Taylor Swift Drops Song "Carolina" From Where the Crawdads Sing: Hear the "Haunting" Full Version

For “Carolina,” Swift noted she “wanted to create something haunting and ethereal to match this mesmerizing story.” And Witherspoon will never forget the first time she heard the song.

“I freaked out when I heard Taylor wrote a song for this movie,” the Oscar winner said during Sony Pictures’ recent live chat for the film. “First of all, she’s one of my favorite artists of all time, but her songwriting is so moving.”

Witherspoon continued, “But the fact that she read this book and loved it so much and then she heard we were making a movie, she was making her folklore album, and then she wrote a song with that whole folklore team, which was so haunting and magical, and the beautiful instruments that they used—I was blown away.”

Director Olivia Newman said Swift wrote “this gorgeous letter” to her, explaining that she had only used musical instruments that were available before 1953 to keep with the era of the movie. Swift also “recorded it in one take the way they recorded songs at the time,” the director said.

“What was so haunting about it was that you have a very specific feeling when the book ends, which we really wanted to capture at the end of the movie as well,” Newman explained. “We wanted to leave audiences with that same sort of emotional feeling. And her song just leans right into that.”

In addition to Edgar-Jones, Where The Crawdads Sing features Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr. and David Strathairn. The movie hits theaters July 15, but fans can hear Swift perform “Carolina” now above.