TAYLOR SWIFT DROPS ORIGINAL VERSION OF ‘THE LAKES’ ON THE ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF HER ALBUM ‘FOLKLORE’

When Taylor Swift’s Grammy-winning, eighth studio album Folklore was released last year on July 24th, it received widespread critical acclaim. Many were impressed by the poetic lyrics and sophistication of ‘The Lakes’ song. On the occasion of its one-year anniversary, the 31-year-old singer took to Instagram to thank her fans for all the support and as a gift of gratitude, dropped the orchestral version of the bonus track ‘The Lakes’.

“It’s been one year since we escaped the real world together and imagined ourselves someplace simpler,” Swift wrote on her social media accounts. “With tall tall trees and salt air. Where you’re allowed to wear lace nightgowns that make you look like a Victorian ghost every day & no one will side-eye you cause no one is around. It’s just you and your imaginary cabin and the stories you make up to pass the time. To say thank you for all you have done to make this album what it was, I wanted to give you the original version of ‘The Lakes.’ Happy 1 year anniversary to Rebekah, Betty, Inez, James, Augustine, and the lives we all created around them. Happy Anniversary, folklore.”

The alternate version of ‘The Lakes’ song was recently revealed during an interview with Jack Antonoff who was the co-writer and co-producer of the song with Swift. He said that Taylor had nixed the original production of the song which existed as a ‘big orchestral version’.

In this week’s Billboard digital cover story he said, “On one of my favourite songs on ‘Folklore,’ ‘The Lakes,’ there was this big orchestral version, and Taylor was like, ‘Eh, make it small.’ I had gotten lost in the string arrangements and all this stuff, and I took everything out. I was just like, ‘Oh, my God!’ We were not together because that record was made [remotely], but I remember being in the studio alone like, ‘Holy s–t, this is so perfect.’”

Although the 24^th of July marks the first anniversary of “Folklore,” it hasn’t exactly been a year since “The Lakes” was heard. It was an exclusive bonus track that was initially featured on the physical deluxe editions of ‘Folklore’ and released on August 7, 2021.

‘The Lakes’ song, with its themes of introspection and escapism has an autobiographical essence. It’s a reflection of the singer’s semi-retirement to Windermere which is the largest lake in England. It has tones of romance, melancholy, and fantasy about staying aloof in a land, seemingly far from the reaches of the paparazzi or celebrity stalkers.

“Folklore was an album that I made in the very beginning of the pandemic. I started writing it, and I feel like it became a sort of emotional life raft for me to pour my feelings into,” the singer said during her acceptance speech.

Swift was grateful to her collaborators Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff for their creativity, which she said “completely changed” her life. “I feel like we’re going to be friends forever,” she said.

“We all needed to escape into stories, whether movies or TV or film or music and the fact that you chose this album, I am so honored by that,” Swift later added. “You really wrapped your arms around it. Someday we’ll get to wrap our arms around each other when we see each other again.”

According to PEOPLE, Taylor’s Folklore was the first album to sell a whooping one million copies in the United States in 2020 and topped the Billboard 200 albums chart for eight non-consecutive weeks last year. Folklore was also declared the pop album of the year 2021 in iHeartRadio Music Awards.

As the top-selling album in the United States, Folklore was a surprising shift towards indie-folk that proved a critical and commercial blockbuster for Swift.

Listen to the orchestral version of ‘The Lakes’ song below.

—Silviya Yohannan