Taylor Swift Drops ‘Willow’ Video From New Album ‘Evermore’

Taylor Swift has released the music video for “Willow,” the lead single from her new album Evermore. Both the visual and the album dropped at midnight on Thursday.

In her self-directed video for the song, which she cowrote with Aaron Dessner who also produced the song, Swift hearkens back to familiar scenes from her past. It opens with Swift in the cabin where Folklore‘s “Cardigan” visual is set, its piano once again offering an escape to a fantastical place where she sees a love’s reflection in a pool of water. When she jumps in, she’s transported to a carnival, where she is one of the attractions, but when she appears to be trapped, she magically is presented with a way out. The connection between her new video and her previous work adds to the continuity between Evermore and her previous album Folklore.

“The more that you say/The less I know,” she sings on the ballad. “Wherever you stray, I follow/I’m begging for you to take my hand.”

Swift announced Evermore on Thursday morning, less than a day before it was released. The singer billed the album as a “sister” record to her previous LP Folklore, which received a similar surprise rollout in July.

Swift recorded both albums in quarantine during the Covid-19 pandemic with songwriters/producers Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, and both feature duets with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. She also wrote several songs on both albums with “William Bowery,” the pseudonym for her boyfriend Joe Alwyn. Additionally, Evermore includes collaborations with Haim as well as Dessner’s band The National.