By Larisha Paul
The halls of The Tortured Poets Department are quieter than usual as Taylor Swift and Post Malone strip back their collaborative single “Fortnight” for an acoustic version.
The updated recording replaces the thudding percussion of the original with hollow piano melodies and the plucks of an acoustic guitar. It also blends Swift and Malone’s haunted vocals more thoroughly, converging as they sing: “I love you, it’s ruining my life.”
“Fortnight” marked the first collaboration between the two musicians after years of mutual admiration. As the first official single from The Tortured Poets Department, the 11th studio album from Swift, the record debuted at Number One on the Billboard Hot 100. It spent two weeks in the position.
“I’ve been such a huge fan of Post because of the writer he is, his musical experimentation, and those melodies he creates that just stick in your head forever,” Swift wrote on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this year. “I got to witness that magic come to life firsthand when we worked together on Fortnight.”
In a separate post on Instagram, Malone wrote: “It’s once in a lifetime that someone like @taylorswift comes into this world. I am floored by your heart and your mind, and I am beyond honored to have been asked to help you with your journey.”
Malone and Swift also starred in the “Fortnight” music video together, unraveling a visual narrative of fatalism written and directed by Swift. Dead Poets Society’s co-stars Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles made cameos in the video as well.
“When I was writing the Fortnight music video, I wanted to show you the worlds I saw in my head that served as the backdrop for making this music,” Swift shared on Instagram. “Pretty much everything in it is a metaphor or a reference to one corner of the album or another. For me, this video turned out to be the perfect visual representation of this record and the stories I tell in it.”
She added: “@postmalone blew me away on set as our tortured tragic hero and I’m so grateful to him for everything he put into this collaboration.”
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