Swift wrote "Carolina" in the months after she wrote "Folklore," her eighth and best album.
She said she was inspired by "a girl who always lived on the outside, looking in... Her longing and her stillness. Her curiosity and fear, all tangled up. Her persisting gentleness… and the world's betrayal of it."
The song shares the aforementioned album's vivid lyricism, painting a portrait of a misunderstood woman with darkness to outrun: "Carolina stains on the dress she left / Indelible scars, pivotal marks / Blue as the life she fled."
The song was written for the film adaptation of "Where the Crawdads Sing," Delia Owens's bestselling novel about a girl who lives alone in a North Carolina marsh.
But "Carolina" can also be read as an allegory for Swift's own ostracism ("for years they've said that I was guilty as sin and sleep in a liar's bed"). She treads similar ground in recent tracks like "Mad Woman" and "Evermore."
Unfortunately, the lyrics can get lost in the languid production. Although Swift said that she "meticulously" worked with producer Aaron Dessner to create a sound that felt "authentic" to the story, the song lacks momentum, texture, and motive — and ultimately fails to create the tension Swift describes. — CA