Allen BerezovskyGetty Images
Taylor Swift invited Shawn Mendes to do a duet version of her song “Lover” with her, and he gave the track a personal touch, adding new lyrics, presumably with his girlfriend Camila Cabello in mind. Swift announced the debut of the single on her Instagram early this morning.
“There is a new version of ‘Lover’ coming, a remix featuring someone who I’m such a huge fan of, who I’ve known for a really long time, and someone that I’ve always really been dying to collaborate with so drumroll please, it is featuring Shawn Mendes,” Swift announced. “And he has taken ‘Lover’ and he has rewritten parts of it, which I think is so important because I love him as a writer, and I also think that everybody would write a different love letter to their lover and I think his take on it is so beautiful. I can’t wait for you to hear it.”
Lyrically, Mendes adds his own new second verse, singing, “We could light a bunch of candles and dance around the kitchen, baby. Pictures of when we were young, would hang on the wall. We’ll sit on the stoop, I’ll sing love songs to you when we’re 80. See I finally got you now honey, I won’t let you fall.”
Toward the end, he sings, “Look in my eyes, they will tell you the truth. The girl in my story has always been you. I’d go down with the Titanic, it’s true. For you, lover.” His line—”The girl in my story has always been you”—could be an allusion to his and Cabello’s years-long friendship.
Cabello shared that while the two always had an attraction for it, they didn’t act on it at first. The timing was off. “Definitely there were feelings, but I think we were just too young to know what to do with them,” she told The Sun last month.
Of risking her friendship with Mendes to date him, Cabello said, “It’s almost more scary because you have more to lose. When you first start dating a person and you know nothing about them, there’s less at risk there. I think when you fall in love with somebody you’ve known for a long time, there’s more at stake.”
“But it also feels more special because it feels like the love story you see in the movies of people who have known each other for a long time but been too stupid to realize it or say it and then it happens—and that’s beautiful too,” she finished.
Listen to the full song below: