Taylor Swift Added 2 Songs to ‘evermore’ With Only Days To Spare

Taylor Swift released her album evermore on Dec. 11, 2020, and the album was an even bigger surprise than its predecessor, folklore. Swift collaborated with producers Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, and Bryce Dessner on evermore, and the album also features Bon Iver, Haim, and The National. 

evermore has 15 songs and two bonus tracks called “Right Where You Left Me” and “It’s Time to Go.” In an interview with Rolling Stone, collaborator Aaron Dessner revealed that Swift added two songs to the album right before it was released.

Taylor Swift wrote ‘Right Where You Left Me’ and ‘Happiness’ at the last minute

Aaron Dessner has now collaborated with Swift on two albums. Both folklore and evermore were surprises for fans and were announced just hours before they were released.

evermore was released two days before Swift’s 31st birthday. Aaron Dessner told Rolling Stone that Swift ended up adding two songs to the album with just days to spare.

“There were two songs like that. One is a bonus track called ‘Right Where You Left Me,’ and the other one was ‘Happiness,’ which she wrote literally days before we were supposed to master. That’s similar to what happened with Folklore, with ‘The 1’ and ‘Hoax,’ which she wrote days before,” Dessner said.

He continued, “And it was funny, because I walked into the studio and Jon Low, our engineer here, was mixing and had been working the whole time toward this. And I came in and he’s in the middle of mixing and I was like, ‘There are two more songs.’ And he looked at me like, ‘…We’re not gonna make it.'”

Aaron Dessner thinks the two songs are ‘important’

While speaking with Rolling Stone, Aaron Dessner gave more insight into Swift’s songwriting process and how “Right Where You Left Me” and “Happiness” came to be.

According to Aaron Dessner, he had written the music to “Happiness” and “Right Where You Left Me.” When Swift heard the instrumentals, she recorded her own lyrics remotely and sent back the songs.

“That is a little bit how she works — she writes a lot of songs, and then at the very end she sometimes writes one or two more, and they often are important ones,” he told Rolling Stone.

Will Taylor Swift make more albums like ‘folklore’ and ‘evermore’?

Ever since Swift released evermore, fans have wondered if the singer-songwriter plans to release another follow-up album. Despite fans’ curiosity, Aaron Dessner thinks Swift’s journey with folklore and evermore is completed.

“I do think this story, this era, has concluded, and I think in such a beautiful way with these sister records — it does kind of feel like there’s closure to that…,” he said. “It’s this whole community that moves forward and takes risks and, hopefully, there will be other records that appear in the future.”