Taylor Swift Shares Original Version of “The Lakes” on ‘Folklore’ Anniversary

In celebration of the one-year anniversary of folklore, Taylor Swift surprised fans with a gift: the alternate “original” version of the bonus track “The Lakes.”

“It’s been one year since we escaped the real world together and imagined ourselves someplace simpler,” said Swift on her social media pages. “With tall tall trees and salt air. Where you’re allowed to wear lace nightgowns that make you look like a Victorian ghost every day and no one will side-eye you cause no one is around.”

Swift added, “It’s just you and your imaginary cabin and the stories you make up to pass the time. To say thank you for all you have done to make this album what it was, I wanted to give you the original version of ‘The Lakes.’ Happy one-year anniversary to Rebekah, Betty, Inez, James, Augustine, and the lives we all created around them. Happy Anniversary, folklore.”

A lusher, orchestral arrangement of “The Lakes, is the original recording, which Swift originally nixed, according to co-producer and co-writer Jack Antonoff, because she wanted to make it smaller on the album.

“I had gotten lost in the string arrangements and all this stuff, and I took everything out,” said Antonoff in a recent interview. ‘I was just like, ‘Oh, my God!’ We were not together because that record was made [remotely], but I remember being in the studio alone like, ‘Holy shit, this is so perfect.’”

Set in England’s Lake District, the song is one of the more autobiographical ones on folklore, about the fantasy of escaping to another place without paparazzi.