Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon found himself in the Taylor Swift universe in the early 2020s when he and Swift collaborated on two of her songs: “Exile” from Folklore and the Evermore title track. It turns out, though, that those songs actually got their start in Vernon’s realm.
Vernon sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe for an interview that was shared yesterday (April 15), and in it, Vernon explained:
“Right in February there, we were going to go on a tour. This is 2020, so the timeline’s a little fuzzy, but stay with me. […] So Andrew Fitzpatrick, who was playing guitar in Bon Iver, was going to have a baby in April, did have a baby. And we were out a guitar player for our big European run that we were going to do for IMI. And I asked Aaron [Dessner], so Aaron was flying out to gigs, he was listening and rehearsing. He was in. And what we were going to do is have Aaron go out to the middle of these arenas and just play demos of Big Red Machine, new stuff. […] And then March 12th, the NBA season is cancelled and COVID really trips up. And so that tour pretty quickly gets cancelled. And it’s a brick wall for everybody, especially in music. […]
Somewhere around that time, like everybody, like me, Aaron was going on Instagram Live and just playing stuff he’s been working on, because I think we just needed to share. And Taylor heard it. Again, all the glory goes to Taylor for hearing, as a songwriter, what music she wants to make, but those songs are Big Red Machine demos at their core.”
He continued, “Her genius was working with the genius of Aaron Dessner on making the strongest set of lyrics and songwriting that she’s ever had, really. And so during that process, I’m just sort of watching it happen. And to me, it was very much like seeing Taylor enter our whole universe. Of course, there’s no one bigger and we all bowed down to her, you know. But to see her come into that, it was almost like I couldn’t stop blinking. […] And then Aaron hits me up and is like, ‘So Bud-o, I think there’s a song that Taylor would like you to sing.’ And I was like, ‘Taylor?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, I haven’t told you yet, but [we’re] taking some of the songs and she’s writing to them.’”
Watch the full interview above.