates its sadness

(In her 2012 hit “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” she even jabbed at pretentious guys who are obsessed with dude-rock, like the ex who ran off to listen to “some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.”) The National became the house band for a certain segment of Millennial yuppies Swift became one of the biggest stars in the world.

The National is known for somber dude-rock Swift found fame with anthems of heartbroken but upbeat young-womanhood. Where The National’s charisma lies in its mysteriousness, Swift earnestly says just what she means.

Where The National’s songwriting is impressionistic, Swift’s is diaristic-built on personal stories that typically forgo abstraction or even difficult metaphor. On the surface, these two acts are starkly different. In the mid-to-late aughts, as The National was gathering acclaim with darkly experimental albums, another artist was rising to prominence: Taylor Swift. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

Who is tell me why by taylor swift about