willow

Willow's harmony is deliberately restrained, using just four diatonic chords from the E natural minor scale. The absence of any dominant function (no B major or B7) keeps the song in a purely modal folk space, avoiding the pull of traditional tonal resolution. This simplicity is the point — the hypnotic repetition of the fingerpicked guitar ostinato creates a spell-like quality that serves the song's lyrical metaphor of enchantment. The harmonic interest comes not from chord complexity but from the interplay between the static guitar pattern and the orchestral layers (glockenspiel, flute, strings) that gradually enrich the texture across sections.

Aaron Dessner composed an instrumental track he named 'Westerly,' after the area near Taylor Swift's Rhode Island home. Upon receiving the track, Swift wrote the lyrics within an hour and sent the finished song back to Dessner. She described the song's central motif as akin to casting a love spell, weaving romantic metaphors around the image of a willow tree bending toward its beloved.

Released as the lead single from Taylor Swift's surprise ninth album Evermore in December 2020, 'Willow' is a delicate chamber folk ballad built on picked guitars, glockenspiel, flute, and strings. Co-written and produced by Aaron Dessner, the song debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making Swift the first artist to debut atop both the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 in the same week on two separate occasions.