Hear Taylor Swift Sing On Emotional New Song With The National

Swifties have something special to celebrate on this New Music Friday. Indie rock favorites The National have released their new album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, and it features a song with Taylor Swift! The band's founding member Aaron Dessner has become a major collaborator with Swift after he helped produce her 2020 album folklore.

Their song "The Alcott," features prominent vocals from Swift as her lines weave in and out of lead singer Matthew Berninger's somber melody. An accompanying music video for the song shows Swift in the studio laying down her vocals. "‘Alcott’ is a song that she co-wrote with Matt, where she co-wrote, you know, the lyrics," band member Bryce Dessner said in an interview per Pitchfork. "And, so, it’s really amazing to hear her, you know, the way she was able to take what Matt had done and then kind of reinvent the song, and it's really a special, special song.”

Here's what Matt had to say about what Swift added to the song:

"And, so, when the song “The Alcott,” I wrote that, and it very much is a perspective of one person coming to try to reconnect with another person in a space, in a room, like, in a hotel bar. And I had written all that side of it, and Aaron sent it to Taylor right away. And I think she jumped right into sort of, like, the role of the other voice, the other perspective. And I was writing about my wife, but, you know, it sets a scene of a person with a notebook writing in a bar basically. And she knew exactly, you know, she fit right into that spot and she knows.

"So when it came back and all of a sudden this song I’d written suddenly has the other viewpoint, or the other perspective added to it by one of the greatest songwriters of all time. My wife was blown away. It was great. It was such a fun, exciting thing, and it just made that song so much more beautiful and so much more dimensional. And, yeah, so, yeah, we’ve always had an open door and people come in, and we’ve been so lucky to have so many incredibly brilliant, wonderful, and collaborative and fun people working with us for so long. And, yeah, it was just really, really delightful and exciting."