Songfacts®:

• Taylor Swift gave her fans an early Christmas present when she announced her surprise Evermore album a day before its release on December 11, 2020. The singer dubbed Evermore a "sister record" to its predecessor, Folklore, which she dropped less than five months previously. Swift recorded both records with Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff and Justin Vernon; they feature more bare-bones arrangements than her previous material with third person fictional narratives rather than personal confessions. This airy love song is Evermore's lead single.
• Here, Swift sings of her dedication to her romantic interest.
  
  Wherever you stray, I follow
  I'm begging for you to take my hand
  Wreck my plans, that's my man
  
  The song is one of the more personal ones on Evermore. While many are imaginary tales, here it is likely Swift is singing of her relationship with her actor boyfriend Joe Alwyn.
• Willow trees have long thin branches that flutter in the wind and appear on the surface that they might blow over. However, they have large, tough roots that spread wide underground and keep the tree firm. Here Swift uses the tree as a metaphor for her life before and after she met Joe Alwyn.
  
  Life was a willow, and it bent right to your wind
  They count me out time and time again
  Life was a willow, and it bent right to your wind
  But I come back stronger than a '90s trend
  
  In the summer of 2016 Taylor Swift felt her life was out of control in the face of public feuds with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian over the rapper's "Famous" lyrics, and Calvin Harris following the end of their romance. This tumultuous time coincided with her meeting Joe Alwyn. Their relationship was a life raft for the singer and gave her the strong roots she needed during the public disputes.
• Swift describes how she pursued Alwyn and won him over.
  
  'Cause if you are a mythical thing
  Like you were a trophy or a champion ring
  But there was one prize I'd cheat to win
  
  Swift said of the song, "Willow is about intrigue, desire and the complexity that goes into wanting someone. I think it sounds like casting a spell to make someone fall in love with you."
• Taylor Swift wrote "Willow" with The National multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dessner, who helped her write much of her Folklore record. When Evermore was announced, Swift said that she and her collaborators didn't want to stop writing after Folklore. Clearly Dessner wanted to carry on; he co-wrote and/or co-produced all but one of Evermore's 15 songs.
• Taylor Swift directed the music video, which follows-up the events laid out in the Folklore lead single, "Cardigan." It starts off with Swift sitting at her piano right after the events of "Cardigan" before being taken to another dreamy fantasy world.
• Taeok Lee, one of Swift's backing dancers on her 2013 Red tour, joins the singer on her fantastical adventure. She revealed the meaning behind the visual, saying, "One scene represents how I feel about fame. There's a scene to represent each season throughout the journey of the video."
  
  She also revealed that there are some links to tracks from Folklore in the clip, including "Seven," "Epiphany," and "Mirrorball." Most obvious is the flowing gold thread that appears throughout the clip, which plays off her song about Alwyn, "Invisible String."
• After Swift and Dessner completed Folklore, the two artists began collaborating remotely on possible songs for Big Red Machine, The National multi instrumentalist's experimental folk-rock project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon.
  
  One instrumental Dessner penned was a musical sketch titled "Westerly" after the Rhode Island town where Swift purchased a waterfront mansion previously occupied by Rebekah Harkness. (She told the story of the eccentric heiress in the Folklore track, "The Last Great American Dynasty.")
  
  "I didn't really think she would write something to it - sometimes I'll name songs after my friends' hometowns or their babies, just because I write a lot of music and you have to call it something, and then I'll send it to them, Dessner told Rolling Stone. "But, anyway, I sent it to her, and not long after she wrote 'Willow' to that song and sent it back."
  
  The song opened the floodgates, and they kept creating more songs for what would eventually lead to Evermore.
• Four months after the concurrent arrival of "Cardigan" and Folklore at #1 on the Hot 100 and Billboard 200, respectively, Taylor Swift achieved the same feat again when "Willow" debuted at #1 on the Hot 100 and Evermore bowed at #1 on the Billboard 200, meaning she became the first artist in history that simultaneously debuted at the top of both charts twice.
• Both this song and the Folklore track "Cardigan" were originally intended for The National. "I'd taken a swing at ['Cardigan'] and 'Willow' and a couple of others, and I wasn't having a lot of luck, so Aaron sent them to Taylor," The National singer Matt Berninger recalled to The Telegraph.
  
  The opposite has also happened in the past, where the band has released tracks that were initially intended for Swift. "I always have a lot of music to work on, and I am looking for something to connect emotionally," Berninger added. "The reverse has happened, too, where Aaron wrote something for Taylor, and I dove right in. It works both ways."
• Aaron Dessner was amazed how quickly Taylor Swift wrote "Willow." "When I sent Taylor the music for our song 'Willow' - I think she wrote the entire song from start to finish in less than 10 minutes and sent it back to me," he stated to People. "It was like an earthquake. Then Taylor said, 'I guess we are making another album.'"