Taylor Swift Drops Her Pitch-Purrfect Cats Ballad 'Beautiful Ghosts'

It's been a real topsy-turvy day for Taylor Swift fans. Just hours immediately after telling the world that her old music is being kept hostage, the Lover singer finished her day on a happier note by releasing a new song.


"Beautiful Ghosts" is Swift's contribution to the upcoming film version of Cats, in which she also stars because the singing, dancing, catnip-sprinkling Bombalurina. She collaborated with lauded composer Andrew Lloyd Webber on the quietly devastating ballad, which will be sung by Francesca Hayward's character, Victoria. "All that I wanted / Was to be wanted," Swift yearns, dreaming of "dazzling rooms I'll do not get let into" and settling for cute ghosts" alternatively opposed to real memories. The Jellicle-approved song ends with a high note that's more powerful than anyone we've heard from T. Swift in recent memory — prepare to be wowed.


Swift's version of cute Ghosts," it should be noted, will appear in the upcoming film's end credits — which should make Swift and Cats eligible for a Oscar.


In a previously released behind-the-scenes featurette about the song, Swift mentioned, "T.S. Eliot is such a specific kind of writer and uses such specific language [and] imagery, and thus reading through his work and everything, I just really wanted to resemble that. You can't write a modern lyric for Cats. So in the event you can’t get T.S. Eliot, you get T.S."


The Tom Hooper-directed Cats, needless to say, is the cinematic event of this holiday season. And also Swift, the feline-filled flick stars Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Judi Dench, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, and Jason Derulo, among others.


Meanwhile, Swifties have began a Change.Org petition to get Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta to let the embattled pop star play her pre-Lover songs at the American Music Awards and in her Netflix documentary. Hopefully this will all clear up by the time Cats hits the big screen on December 20.