Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon has revealed that Taylor Swift‘s ‘Folklore’-era collaborations with him and Aaron Dessner originally stemmed from Big Red Machine demos.
- READ MORE: Bon Iver – ‘SABLE fABLE’ review: a creative rebirth
In 2020, Taylor Swift released two folk-inspired albums, ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’. The albums featured production work from The National‘s Aaron Dessner and included collaborations with Bon Iver.
Now, Justin Vernon has revealed in a chat with Zane Lowe that those collaborations were birthed out of demos Taylor had heard from his Big Red Machine side-project with Dessner.
Vernon explained that in early 2020 before the pandemic hit, he had asked Dessner to join Bon Iver for their European tour as a replacement guitarist and to “dick around” and perform some of Big Red Machine’s songs. All of that never happened though, as the pandemic forced everyone into quarantine.
As such, Dessner went on Instagram Live and played some of the Big Red Machine demos he had working, with Vernon explaining: “I think we just needed to share it. And Taylor heard it.”
Vernon continued: “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.”
Justin Vernon explained how it all came together: “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 like 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…”
“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 I’m taking some of the songs and she’s writing to them’. I was like, ‘Awesome. I’m not doing anything today’. So they sent it and I ended up adding a couple of little bits, but that’s how Aaron and Joe [Alwyn] and Taylor wrote the song, and I just sang it on an SM7 in my little makeshift studio.”
“And it felt level to everything else. I mean in, it’s an exceptional song and an exceptionally popular song for a good reason. But it felt just so natural and I’m so thankful for that opportunity just to have, yeah, to have worked with such an amazing artist,” Vernon concluded on the matter.
Vernon appeared on ‘exile’ on ‘Folklore’ and again on the title track of ‘Evermore’. Dessner co-produced numerous songs on both records.
In a four-star review of ‘Folklore’, Hannah Mylrea wrote for NME: “‘Folklore’ feels fresh, forward-thinking and, most of all, honest. The glossy production she’s lent on for the past half-decade is cast aside for simpler, softer melodies and wistful instrumentation. It’s the sound of an artist who’s bored of calculated releases and wanted to try something different. Swift disappeared into the metaphorical woods while writing ‘Folklore’, and she’s emerged stronger than ever.”
As for Vernon’s Bon Iver, the new album ‘SABLE, fABLE’ arrived last week (April 11). In a four-star review of ‘SABLE, fABLE’, NME commended the album which was feared to be the departure of the Bon Iver project, but instead is being seen as a “rebirth”.
It reads: “Though this is not Bon Iver’s answer to ‘Brat’ summer by any stretch of the imagination, many of these same existential questions also linger on ‘SABLE, fABLE’ – a record that grapples with his own identity as much as it does the twists and turns of life. Though some fans feared this might well be an epilogue to the Bon Iver project, it comes across as more of a rebirth.”
