Marjorie (song)

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Taylor Swift wrote and produced her eighth studio album, Folklore, with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff.

[10] Prior to its release, she mentioned that one of its songs would be about her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, who was an opera singer and inspired her to pursue a musical career.

Dessner provided drum machine programming and played drone, synth bass, piano, and electric guitar, while his brother Bryce was the orchestrator for the violin (Yuki Numata Resnick), chord stick (Jason Treuting), cello (Clarice Jensen), and vermona pulse (Justin McAlister).

Justin Vernon contributed background vocals, played Prophet-X, and recorded his instrumentation at April Base Studios in Fall Creek, Wisconsin.

[28] In one scene, she is seen at a colonial bungalow in Singapore, where the Finlay family lived in the 1960s, getting into a Ford Galaxie car whose license plate is visible, and has a distinctively Singaporean number.

[30] Variety's Chris Willman and Teen Vogue's P. Claire Dodson picked the performance as one of the show's best moments; the latter added that it was unexpected owing to the song's personal and intimate nature.

[31][32] At the Atlanta concert on April 29, 2023, Swift's fans turned on their phone flashlights to honor Finlay, which became a common practice at subsequent shows.

[35] Music critics praised "Marjorie" for its production and emotionally stirring lyricism; Sheffield and Dodson regarded it as one of the finest instances of Swift's songwriting.

Club lauded the track for its heart-wrenching lyricism and "anguished" production, naming it one of her best songs,[20] and Hannah Mylrea of NME thought that it effectively depicts the grief and the complex guilt that is tied with it.

[23] Entertainment Weekly's Maura Johnston opined that the whirring synthesizers, strings, and Finlay's "fluttery" soprano added life to Swift's emotional vocals,[19] and Stephen Erlwine of AllMusic said that Evermore reaches its crescendo on "Marjorie".

[39] Rolling Stone's Claire Shaffer dubbed it the centerpiece of Evermore—a "brilliant and devastating piece of songcraft, an instant classic in the Swift canon"—and praised her skills in writing a eulogy.