Last night, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon sat down with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show ahead of his forthcoming album SABLE, fABLE, where he spoke about his past collaborations with Taylor Swift and Charli XCX.
Vernon is featured on Swift's tracks "exile" and "evermore" from folklore and evermore, respectively, and shared that seeing clips of Eras Tour attendees singing his part of the duets was an "out of body" experience. "I sadly never got the chance to sing it with her on her tour, she got to sing it with us," Vernon said. "I saw those clips, gosh, they sound better than one of me can sound. It was pretty powerful to see that and to hear how that sounded; it was amazing."
Swift also appeared on the National's Aaron Dessner (another frequent Swift collaborator) and Vernon's Big Red Machine track "Renegade" from their 2021 record How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?
Speaking of collaborations, Vernon also revealed on the talk show that working with Charli XCX on Brat and it's completely different but also still brat for the "I think about it all time" remix involved making a phone call to Bonnie Raitt to sample her track "Nick of Time," an idea that was suggested to him by Danielle Haim.
"Charli's song was a little bit about running out of time and et cetera, and Bonnie and I had been friendly over the years," Vernon explained. "She's my number one, our greatest living singer. She was like, 'Yep, let's do it.' She kind of just had to give us her blessing on using the sample, but she was of course, touched, and she's a huge fan of Charli's, as am I." How's that for connections?
Watch the interview below. SABLE,fABLE arrives April 11 via Jagjaguwar.