this is me trying
Taylor Swift
"this is me trying" exists in the quietest corner of Taylor Swift's Folklore — a song about the gap between effort and visibility, about doing the minimum to survive and wondering if anyone can tell. The production is near-still: Aaron Dessner's guitar work provides a soft, cycling bed with just enough forward motion to keep the song from collapsing into itself, while synth textures blur the edges like fog on a window. There are no dramatic peaks, no bridge that lifts into catharsis. The song refuses that release. Swift's vocal delivery is deliberately understated — she sounds tired in a way that reads as honest rather than performed, each syllable landing with the weight of someone choosing their words carefully because they've learned that overshooting leads to misunderstanding. The lyrical focus is on trying as an invisible act — showing up when showing up is all you have, when the heroism is entirely internal and entirely unwitnessed. It speaks to depression, to estrangement, to the aftermath of decisions made in a worse version of yourself. Released during the pandemic summer of 2020, when survival itself felt like an achievement, the song found an audience that had stopped expecting to be seen. Reach for it in the late afternoon when you need someone to articulate what you haven't been able to say out loud.
slow
2020s
foggy, sparse, delicate
American indie folk / alternative pop
Indie Folk, Alternative. Chamber Pop. melancholic, serene. Stays deliberately flat and unresolved — effort without recognition, exhaustion without catharsis, ending exactly where it began.. energy 2. slow. danceability 1. valence 2. vocals: understated female, deliberately tired, careful and intimate. production: cycling acoustic guitar, blurred synth textures, minimal arrangement, no dramatic peaks. texture: foggy, sparse, delicate. acousticness 7. era: 2020s. American indie folk / alternative pop. Late afternoon when you need someone to articulate what you haven't been able to say out loud.