A few days ago, it was announced that Taylor Swift will be appearing on a new album from Big Red Machine, a group led by two of her Folklore/Evermore collaborators, Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon. Before the news was made official, though, Swift fans picked up on an Easter egg in a teaser video, that Easter egg being Swift’s handwriting. Swift’s buried treasures for fans to find have become the stuff of legend, so naturally, Dessner was happy to be involved in that side of Swift’s career.
Speaking with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Dessner said:
“It’s funny because I feel like I’m also searching for the Easter eggs when she drops them because there’s so many. I’m such a fan of what she does, but I think she has a sort of mystical, mythical elements in her songwriting just kind of are there as a constellation in her mind. She sees things, patterns, that she then drops in different ways. And so sometimes I know, and sometimes I don’t know, but it’s fun. And I think her fans are just incredible, the details that they’re interested in. I love it, it’s super fun. I feel like I got invited into the best club or something.”
He also spoke about the strong collaborative chemistry he and Swift share, saying:
“Whatever wildfire happened last year creatively for Taylor and I… we didn’t want to stop writing songs together, and still don’t, really. It’s kind of like somehow I ended up on the team with the best player, so you just want to keep passing the ball to her. Big Red Machine was a great opportunity because she really fell in love with a lot of the music that Justin and I were working on because I would share it with her. A lot of this music, right before Taylor approached me last year, Justin and I had been in Texas to work on these songs. And so they were pretty far along, and I shared a bunch of them with Taylor and she really was inspired by them, and she knew the first record, so it just kind of was in the air when we were working on Folklore and Evermore.
Some of the songs, some of the instrumental ideas, there were some where she felt like, ‘Well, this might be Big Red Machine.’ And so it just kind of happened naturally after we finished Evermore, she wrote ‘Renegade’ and it was just like, again, getting hit by a bolt of lightning or something. When you get the chance to work with someone like her, she’s just… she’s a savant and just this incredibly hardworking and wonderful person, so it was just special.”
Watch the full interview below.
How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? is out 8/27 via Jagjaguwar/37d03d. Pre-order it here.