By Sterling Whitaker for Taste of Country

Expect to hear new Taylor Swift music on country radio soon. The country-turned-pop mega-star is releasing a new song called “New Year’s Day” to country stations.

“New Year’s Day” is the closing song on Swift’s brand-new album, Reputation, which mostly focuses on far more progressive pop tracks including “Look What You Made Me Do” and “… Ready for It?” And while the pop-influenced piano ballad isn’t going to draw any comparisons to classic Loretta Lynn or Tammy Wynette, it’s every bit as much of a contemporary country track as many of the songs Swift scored big country hits with, and probably more so than a track like “We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together.”

Swift channels a singer-songwriter vibe that brings Carole King to mind on “New Year’s Day,” a soft elegy to a year that has ended that turns in the chorus to a hopefulness about a permanent love in the year that is beginning.

“Don’t read the last page / But I stay when you’re lost, and I’m scared / And you’re turning away / I want your midnights / But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day,” Swift sings.

Swift wrote “New Year’s Day” with Jack Antonoff from Fun, and in the video above, she sings it live at an intimate fan party at one of her homes to launch Reputation. She stunned the audience on the Tonight Show when she made a special appearance on the show to sing the song as a tribute to Jimmy Fallon’s mother, who died earlier in the month.

The song marks Swift’s first release to country radio since she left country and went pop with the 2014 release of 1989, but she hasn’t been entirely absent from country radio. Swift wrote “Better Man” for Little Big Town, and recently took home Song of the Year honors for the song at the 2017 CMA Awards.

Source: Taste of Country