6 album covers in our archive
Taylor Swift is featured in Behind the Covers' archive with 6 album covers spanning the 2020s and 2010s and 2000s. Released across Republic Records, Big Machine Records and Big Machine labels, the artwork sits in the pop, indie, alternative, folk, electronic, rock, country tradition. Each cover is documented in our archive with design notes covering photography, portrait, minimalist, iconic, black and white, monochrome. Below you'll find the full story behind each Taylor Swift cover — designers, photographers, label history, and the visual choices that defined the release.
Cover evolution
Taylor Swift's tenth album features ethereal blue-purple gradient portraits by photographer Beth Garrabrant, shot on film to capture the nocturnal aesthetic of Swift's sleepless nights concept album.
In July 2020, with the world shut down, Taylor Swift vanished into a friend's woods with one photographer, no crew, and nightgowns ordered online. The black-and-white image she came back with shows her almost lost among the trees, a tiny pioneer figure swallowed by fog. The cover for folklore is a story about scale, solitude, and making art with whatever you have.
The pink glitter word floating in a bruise of clouds says everything before you notice the girl beneath it. Taylor Swift handed her seventh album's entire visual world to a 24-year-old photographer two years out of art school. Here's how a sky, a blue-dipped strand of hair, and a change of record labels came together.
A striking black-and-white portrait shows Swift with newspaper-style text covering half her face, embodying her transformation from country sweetheart to defiant pop star after public controversies.
A Polaroid-style portrait crops Swift's face below her eyes, creating mystery about the album's emotional content. The photography duo Lowfield shot over 400 Polaroid photographs for the project.
A curly-haired young woman stares out from a swirling green backdrop, her name looped in white script across the bottom. The photographer who shot it had a hunch: this thing is going to go places. He had no idea how far.
