As mentioned in my post about her the other day, I’ve been hearing from industry sources this week in Nashville about Taylor Swift and a new song and something to do with Jennifer Nettles. Looks like my sources were right. 

Per Rolling Stone, Taylor co-wrote the song with Train’s Pat Monahan and she sings on the track too. Apparently the song’s been kicking around in her archive since 2012 or so. Which speaks to just how many songs she has. Last year, you’ll recall, she gave Better Man to Little Big Town and it became a big hit, winning all kinds of awards. This is what Taylor is sitting on – an extensive catalogue of music, her own music, that she can hold in her vault for years and either pull out for herself or trickle out through other artists. It’s a tremendous superpower. 

In addition to the news about her collaboration with Sugarland, Taylor also released two new singles on Spotify yesterday: an acoustic version of Delicate and a cover of Earth, Wind & Fire’s classic September. Delicate is a good song. The original is good and the acoustic is good and I don’t prefer one over the other. Taylor’s September… well… even if you’re the most diehard Taylor stan, we’re going to start from the position that no one will cover September better than the original, right? Please don’t do this. Please don’t be that person who’s all like, “OMG she made the song so much better”. This is a lie and you’re better than that. 

 

So… I’m not feeling it. It doesn’t make me feel the same way, or feel anything really. You know those trumpets off the top of the original? As soon as you hear those trumpets, it gets you hype, right? None of that is happening in Taylor’s September. And, sure, I get that she wanted to make it different. But in the process she’s taken out the joy of the song and also its soul. She’s also changed a lyric – from the 21st of September to the 28th of September. Which is probably a significant date in her relationship with Joe Alwyn. Which, if we’re still caring about this, is more confirmation that she pretty much broke up with Tom Hiddleston so that she could be with Joe. If you recall, news broke that Taylor and Tom were over on September 7, 2016. Taylor and Joe were both at the Kings of Leon concert in New York on October 12 which was when, after it was revealed that they were together, we first gauged the beginning of their relationship. If she’s singing about September 28th, though, it means that they hooked up even earlier than that. In the lyrics to her song Gorgeous, she establishes that she and Joe actually met when she was still with Calvin Harris. (“And I’ve got a boyfriend, he’s older than us. He’s at the club doing I don’t know what.”) She broke up with Calvin after the Met Gala in 2016 in a Getaway Car with Tom. Joe was at the Met Gala too though. And on the song Dress, she sings about “flashback to when you met me, your buzzcut and my hair bleached” and her hair was platinum the year she hosted the Met Gala. So she used Tom to get away from Calvin but was thinking about Joe the whole time and left Tom on the side of the road as soon as she could make it happen with Joe. None of which is a secret, not since reputation was released. It’s just the timeline that’s been a question mark. And now we have a better idea.