Taylor Swift Drops Song "Carolina" From Where the Crawdads Sing: Hear the "Haunting" Full Version

Back in March, fans heard a bit of Taylor Swift's song "Carolina" in a teaser for the new movie Where the Crawdads Sing. Now, listeners can hear the whole track...Ready for it?

By Elyse Dupre Jun 24, 2022 4:04 AMTags
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You'll want to stay, stay, stay and listen to Taylor Swift's new song on repeat.

The singer, 32, released the full version of her song "Carolina" from the new movie Where The Crawdads Sing at the stroke of midnight on June 24.

"I wrote this one alone in the middle of the night," Swift shared on social media after its release. She said she wanted the sound to "be authentic to the moment when this story takes place."

If you go back to December, er, rather March you may recall that fans first heard a teaser for "Carolina" in the film's trailer. Now, they no longer have a blank space in regard to the rest of the lyrics and can listen to the whole track.

The movie Where The Crawdads Sing is based on the best-selling novel by Delia Owens. In a post shared to Instagram upon the trailer's release, Swift recalled how she "got absolutely lost in" the book when she read it years ago. And after hearing that the "incredible" Daisy Edgar-Jones was starring in the film and that the "brilliant" Reese Witherspoon was producing it, she knew she "wanted to be a part of it from the musical side." So, the 11-time Grammy winner wrote "Carolina" alone and asked Aaron Dessner (who she also worked with for folklore and evermore) to produce it.

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For "Carolina," Swift noted she "wanted to create something haunting and ethereal to match this mesmerizing story." And Witherspoon will never forget the first time she heard the song.

"I freaked out when I heard Taylor wrote a song for this movie," the Oscar winner said during Sony Pictures' recent live chat for the film. "First of all, she's one of my favorite artists of all time, but her songwriting is so moving."

Witherspoon continued, "But the fact that she read this book and loved it so much and then she heard we were making a movie, she was making her folklore album, and then she wrote a song with that whole folklore team, which was so haunting and magical, and the beautiful instruments that they used—I was blown away."

Director Olivia Newman said Swift wrote "this gorgeous letter" to her, explaining that she had only used musical instruments that were available before 1953 to keep with the era of the movie. Swift also "recorded it in one take the way they recorded songs at the time," the director said.

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"What was so haunting about it was that you have a very specific feeling when the book ends, which we really wanted to capture at the end of the movie as well," Newman explained. "We wanted to leave audiences with that same sort of emotional feeling. And her song just leans right into that."

In addition to Edgar-Jones, Where The Crawdads Sing features Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr. and David Strathairn. The movie hits theaters July 15, but fans can hear Swift perform "Carolina" now above.