I was in line at the grocery store when I got the news. I was scrolling through my Facebook feed (it was a long line at the register) when I saw a post by Taylor Swift saying she wrote the song “Better Man” for Little Big Town. My heart started pounding. New Taylor Swift music. Finally.
I rushed to my car and downloaded the song from iTunes without previewing it. If Taylor Swift had a hand in writing the song, you know it has to be good. You don’t need to preview that.
And it’s beautiful. The song is honest and fragile, and reminiscent of Swift’s country roots.
The mark of a truly gifted songwriter is when the song will sound like the person who wrote it even if they aren’t performing it. This is totally the case here. While it’s Little Big Town performing, you feel as though Taylor Swift is singing it to you – you can almost hear her sing it.
Last month, there was a bit of a hysteria where we thought Swift would secretly release her sixth album (sadly, that did not happen). The below video leaked online and people thought it was a clip of a new Taylor Swift song because it sounds just like her.
However, I have a very well trained musical ear, and that is not Kelsea Ballerini. Ballerini has more of a southern twang than Swift and a slightly higher pitch voice. Plus, the way this singer pronounced “didn’t know, thought we could grow it” is more in line with Swift’s pronunciations. But this video is not the greatest quality. Indeed, Ballerini released the studio snippet of the song on her Instagram account (see below) and it made me do a double take…maybe it is Ballerini singing but the distorted quality makes it seem like Swift…
But since Swift wrote “Better Man” for Little Big Town, I’m now wondering if the clip above actually is Taylor Swift singing a demo for Kelsea Ballerini. Like, in a few months we’ll see Kelsea Ballerini has a new single “Roses” written by T. Swift.
Regardless, let us revel in the fact we sort of have a new Taylor Swift song, and hope she hurries up with #TS6!
