Watch: Taylor Swift and The National Release “The Alcott”

To celebrate the release of their ninth album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, The National shared a video for their song “The Alcott,” featuring Taylor Swift.

Swift has already been connected to The National for several years, with the band’s Aaron Dessner co-producing and co-writing her 2020 albums, Folklore and Evermore. The National also appeared on the Evermore track “Coney Island.”

Dessner has continued collaborating with Swift on the Big Red Machine songs ‘Renegade” and “Birch,” along with producing Swift’s “Carolina,” featured in the 2022 film Where the Crawdads Sing, and on Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version), and Midnights (3am Edition).

“We’re all big fans of Taylor, and she’s been really generous with us, you know, inviting us to be part of ‘Coney Island,’” said The National’s Bryce Dessner in a recent interview. “And, you know, obviously, my brother’s worked with her a lot, and I’ve done a bunch of orchestration for her albums.”

He added, “‘Alcott’ is a song that she co-wrote with Matt [Berninger]. So it’s really amazing to hear her, the way she was able to take what Matt had done and then kind of reinvent the song, and it’s really a special, special song.”

Elaborating on his collaboration with Swift on “The Alcott,” Berninger said he initially wrote it from the “perspective of one person coming to try to reconnect with another person in a space, in a room,” before Swift added the “other voice” in the song.

“I had written all that side of it, and Aaron sent it to Taylor right away,” shared Berninger. “And I think she jumped right into sort of, the role of the other voice, the other perspective. And I was writing about my wife, but, you know, it sets a scene of a person with a notebook writing in a bar basically. And she knew exactly, you know, she fit right into that spot and she knows.”

The 11-track First Two Pages of Frankenstein was produced by The National at Dessner’s Long Pond Studios in the Hudson Valley region of Upstate New York, and also features guest appearances by Sufjan Stevens on the song “Once Upon a Poolside” and Phoebe Bridgers, who appears on the tracks “This Is Not Helping” and “You Mind Is Not Your Friend.”

Photo by Emma McIntyre/AMA2019/Getty Images for dcp