Today, Taylor Swift dropped “Carolina,” her long-awaited contribution to the Where the Crawdads Sing film soundtrack. The film—inspired by the book of the same name—follows a young girl named Kya who grows up isolated in the marsh of North Carolina. Normal People star Daisy Edgar-Jones plays the leading role in the movie.
Swift first teased a snippet of “Carolina” in the film’s official trailer, which dropped back in March, but she wrote the track over a year ago. After penning the lyrics, she asked frequent collaborator Aaron Dessner to handle production.
“About a year & half ago I wrote a song about the story of a girl who always lived on the outside, looking in,” Swift explained on Twitter. “Figuratively & literally. The juxtaposition of her loneliness & independence. Her curiosity & fear all tangled up. Her persisting gentleness & the world’s betrayal of it. I wrote this one alone in the middle of the night and then Aaron Dessner and I meticulously worked on a sound that we felt would be authentic to the moment when this story takes place.”
“Carolina” is written from the perspective of the character Kya. On the first verse, we learn just how deep her loneliness goes.
Lost I was born, lonesome I came
Lonesome I’ll always stay
The only friend she has is the Carolina marsh she grew up in.
Carolina knows why, for years, I roam
Free as these birds, light as whispers
Carolina knows
On the chorus, Kya doesn’t stray too far from her home. Carolina is the only place she really knows—and it’s the only place that really knows her.
And there are places I will never, ever go
And things that only Carolina will ever know
The bond Kya has with Carolina is even stronger on the second verse. It’s a part of who she is, and that’s never going to change.
Carolina stains on the dress she left
Indelible scars, pivotal marks
Blue as the life she fled
Where the Crawdads Sing is set to arrive in theaters on July 15. In the meantime, you can check out all the lyrics to “Carolina” on Genius now.
