Do you remember where you were when Taylor Swift hit us with folklore? Maybe you were on the afternoon train to your saltbox house on the coast. Or meeting someone behind the mall. Or showing up to Betty’s party and stirring shit up in the garden. Wherever you were, get ready to be hit with the pummeling force of the passage of time: That was a year ago today. To commemorate the occasion, Swift tweeted a link to an alternate version of bonus track “The Lakes†on Saturday morning, writing, “It’s been 1 year since we escaped the real world together and imagined ourselves someplace simpler. With tall trees & salt air. Where you can wear lace nightgowns that make you look like a Victorian ghost & no one will side eye you cause no one is around.â€
The alternate version is titled “The Lakes (Original Version),†because the more ornate-sounding instrumentation was producer Jack Antonoff’s original plan for the song. In Billboard this past Tuesday, Antonoff recalled, “there was this big orchestral version, and Taylor was like, ‘Eh, make it small.’ I had gotten lost in the string arrangements and all this stuff, and I took everything out.†This version puts all of those layers of strings and sound right back in there. Congrats, Jack. You made another song sound like Lana.