Taylor Swift threads one of the biggest business stories in 2020 into her music, as the retail apocalypse emerges as a crucial theme through 'Folklore' and 'Evermore'

• The mall becomes a symbol of nostalgia in Taylor Swift's 2020 sister albums, Folklore and Evermore.
• Lines like "we were like the mall before the internet, it was the one place to be" align shopping centers pre-Amazon with bittersweet memories of failed relationships.
• Swift — intentionally or not — taps into one of the biggest retail stories of 2020: the rise of online shopping and brick-and-mortar store closures, as the retail apocalypse continues.

Taylor Swift's 2020 album duo of Folklore and Evermore is actually about the retail apocalypse.

Let me explain.

Writing about retail and business more generally over the last five years makes me, perhaps, overly sensitive to artists referencing the industries I cover. But, when my coworker Madeline Stone pointed out a certain line in "Coney Island," I realized the subtext had risen into text:

"Cause we were like the mall before the internet
It was the one place to be
The mischief, the gift-wrapped suburban dreams."

The mall before the internet? Has Swift been reading the headlines about e-commerce sales rising 35.8% while in-store traffic slumps this holiday season? Or about the thousands of stores closing in 2020? Maybe just the retail apocalypse Wikipedia page, which references the years of declining mall traffic tied to the rise of Amazon and online shopping?

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"Coney Island" isn't an isolated instance of Swift edging into the retail beat.

Evermore and its sister album Folklore lean hard into certain nostalgic signifiers of an earlier era in reference to past relationships. To name a few, an arcade ring in Coney Island, "Peter losing Wendy" in Cardigan, plus basically every line about Rhode Island in "The Last Great American Dynasty."

The mall itself becomes one of the symbols that Swift turns to. Let's look at these lyrics from Folklore's August, a song from the perspective of someone looking back at a teenage love affair:

"Back when I was livin' for the hope of it all, for the hope of it all
'Meet me behind the mall'"

The mall serves two nostalgic purposes here. It helps position August within a three-song trilogy that spans decades, with the affair seemingly taking place in the past (may I suggest in the '80s, the peak of mall culture?). By using the mall as a symbol of nostalgia, Swift frames August more generally as a song about memory and something that was lost. And, this isn't just a passing reference - Swift is literally selling lithographs titled "meet me behind the mall."

Swift likes to muddle personal characters' bittersweet memories through Folklore and Evermore and more general nostalgia for a different era. It is no mistake that the mall becomes one of those symbols at a time when classic shopping centers' decline continues across America.

Swift might not be reading Business Insider's retail coverage. (Then again, she might be.) Either way, she has tapped into one of the biggest retail stories of 2020 - the nail in the coffin of "the mall before the internet."