Track Review: Taylor Swift – “The Lakes”

“The Lakes” was highly anticipated, although by some more than others. A bonus track on Swift’s surprise album folklore, it was essentially a marketing ploy to get fans to pre-order a physical copy of the LP because it was being touted as “limited”. Even though the song would end up being released digitally before most fans received their CD/vinyl, the tactic worked. Swift now finds herself as the first artist to spend 40 weeks atop the Billboard Artist Chart thanks in large part to folklore‘s 3 week stretch – a streak that can be at least partially credited to continued intrigue over the delayed release of “The Lakes”.

So, marketing strategies aside, “The Lakes” is actually a very good song and arguably one of the best that Swift has ever penned (or half-penned, crediting Jack Antonoff’s omnipresence in nearly every pop production these days). Swift throws a lot of imagery at us in this string-swept ballad, which essentially boils down to a farewell: “Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die…I’m setting off, but not without my muse.”  She seems disenchanted with society as a whole, from the controversy/cancel culture that tarnished her reputation circa her highly publicized conflict with Kanye West (“I’m not cut out for all these cynical clones / These hunters with cell phones”) to Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun, who dealed away Swift’s intellectual property giving her a chance to buy her own music (“I’ve come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze tell me what are my words worth”). Basically, “The Lakes” is Swift telling all these people to fuck off in the kindest possible way.

Instead of making past drama the focal point of “The Lakes”, however, she wisely sidesteps it early on and hones in on isolation and self-care. She sings about the natural beauty of the Lake District in England (from which “The Lakes” draws its inspiration), and specifically about how isolating herself from the toxicity of celebrity and internet culture is helping to heal her: “I want auroras and sad prose / I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet”…”A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground, with no one around to tweet it”…”Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry.” Thematically, it conveys a lot of the ideas that folklore on the whole tried and failed at: grief, isolation, and reconnecting with yourself. These are all concepts that coincide with the modern days of COVID-19, and in that sense, “The Lakes” is an ideal product of its time.

Although its inclusion as a bonus track was something of a gimmicky money-grab, “The Lakes” should be added to the end of anyone’s folklore playlist. It’s the perfect closer for the album, and it summarizes what the album was truly about…although this conveys it better than any other song on the track list. Queue up “The Lakes” to hear Swift at her most honest and vulnerable – after all, that’s when she’s at her best.

Track Score: 4.5