The 2020s File Feature
This Is Me Trying
This Is Me Trying: Taylor Swift's Hidden Gem from Folklore Taylor Swift released "This Is Me Trying" as part of her landmark eighth studio album, folklore, o…
01 The Story
This Is Me Trying: Taylor Swift's Hidden Gem from Folklore
Taylor Swift released "This Is Me Trying" as part of her landmark eighth studio album, folklore, on July 24, 2020. The album arrived without the typical promotional cycle of advance singles and carefully staged rollouts, announced just twenty-four hours before its release and delivered to an audience that was still processing the particular emotional weight of the pandemic's first months. That context shaped both the reception of the album as a whole and the particular resonance of tracks like "This Is Me Trying," which dealt with themes of effort, failure, and the gap between intention and outcome.
The song was co-written and co-produced by Swift and Aaron Dessner, the National guitarist and producer who became the primary creative collaborator on folklore. Dessner's involvement represented a significant shift in Swift's production partnerships. Having spent much of the previous decade working with Max Martin, Shellback, and Jack Antonoff, she brought in Dessner specifically for the indie-folk and alternative direction that folklore was pursuing. Their collaboration was conducted almost entirely remotely during the early months of the COVID-19 lockdowns, with files exchanged digitally as the two worked from separate locations.
The production Dessner created for "This Is Me Trying" is characteristically restrained, built around acoustic guitar, subtle percussion, and understated piano elements that give Swift's vocal performance the space to carry the emotional weight of the track. This approach was consistent with folklore's broader aesthetic, which prioritized atmosphere and emotional texture over the polished, maximalist production of albums like 1989 or Lover. The result was an album that critics and fans described as distinctly literary, and "This Is Me Trying" embodied that quality as fully as any track on the record.
Folklore debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with the largest first-week performance of 2020 at the time of its release, and it spent multiple weeks at the top of the chart. The album's success was historic in several respects, establishing Swift as the only artist at that point to have debut-week sales of more than 500,000 copies across four consecutive albums. "This Is Me Trying" appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 as part of the album's massive streaming and sales performance, though it was not among the most prominently charting individual tracks from the record.
Critical reception for the album was rapturous, with many reviewers citing it as Swift's most artistically mature work to that point. "This Is Me Trying" earned specific attention for what critics described as its understated emotional precision, the way it articulated a particular kind of difficult feeling, the exhaustion of someone who is doing their best while knowing it may not be enough, without resorting to melodrama or rhetorical overstatement. For listeners who encountered it during the isolation and uncertainty of 2020, the track's emotional honesty resonated in ways that were specific to that historical moment.
The song also contributed to folklore's sweep of major awards. The album won Album of the Year at the 2021 Grammy Awards, making Swift the first woman to win that award three times. While "This Is Me Trying" was not the primary nominated track, its role in the album's overall artistic achievement was part of what made the record such a complete and compelling statement. The Grammys recognition confirmed what critical and commercial reception had already suggested: that folklore represented a genuine artistic breakthrough rather than merely a commercial exercise.
In the context of Swift's career, "This Is Me Trying" arrived at a moment of significant creative reinvention. The shift from the maximalist pop of Lover, released just eleven months earlier, to the spare, literary introspection of folklore was among the most dramatic stylistic pivots of her career. The song embodied that pivot, showcasing a willingness to leave behind the sonic signatures that had made her one of the most commercially dominant artists of the 2010s in pursuit of something quieter, more personal, and more emotionally complex.
02 Song Meaning
This Is Me Trying: The Exhaustion of Imperfect Effort
"This Is Me Trying" occupies an unusual emotional position in popular song. Where much music about struggle culminates in triumph or offers redemption as its emotional resolution, this track stays deliberately in the middle of the difficulty, presenting effort itself as the conclusion, not as a step toward something better but as the thing that matters and the thing that may or may not be enough. It is a song about someone in the process of trying, not someone who has succeeded or failed but someone who is still doing the work with uncertain outcome.
The narrator of the song is neither a hero nor a victim but simply a person doing their best under the weight of their own accumulated failures and limitations. The emotional register is one of quiet desperation mixed with genuine determination, a combination that feels emotionally authentic rather than dramatically heightened. This restraint was a deliberate artistic choice, one consistent with folklore's broader commitment to emotional precision over emotional spectacle.
The song's central subject is the gap between intention and execution, the distance between who someone wants to be and who they actually manage to be on any given day. The narrator acknowledges past failures and current shortcomings without using them as either justification or permanent definition. There is accountability without self-flagellation, effort without certainty of reward, and honesty without the clean resolution that tidier narratives would provide.
Within Taylor Swift's catalog, the track represents a significant departure from the narrative structures she had built her career on. Songs from earlier eras often moved through conflict toward clarity, with the narrator arriving at self-knowledge or empowerment by the song's end. "This Is Me Trying" refuses that arc, remaining in the uncomfortable space of uncertainty. This was part of what made folklore feel like a genuine artistic evolution rather than a stylistic detour.
The song also speaks to the particular exhaustion of mental health struggles, though it does so without diagnosing or labeling. The narrator describes the simple act of showing up, of reaching out, of getting up and continuing as an achievement worthy of acknowledgment. This framing resonated with listeners who understood from personal experience that sometimes the most significant act available is the effort to keep going, and that this effort can be invisible to the people around you.
Aaron Dessner's production choices amplify the meaning considerably. The sparse arrangement refuses to build toward a cathartic release, never escalating into the kind of wall-of-sound moment that pop music typically uses to reward the listener for sitting through emotional difficulty. The restraint of the music enacts the restraint of the narrator, someone who does not have a grand gesture available and is working with what is at hand.
For many listeners the track served as a form of recognition, confirmation that the feeling of trying hard without visible success is real and valid and worthy of being named. This quality of honest witness to a common but under-acknowledged emotional experience is ultimately what gives "This Is Me Trying" its particular power within the folklore album and within Swift's body of work. It asks nothing of the listener except that they recognize the experience being described, and for a large number of people, that recognition was exactly what the moment required.
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