Taylor Swift debuts new song ‘Carolina’ for NC’s ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ movie
Taylor Swift finally released “Carolina,” the signature track for the new movie based in North Carolina, “Where the Crawdads Sing.”
Swift said on Twitter that she wrote the song — alone — a year and a half ago in the middle of the night.
“About a year & half ago I wrote a song about the story of a girl who always lived on the outside, looking in. Figuratively & literally. The juxtaposition of her loneliness & independence. Her curiosity & fear all tangled up. Her persisting gentleness & the world’s betrayal of it,” Swift wrote.
“Where the Crawdads Sing” is a book written by Delia Owens that spent 32 weeks at the top of The New York Times bestseller list in 2019 and 2020. Now being adapted into a movie to be released July 15, the story tells the tale of Kya, known as the “marsh girl” because she raised herself alone out in nature, and how she became intertwined in the murder investigation of a local celebrity. The book and movie are set in the fictional coastal town of Barkley Cove.
In March, the News & Observer first reported on the song, which was announced when the movie’s trailer was first released. Until Thursday, however, the song did not have a release date. Swift announced her plans to release the song just 12 hours Friday before its arrival at midnight.
The song is “haunting,” a feeling she said previously she sought out to best match the story. Telling Kya’s story, she sings about how “Why for years they’ve said / That I was guilty as sin / And sleep in a liar’s bed.” It was produced with Aaron Dessner, a major collaborator on her “folklore” and “evermore” albums, both of which share musical tones with “Carolina.”
The song is full of vivid imagery about North Carolina’s natural beauty, its creeks, birds and forests.
In the first two lines of the song, Swift sings, “O Carolina creeks / Running through my veins.”
Later in the song, she sings about “Carolina Pines.” And, as she does, the lyric video showed off pine trees dripping with the coastal Carolina’s iconic Spanish moss.
The line is fitting, as North Carolina is known for its trees — Raleigh is the “City of Oaks.” The state is home to eight of the 60 species of pine trees: loblolly, longleaf, short-leaf, Eastern white, pitch, pond, Virginia, and table mountain pine.
Read the full lyrics below.
O Carolina creeks
Running through my veins
Lost I was born
Lonesome I came
Lonesome I’ll always stay
Carolina knows
Why for years I roam
Free as these birds
Light as whispers
Carolina knows
And you didn’t see me here
No, they never did see me here
And she’s in my dreams
Into the mist, into the clouds
Don’t leave
I make a fist, I make it count
And there are places I will never ever go
And things that only Carolina will ever know
Carolina stains
On the dress she left
Indelible scars
Pivotal marks
Blue as the life she fled
Carolina pines
Won’t you cover me?
Hide me like robes
Down the back road
Muddy these webs we weave
And you didn’t see me here
No, they never did see me
And she’s in my dreams
Into the mist, into the clouds
Don’t leave
I make a fist, I make it count
And there are places I will never ever go
And things that only Carolina will ever know
And you didn’t see me here
They never did see me here
No you didn’t seem me here
They never saw me
O Carolina knows
Why for years they’ve said
That I was guilty as sin
And sleep in a liar’s bed
But the sleep comes fast
And I’ll meet no ghosts
It’s between me
The sand and the sea
Carolina knows
This story was originally published June 24, 2022 at 11:33 AM.
