Taylor Swift captures the “Loneliness” Essence in her freshly-brewed single “Carolina”, and I feel Belonged

Sobs are heaved, loneliness lauded, while eerie ballads take our hearts on a spine-chilling ride. In her newly released single, Carolina, Swift keeps her vocals hollow, as if stating a story of someone clandestine. Like a poem, embossed in a night journal, unpublished and raw, away from people’s caress. Carolina comes as a bespoke solution to a term quite familiar to people like me, and Kya– A Glorious Mess.

After her critically acclaimed album Evermore, Carolina is a freshly brewed track by Swift. The melody will play towards the end of the movie “Where the Crawdads Sing”, based upon the New York Times Bestselling Novel with an identical name. Authored by Delia Owens, the movie is being produced by Reese Witherspoon and stars Daisy Edgar-Jones in the lead role.

The significance of the track comes from the plot of the story. The chronicle follows Kya (played by Daisy), who is abandoned by her family, and lives among the North Carolina marshes. Kya is exhibited as a marsh girl, the one who grew up in the wild. The one no one really knew, the one who did not know how to do life.

Swift recites, “Oh Carolina Creeks, Running through my veins", and I am taken aback by her hollow, almost haunted voice. The tune whispers the protagonist's isolation in merely seconds. How the 11 times Grammy Award Winner does that with her scintillating voice is haunting, breathtaking, and chilling, all at once. Sometimes, even conventionally fond of solitude, individuals find loneliness abstruse to describe. A feeling, a state, a situation, or a residue of actions? Ask a lonely person and often, they find it difficult to decipher. But Dr. Taylor Swift champions what others feel. To quote my High-School bestie, “She gives words to things that make my heart heavy, and makes me aware of what it was that made my existence a baggage.” The track, embossed with acoustic instruments, sets the scene of a solitary reaper, which the protagonist embodies.

Lost I was born

Lonesome I came

Lonesome I’ll always stay

The song had me at this. It was as if my soul devoted itself to the track. How I felt on a regular basis was captured by mere words. I’ve often found my existence awry. At times, isolation feels like an inevitable companion, someone that I’ll always have. A part of me rejoices in it, but at times, that very seclusion arrives with sadness immersed. I question, Do I really admire it, or am I forced to feel that way? Is it because the people with whom I wanted to stay, left, and I couldn’t stand the ones who chose to stay. Am I that tragic that I gravitate towards it, or do I have no other choice? Carolina felt a reverie from the unanswered questions residing inside me, every day.

As per Swift, the song is the story of a girl who always lived on the outside, looking in. Figuratively and literally. The juxtaposition of her loneliness and independence. Her longing and her stillness. Her curiosity and fear were all tangled up. Her persisting gentleness, and the world’s betrayal of it.

Minutes after the song was released, Swifties flooded Social Media singing praises for the song. Just like the entire world, we’re eagerly waiting for the release of the film too, so we could dive deep into the universe of Carolina, the premise Swift promises with the title tune. This is not the first time Taylor has contributed to feature films. The list includes movies like Fifty Shades Darker, Valentine’s Day, and The Hunger Games. We cannot wait to have more of Taylor's Version.