Taylor Swift capped off her Teen Choice Icon Award acceptance speech by saying the fourth single from her forthcoming album — the title track, “Lover” — will drop on Friday, a week ahead of the full-length’s release date of August 23.
On Monday morning SiriusXM announced that on release day, Swift will “exclusively perform stripped down versions of songs” from the album and participate in a Q&A session with a select group of subscribers. The town hall will air August 23 at 5 pm ET on SiriusXM Hits 1 and rebroadcast throughout the weekend on the channel; it will also be available as a Pandora Stories show.
The singer performed a 10-song, full-band set at a special New York concert celebrating Amazon Prime Day in June.
Swift used her Teen Choice speech, which followed a tribute video that included nods from her friends Ed Sheeran, Haim and Troye Sivan, to promote positivity to young people. “If anybody’s a teen out there, I think one thing I wish I would have known when I was a teen was mistakes are inevitable,” she said. “I think sometimes you think if you try hard enough to make every decision perfectly, you think you can possibly ace life and never make any mistakes. But it’s normal to make mistakes, and I just want you to know if you’re out there and you’re being really hard on yourself for something that’s happened, or messing up or feeling embarrassed, it’s normal.
Related
“That’s what’s going to happen to you in life,” she continued. “No one gets through unscathed. We’re all going to have a few scratches. We live in a crazy world, and we’re living in an insane time, so please be kind to yourselves and stand up for yourself. Please.”
Swift previewed “Lover” for Vogue as part of the magazine’s cover story on her, which published last week. Like the third single, “The Archer,” it’s a collaboration with her longtime cowriter/coproducer Jack Antonoff. “This has one of my favorite bridges,” she said. “I love a bridge, and I was really able to go to Bridge City.” The writer described it as “a romantic, haunting, waltzy, singer-songwritery nugget: classic Swift.” “My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue,” she sings. “All’s well that ends well to end up with you.”