coney island (feat. The National)

The song title refers to Coney Island, a peninsula in Brooklyn, New York, which is home to a famous amusement park. Between the end of the 19th century and World War II, Coney Island's entertainment area was one of the United States' biggest tourist attractions, attracting several million visitors per year. Taylor Swift is using the peninsular neighborhood in this song to represent her regrets about a past relationship that went wrong. And I'm sitting on a bench in Coney Island Wondering where did my baby go? Swift explained to Apple Music she chose the titular tourist attraction to represent "a place where thrills were once sought, a place where once it was all electricity and magic and now the lights are out and you're looking at it thinking, 'What did I do?'"

The National lead singer Matt Berninger joins Swift on the song to croon his view of the dissolution of the romance. He too expresses his remorse for messing up their relationship. During the back-and-forth conversational bridge, they both admit to neglecting the other. Swift explained that the lyrics she wrote for Berninger were coming from "a male perspective of regret or guilt after a lifetime of a pattern of behavior." Swift added that she'd touched on the same topic on another Evermore track, "Tolerate It," "where there's this person who's on one side of the relationship who's felt like their partner's been there, but they haven't been there. They've been there, but they're just sitting next to each other eating breakfast. They haven't been there."

Swift released Evermore on December 11, 2020, two days before her 31st birthday on December 13. Thirteen is famously Swift's lucky number and she was especially excited about turning 31 because it's her lucky number backwards. Swift frequently sneaks in references to the number in her music, and here she had a second reason for the song's location: Coney Island is part of Brooklyn Community District 13.