Column | Taylor Swift collabs with Ice Spice and Lana Del Rey on new releases

Photo courtesy of Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images/TNS

Singer Taylor Swift attends the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 9.

By Maaike Niekerk, Summer Editor

Taylor Swift announced through Instagram last Wednesday that she would be releasing two new singles as a part of the deluxe edition of her “Midnights” album, titled “The Til Dawn Edition.”

Swift’s single “Karma” featuring breakout rapper Ice Spice and a new take on “Snow on the Beach” featuring singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey were both released at midnight ET last Thursday. 

“Karma,” one of the most-streamed songs from Swift’s recent album “Midnights,” has over 300 million listens on Spotify. Not even a full week after its release, the new recording featuring Ice Spice has over 11 million listens.

Three seconds shorter than the original, the new single is fairly similar to the first track. Ice Spice enters to rap during the second verse, while providing interjections and adding vocals over Swift’s original chorus during the rest of the song.

The music video for the new single, released on Swift’s YouTube channel last Friday, has over 11 million views with 870 thousand likes.

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The new video features Swift and Ice Spice soaring through glittery, colorful backgrounds in the sky. 

Swift is known for dropping small hints regarding future releases, otherwise known as easter eggs, in her songs and social media posts. An article from Cosmopolitan outlines all of the easter eggs that fans identified in the video— including a somewhat hidden painting and a statue of Swift standing on a platform reading “1989” in Roman numerals.

The remixed version of “Karma” has received praise, with one prominent example being actress Keke Palmer posting a video of her jamming to the song in her car on Instagram.

Ice Spice was brought out to huge cheers from the crowd at the end of Swift’s three-hour set at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey last Friday. The two debuted the track there together.

Swift’s second new release, “Snow on the Beach” (featuring “More Lana Del Rey”) is a total 27 seconds shorter than the original recording (which featured less of Del Rey’s vocals). 

Del Rey was barely noticeable on the original track, being used as backing support for Swift. The new recording features Del Rey much more prominently, with the singer’s voice carrying over Swift’s during much of the song.

The reason for the re-recording was, as stated by Swift in an Instagram post, the wishes of the fans. “You asked for it, we listened,” Swift said.

A third and final part of Swift’s big drop was solely for fans attending Swift’s shows in East Rutherford. A brand new special-edition CD was released containing a track from what Swift calls her “Midnights Vault,” a series of unreleased songs.

Available on the CD, the song “You’re Losing Me” may be about Swift’s most recent breakup, an article from Elle said.

Nearly five minutes long, the track can be found on YouTube but is not available on any mainstream music platforms.

With three very different musical vibes, Swift’s brand new tracks continue to show that the hype over the pop artist is not dying down any time soon. The artist’s current tour will be running in the United States through early August, with more surprise releases like this possibly on the way.

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