The song releases three weeks in before the film’s release
Taylor Swift has released a new song titled “Carolina,” which was produced by Aaron Dessner of The National.
The song serves as the theme song for the new film “Where The Crawdads Sing,” directed by Olivia Newman and executive produced by Reese Witherspoon.
The track, which plays over the movie’s end credits, arrives three weeks before the July 15 release of “Where the Crawdads Sing.”
Taylor announced the release on her social media handle without including any text about the song.
A preview of “Carolina” was first seen in the trailer for the new mystery thriller back in March.
Swift’s voice is rather unsettling as she sings, “They never saw me/You didn’t see me here/No, they never did see me here/There are places I will never, ever go/Things that only Carolina will ever know.”
Swift wrote the song while working on her 2020 album “Folklore,” according to Witherspoon, after reading the 2018 Delia Owens novel of the same name, on which the film is based.
Hardcore fans were well aware that the song would be available Thursday.
The song was recorded in one take, using only instruments from the early 1950s, when the first part of “Where the Crawdads Sing” is set — details revealed in a recent roundtable discussion by producer Reese Witherspoon and director Olivia Newman.
Newman said Taylor “wrote this gorgeous letter to us,” explaining how they chose instruments that were only available before 1953 and she recorded it in one take, which was how songs were recorded at the time.
“I started bawling the first time I heard it and said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me right now.I mean, I enjoy singing along to Taylor Swift songs, but I never cry like this. “
According to the filmmakers, Swift wrote the song on the spur of the moment and then submitted it.
Witherspoon again said, “She read this book and loved it so much, and when she heard we were making a movie (during the time she was making her “Folklore” album), she wrote a song with that whole “Folklore” team, which was so haunting and magical and beautiful.”
Newman continued, “She just went and wrote this song out of pure inspiration and kind of said, I don’t know if you’ll like it, but here it is.”
As stated in a recent livestream by the director, Swift’s song, which plays over the credits, reflects the tone of the story’s ending.
“We wanted to leave audiences with that same sort of emotional feeling” that the source novel had on readers, Newman said, and “her song just leans right into that.”
Swift’s previous feature film original songs include “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever (ft. Zayn Malik)” for Fifty Shades Darker (2016), “Sweeter Than Fiction” for One Chance (2013), “Safe and Sound” and “Eyes Open” for the superhit The Hunger Games (2012).
“Today Was a Fairytale” for Valentine’s Day (2010), and “Crazier” and “You’ll Always Find Your Way” (2009) for Hannah Montana.
Swift will also appear in director David O. Russell’s “Amsterdam” this fall, marking her first significant acting role in a drama. She has previously appeared in the films “Cats,” “The Giver,” “Valentine’s Day,” and “The Lorax.”
