The National and Taylor Swift’s “Coney Island”: A Sweet Meaning…

When the pandemic stopped work for most people, Taylor Swift began crafting a quiet, cabin-in-the-woods folk album with The National’s Aaron Dessner. She surprised the world with the elegant Folklore in 2020, an album reflecting the isolation of both the project and the time.

The fruitful sessions were so stimulating that Swift and Dessner kept going and followed five months later with Evermore.

For “Coney Island,” Dessner brought his entire band along. The members of The National are from Cincinnati, but the band formed in Brooklyn, New York.

Swift’s reference to Coney Island brought the group home, prompting singer Matt Berninger to post to his Instagram account that the experience “made me miss Brooklyn.” He also said singing with Swift “is like dancing with Gene Kelly. She made me look good and didn’t drop me once.”

On “Coney Island,” Swift and The National are musically and lyrically exposed in a minimalist production like the wounds of separation.

“Coney Island” uses the famous New York destination for a relationship’s ending scene. Berninger joins Swift in a two-way conversation where both partners admit to neglecting the other.

Aaron and Bryce Dessner produced and co-wrote (with Swift) “Coney Island.” Aaron’s placid acoustic guitar signals the relationship’s fragility while his brother Bryce arranges wintry strings, bonding the visual to a cold, empty amusement park.

Swift’s then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, working under the pseudonym William Bowery, is also listed as a co-writer.

Swift explained to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe why she chose to work with The National: “I’m a huge fan of The National. I love the way they do that downbeat, sometimes self-loathing, reflective, just cut right to the heart of the matter.”

She explained further why she wanted Berninger to sing on “Coney Island”: “That lyricism it’s why I’m such a fan of the band, and when we had an idea that Matt could sound really amazing on this, that was the perspective I was coming from, was a male perspective of regret or guilt after a lifetime of a pattern of behavior.”

Using Coney Island as the setting, Swift evokes warm nostalgia and places sadness in a once popular American place of entertainment, like a mall. Said Swift: “It was the place to be, and I was trying to reflect on the Coney Island visual of a place where thrills were once sought, a place where once it was all electricity and magic, and now the lights are out, and you’re looking at it thinking, ‘What did I do?’”

The New York Post once described Coney Island as “a crime-filled, run-down ghost of its glorious heyday.” People understand Coney Island as a cultural reference, but Swift’s mall allusion is a more localized representation of bleakness.

After Folklore’s release, Swift and Dessner continued their collaboration. But the next batch of songs took shape without boundaries. During a period of experimentation, and due to Folklore’s critical acclaim and commercial success, Swift kept writing.