Taylor Swift Just Dropped Her First Instagram Post This Year, And It’s About A ‘Haunting’ New Song

Taylor Swift in Cardigan music video, from Folklore album
(Image credit: Universal Music Group)

Taylor Swift has had a huge couple of years in the music industry, between releasing two incredible albums she crafted in quarantine, folklore and evermore and re-recording and rolling out “Taylor’s Version” of her original music following her masters being sold. With that in mind, it’s understandable why Swift would take some time off of social media. However, we’re over the moon that she just returned to social media for her first announcement of the year, especially since it details what we’ll hear next from her. 

Taylor Swift took to Instagram for the first time in 2022 to post about an upcoming song coming “soon.” The artist wrote a song for the Reese Witherspoon produced film adaptation of Where The Crawdads Sing starring Daisy Edgar Jones. Check out Swift’s announcement: 

The singer has written many songs for movies including “Safe & Sound” for The Hunger Games, “I Don’t Want To Live Forever” for Fifty Shades Darker and “Beautiful Ghosts” for Cats. A blatant theme here is Taylor Swift loves writing music for movies based on books and that trend will continue for the upcoming film, Where The Crawdads Sing

The song is called “Carolina,” which seems to be in reference to North Carolina, where the movie is set. Where The Crawdads Sing is based on Delia Owens’ best-selling book of the same name. The story follows a woman who grew up in a North Carolina marsh and later becomes a suspect of a murder for a man who once pursued her. 

Daisy Edgar Jones is set to play Kya, the protagonist in the movie, following her beloved role in another book adaptation Normal People and recently alongside Sebastian Stan in Fresh. In Taylor Swift’s post, she shared the Where The Crawdads Sing first trailer and shared that she’s been a fan of the book for years. She wrote “Carolina” with The Nationals' Aaron Dessner, who she has worked closely with on folklore and evermore. She calls the song “haunting” and “ethereal” just like the story itself. 

Part of “Carolina” can be heard in the background of the trailer and it’s absolutely chilling. Taylor Swift has shown she is an incredible storyteller in her music as of late, especially as her newer albums served as fictional stories in their own right. Folklore for example had a love triangle within the album consisting of characters named August, Betty, Inez and James, the latter three being nods to Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s kids names. And evermore had more made-up song storylines. 

Where The Crawdads Sing is set to be released on July 22, 2022. While Taylor Swift doesn’t define how soon is “soon” regarding when “Carolina” will come out in full, we’ll definitely be looking out for it. As we wait for Taylor Swift’s new song, check out what other upcoming movies are coming out in 2022

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.