Hoax (song)

American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift began work on her eighth studio album, Folklore, during the COVID-19 lockdowns in early 2020.[1][2] She recruited first-time collaborator Aaron Dessner as a producer. Swift co-wrote nine songs and Dessner produced all of them, including "Hoax".[3] Due to the lockdown, both of them were seperate from each other and therefore created Folklore by exchanging digital files.[4]

Whereas much of the songs they worked on stemmed from Dessner's instrumental tracks, "Hoax" was written first and then produced. It was the last track penned for Folklore; Dessner thought the album was finished before Swift sent the lyrics of the song.[5][6][7] She told him to focus on to not "try to give it any other space other than what feels natural" to him before developing the production.[5] What Dessner came up is a slow-paced piano ballad with orchestration written by his brother Bryce.[8][9][3] It incorporates acoustic and electric guitars, OP1, synth bass, viola, violin,[3] and strings.[10] "Hoax" was recorded at Long Pond Studios in Hudson Valley. The vocals were recorded at Kitty Committee Studio in Los Angeles and the instruments were recorded at Hudson Valley and Brooklyn. The song was mixed at Long Pond and was mastered at Sterling Sound in New York City.[3][5]

The lyrics tells a flawed but everlasting relationship.[9] Swift details the messiness of it by motifs and imagery.[11][7] The first verse mentions lyrics from the tracks of her albums Red (2012) and Reputation (2017), such as "Holy Ground" ("This has frozen my ground") and "Look What You Made Me Do" ("My smoking gun"), respectively; "Hoax" was intrepeted as a "tragic imagining" of the former.[7] In the bridge, she references New York: ("You know I left a part of me back in New York"), which indicated a sense of regret.[7] The next line features a cinema motif, which Swift paints the relationship as a movie: ("You knew the hero died so what's the movie for?").[7] The strained finale reverses the song's main imagery: ("My kingdom come undone"),[11][7] and ends Folklore on a despondent note.[12] Spencer Kornhaber from The Atlantic interpreted the lyrics as a tribute to English actor and Swift's then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn and opined that she is "creating tension [...] by scrambling the listener's assumptions.[13]

Folklore was released on July 24, 2020, by Republic Records. In the track-list, "Hoax" sits at number 16 as the final track on the standard edition of the album.[14] The song reached the national charts of Australia (43)[15] and Canada (51).[16] In the United States, it debuted at the Billboard Hot 100 and Rolling Stone Top 100, with peaks of number 71[17] and 13[18] respectively. On non-national charts, the song appeared at number 14 on the US Hot Rock & Alternative Songs[19] and number 62 on the United Kingdom's Audio Streaming Chart.[20] On November 25, Swift recorded a stripped-down rendition of "Hoax" for the Disney+ film Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions and its live album.[21]

Michael Sumsion from PopMatters selected "Hoax" as one of the tracks that represents the "compelling and entrancing patchwork" of Folklore and welcomed the new direction.[10] Hannah Mylrea of NME considered it the least "memorable" on the album.[22] Jill Mapes from Pitchfork regarded the song as one of the tracks that Folklore "could use some selective pruning".[23]

Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Folklore.[24]