In the spring of 2020, Taylor Swift texted Aaron Dessner — guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer for The National — asking if he wanted to write songs together. Dessner had been creating instrumental sketches at his Long Pond Studio in upstate New York during the early months of the pandemic. He sent Taylor a batch of demos. She started writing to them almost immediately, sometimes returning finished vocals within hours. The result was folklore, the album that redefined Taylor Swift's artistic identity and won Album of the Year at the 2021 Grammys.
Who Is Aaron Dessner?
Before folklore, Dessner was best known as half of the creative engine behind The National, one of indie rock's most respected bands. His production and compositional style is characterized by intricate layering — acoustic instruments woven with electronics, textures that build slowly, arrangements that reward patient listening. He had also produced and collaborated with artists like Local Natives, Frightened Rabbit, and Sharon Van Etten.
Dessner's aesthetic is almost the opposite of mainstream pop production. Where pop tends toward clarity and immediacy, Dessner builds compositions that feel organic and slightly mysterious — instruments that bleed into each other, rhythms that breathe rather than click, melodies that emerge from texture rather than standing on top of it.
The Creative Process
The folklore sessions were conducted almost entirely remotely. Dessner would send instrumental demos — sometimes fully arranged, sometimes skeletal sketches — and Taylor would write lyrics and melodies to them, recording vocals at her home studio. They would exchange files, refine, and repeat.
This process was revelatory for both artists. Dessner has described his surprise at the speed and precision of Taylor's writing — she would receive an instrumental and return a fully formed song within hours, sometimes with the vocal performance already near-final quality. Taylor has spoken about the liberation of writing to someone else's musical landscape rather than starting from her own guitar or piano.
The results were unlike anything either artist had made before. "The 1" opens the album with a delicate piano figure and fingerpicked guitar that set the tone for everything that follows. "Cardigan" builds from a single piano motif into a sweeping arrangement that supports one of Taylor's most nuanced vocal performances. "My Tears Ricochet" is built on a choral bed that Dessner constructed from layered vocals and reverb-drenched instruments.
The Sound of Folklore
Dessner's production on folklore is characterized by several signature elements. The first is space — these songs breathe in a way that Taylor's earlier pop and country work rarely did. Instruments enter and exit without announcement. Silence is used as deliberately as sound.
The second element is texture over hook. While Taylor's melodies are as strong as ever, the instrumental arrangements don't drive toward choruses in the traditional pop sense. Instead, they create environments — the misty atmosphere of "Seven," the late-night intimacy of "Invisible String," the gathering storm of "Mad Woman."
The third element is organic imperfection. Dessner's instrumentals often include room noise, string buzz, and other artifacts of live performance that would be cleaned out of a typical pop production. This gives the album a tactile quality, as though you could reach into the speakers and touch the instruments.
Evermore: The Sequel
The success of folklore led directly to evermore, released just five months later in December 2020. Where folklore was largely the product of first-take inspiration, evermore found Taylor and Dessner pushing further into experimentation.
"Willow" opens with a hypnotic guitar loop that Dessner created from heavily processed acoustic guitar. "Tolerate It" builds tension through minimal arrangement — piano, strings, and Taylor's increasingly desperate vocal, with drums entering only at the emotional breaking point. "Ivy" layers acoustic and electric elements into something that sounds almost Elizabethan.
Evermore also brought in more collaborators — The National's full band contributed to several tracks, and features from HAIM, Bon Iver, and Marcus Mumford added new dimensions. But Dessner remained the creative anchor, and the album's sonic identity is unmistakably his.
The Long Pond Sessions
The creative partnership was documented in the Long Pond Studio Sessions film, released on Disney+ in November 2020. The film shows Taylor, Dessner, and Jack Antonoff playing the folklore tracks live together at Long Pond for the first time — they had created the album remotely and never performed it in the same room.
The film is remarkable for what it reveals about their dynamic. Dessner is quiet and attentive, adjusting arrangements in real time as Taylor sings. Taylor is visibly energized by the environment — performing in a studio surrounded by instruments and autumn woods rather than a pop production facility. The mutual respect is evident in every interaction.
Legacy
The Dessner collaboration gave Taylor something no other producer had: permission to be quiet. Her earlier work, even at its most emotional, was built for arenas. Folklore and evermore are built for headphones, for 2 AM listening, for the kind of attention that pop music rarely demands and even more rarely rewards.
The partnership also proved that Taylor's songwriting could thrive in any sonic environment. She didn't need Nashville production or synth-pop sheen to write great songs — she just needed good music to write to and a collaborator who trusted her instincts. Dessner provided both, and the result was the most critically acclaimed chapter of one of pop music's greatest careers.
