The National‘s Aaron Dessner has teased the second of two collaborations with Taylor Swift on his new album with Big Red Machine, calling it “really, really stunning”.
This morning (June 2), Dessner and Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon – aka Big Red Machine – shared new Swift-featuring single ‘Renegade’, the third preview of the band’s upcoming second album ‘How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?’.
Now, in a new interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music, Dessner has looked forward to ‘Birch’, the other song with Swift yet to be released.
“There’s another song called “Birch” that’s really, really stunning that she sings and is a big part of with Justin,” Dessner told Lowe. “Justin sort of leads the charge, but she’s a huge part of it and it’s a duet.”
Of more potential future collaborations, Dessner added: “I kind of hope we never stopped writing songs together because it’s so fun and so illuminating all the time.”
Speaking of the pair’s creative relationship, Dessner added: “I think whatever wildfire happened last year creatively for Taylor and I… we didn’t want to stop writing songs together, and still don’t really. It’s kind of like somehow I ended up on the team with the best player, so you just want to keep passing the ball to her.
“Big Red Machine was a great opportunity because she really fell in love with a lot of the music that Justin and I were working on because I would share it with her. A lot of this music, right before Taylor approached me last year, Justin and I had been in Texas to work on these songs.”
Last year, Dessner co-wrote and co-produced a host of songs on Taylor Swift’s two lockdown albums, July’s ‘folklore’ and December follow-up ‘evermore’. ‘folklore’ went on to win Album Of The Year at the 2021 Grammys, where Dessner, Swift and co-producer Jack Antonoff also performed a medley of tracks from ‘folklore’ and ‘evermore’.