Listen To The Taylor Swift, Big Red Machine Collab, ‘Renegade’

As promised, Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon’s Big Red Machine project has unveiled a collaboration with Taylor Swift, entitled ‘Renegade’.

The single is the first of two with Swift that will feature on Big Red Machine’s forthcoming album How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?, due out on August 27.

Speaking of the track this afternoon Taylor Swift praised her co-collaborators. “When Aaron Dessner came into my life, I was ushered into his world of free-flowing creativity where you don’t overthink, you just make music,” she writes. “A song we wrote for his project [Big Red Machine] (which also features [Justin Vernon]) is out! It’s called Renegade.”

Dessner and Swift now have a prodigious co-songwriting catalogue, Dessner having co-produced and co-wrote Swift’s 2020 albums Folklore and the Album of the Year Grammy-winning Evermore, which Vernon also contributed to.

Renegade was recorded during that Grammy week in Los Angeles and also features Dessner’s brother and The National bandmate Bryce on strings.

“While we were making folklore and evermore last year, Taylor and I sometimes talked about experimenting and writing songs together someday for Big Red Machine. Making music with your friends just to make it — that’s how Big Red Machine started and has grown — and that’s how Renegade came about too,” said Aaron Dessner in a statement about the new song.

“This song was something we wrote after we finished evermore and it dawned on us that this was a BRM song. Taylor’s words hit me so hard when I heard her first voice memo and still do, every time. Justin lifted the song further into the heavens, and my brother [Bryce Dessner]’s strings and drummer Jason Treuting add so much. The feeling and sound of this song feel very much at the heart of ‘How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?’ I’m so grateful to Taylor for continuing to share her incredible talent with me and that we are still finding excuses to make music together.”

Taylor Swift will also feature on forthcoming Big Red Machine song Birch, which is reportedly a duet between Swift and Vernon.

Other guests to appear on How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last include Anaïs Mitchell, Fleet Foxes, Naeem, Ilsy, Ben Howard and more.

Watch the video for ‘Renegade’ below.