Taylor Swift returns to her folkier roots with “Carolina,” off the Where the Crawdads Sing soundtrack. Swift curls her voice around a brittle guitar. Think “Safe & Sound” but far more haunting and more emotionally-pulverizing. As expected, her lyrics are so vivid, it’s as if one is watching the movie already. “Carolina stains on the dress she left / Indelible scars, pivotal marks / Blue as the life she fled,” she sings. Swift stands in a cloud of dust, almost a siren emerging from troubled waters and dripping sticky wet on the banks of a river. “Into the mist, into the clouds / Don’t leave,” she lingers.
Listen to “Carolina” below.