Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber Team Up for New ‘Cats’ Song
Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber have co-written a song together for the upcoming Cats movie.
In addition to her role as Bombalurina, the 29-year-old pop star teamed up with the famed composer to write "Beautiful Ghosts" — an original song that will be performed by actress Francesca Hayward, who stars as Victoria in the musical-to-film adaptation. Swift’s studio version will appear during the film’s end credits.
Universal Pictures also released a video that offers a behind-the-scenes look at Swift and Webber's creation. In in, the pair discussed the writing process and why it was important to create a song for Victoria.
“When I first read the screenplay — and the film is seen through Victoria’s eyes — the first thing I said was, ‘We have to have a song for Victoria. It’s an incredibly important central part of the whole film,'" Webber explained.
“There was an ambition and aspiration to have an original song in the movie,” Swift added. “Just very much this understanding of, ‘Let’s write the best song we can.'”
Director Tom Hopper was impressed by Swift and her ability to connect with the script and the Cats world. "What I couldn't believe was the extraordinary beauty of these lyrics that Taylor had written," he said. "It was as if someone had come into the film I was in the middle of making and read the script, met the actors, seen the world and reflected back to me a profound understanding of what we are trying to do with the movie. It was utterly thrilling."
The "Lover" hitmaker went on to say a lot of her inspiration came from T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. “T.S. Eliot is such a specific type of writer and uses such specific language and imagery, so reading through his work and everything, I just really wanted to reflect that within,” Swift explained.
“You can’t write a modern lyric for Cats, so if you can’t get T.S. Eliot, get T.S.,” she jokingly added, referring to her own initials. “I’m here for you!”
Watch the Cats featurette in the video, below:
The inclusion of the original song makes Swift and Cats eligible for an Oscar, which means there's a chance the singer could earn her EGOT status soon. (It's someone who won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.) So far, she's won two out of four major awards and only needs an Oscar and Tony to join the coveted list of winners.
Cats hits theaters on December 20, 2019