![It’s Unfair to Pay 100% for 50% of a Seat—Why Airlines Must Start Refunding Customers When They Fail To Deliver [Roundup]](https://viewfromthewing.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/broken-american-airlines-seat.jpeg?#)
![[Podcast] Unlocking Innovation: How Play & Creativity Drive Success with Melissa Dinwiddie](https://justcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/melissa-dinwiddie-youtube.png)
Justin Vernon Praises Taylor Swift For Transforming Big Red Machine Song Into ‘Exile’: ‘Strongest Set of Lyrics and Songwriting’
The Bon Iver frontman said he was also awed to have Swift just step "right into it and flawlessly taking" the "Folklore" song to new heights.
Justin Vernon has a new Bon Iver album to hawk, Sable, Fable. But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to take the odd Taylor Swift question here and there. Which is why during a chat with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe this week, the singer-songwriter waxed rhapsodic about accidentally being pulled into Swift’s pandemic orbit in the best way possible.
Related
When Lowe asked Vernon what it was like to work with Swift, he praised the singer for the “courage” to reach out to The National’s Aaron Dessner to collaborate on her COVID-era Folklore album. On the cusp of quarantine, Vernon said he was about to go on an European tour with Bon Iver a month before lockdown when he tapped Desssner to fill in on guitar.
The plan was for Dessner to play DJ and cue up demos of songs from his Big Red Machine side project — a long-running collaboration with Vernon — before the Bon Iver arena sets. The tour was quickly cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so like a lot of musicians at the time Dessner went on Instagram Live to play some unreleased music for fans and who happened to hear what he was laying down but Taylor Swift?
“All the glory goes to Taylor for hearing, as a songwriter, what music she wants to make,” Vernon said. “But those songs are Big Red Machine demos at their core and her genius was working with the genius of Aaron Dessner on making the strongest set of lyrics and songwriting that she’s ever had, really.”
As he sat back and watched the process unfold, Vernon said he was mesmerized seeing the global pop icon “enter our whole universe… of course there’s no one bigger and we all bowed down to her.” Vernon described a feeling of not being able to stop blinking as he realized the collaboration between the chart and stadium queen and their low-key indie side project made perfect sense.
“The love and community that Aaron had shown me over these years… Taylor was just stepping into it and flawlessly taking it,” Vernon said, adding that Dessner rang him up during the process and said that there was a track Swift wanted him to sing on. “I was like, ‘Taylor?'” Vernon said he asked as Dessner explained that Swift was writing to some of the Big Red Machine songs she’d heard.
“I was like, ‘Awesome! I’m not doing anything today!’ They sent it and I ended up adding a couple little bits,” Vernon said of the origin story of how he ended up with a co-writing credit — along with Swift, Dessner and the singer’s ex, actor Joe Alwyn (under the pseudonym William Bowery) — on the track. “I just sang it on an SM7 in my little makeshift studio… and it felt level to everything else. It’s an exceptional song and an exceptionally popular song for a good reason,” he said. “But it felt just so natural and I’m so thankful for that opportunity just to have worked with such an amazing artist.”
In addition to “Exile” on the Folklore album, Vernon also pitched in on the title track to the companion Evermore pandemic album, while Swift lent a hand on the Big Red Machine single “Renegade” in 2021.
Watch Vernon talk about working with Swift below.
