Songful Style Link Party #52: “Carolina” by Taylor Swift

And my dress up games continue…

About Songful Style

Songful Style is a style challenge series hosted by Shelbee on the Edge, Marsha in the Middle, and Suzy Turner, The Grey Brunette. Each month we will share a song with the lyrics and video and we invite you to use whatever aspect of the song that inspires you to create an outfit. 

It is similar to Style Imitating Art where we use artwork to inspire our outfit creations. Except Songful Style gives you lyrics, music, video, and album artwork to inspire your fashion creativity. You may even find inspiration in a memory triggered by the selected song. It is all open to your own personal interpretation and just a fun way to discover new music and get a little bit more creative with your wardrobe.

Anyone is welcome to join us on a permanent basis or you can just play along without any obligation to do anything other than feel inspired. We are flexible and fun and just want to find more ways to play dress up because it’s what we enjoy doing! 

We will be posting on the last Monday of each month and will announce our song choice for the following month at the end of each post. You are welcome to style your own song inspired outfit and add it to the link party or link anything that you want to share even if it has nothing to do with the song.

Suzy chose this month’s tune, “Carolina” by Taylor Swift, from the 2018 coming-of-age murder mystery film Where the Crawdads Sing. Although I did find enough inspiration in the music video, I ended up watching the entire film before deciding on my outfit. It was an intriguing movie and I enjoyed it.

The Official Music Video

The Lyrics

Oh, Carolina creeks
Running through my veins
Lost I was born, lonesome I came
Lonesome I’ll always stay
Carolina knows
Why for years I roam
Free as these birds, light as whispers
Carolina knows

And you didn’t see me here
No, they never did see me here

And she’s in my dreams
Into the mist, into the clouds
Don’t leave
I make a fist, I’ll make it count
And there are places I will never ever go
And things that only Carolina will ever know

Carolina stains
On the dress she left
Indelible scars, pivotal marks
Blue as the life she fled
Carolina pines
Won’t you cover me?
Hide me like robes down the back road
Muddy these webs we weave

And you didn’t see me here
No, they never did see me

And she’s in my dreams
Into the mist, into the clouds
Don’t leave
I’ll make a fist, I’ll make it count
And there are places I will never ever go
And things that only Carolina will ever know

Oh
Oh
Oh

And you didn’t see me here
They never did see me here
No, you didn’t see me here
They never saw me

Oh, Carolina knows
Why for years they’ve said
That I was guilty as sin
And sleep in a liar’s bed
But the sleep comes fast
And I’ll meet no ghosts
It’s between me, the sand, and the sea
Carolina knows

About the Artist and the Song

This is the second Taylor Swift song that we’ve used for style inspiration in this series, but it offers a totally different sound, vibe, and fashion aesthetic from our “Look What You Made Me Do” challenge back in October 2022. However, the artist’s biographical information hasn’t changed that much except she has won lots more awards and she just got married.

I think most people know who Taylor Swift is and have a decent understanding of what she has accomplished with her artistry. But in case you’ve been out of touch for the last decade, I’ll share a little information from the plenty that is out there.

Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter who rose to fame at a very young age. Born on December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania, she is just 36 years old and has earned 14 Grammy Awards from 58 nominations, making her the most Grammy-decorated Album of the Year artist in history. She has also earned an Emmy Award with a second nomination for this year’s Emmys, 40 American Music Awards (making her the most awarded artist of this honor), 49 Billboard Music Awards, 58 Guinness World Records, 30 MTV Video Music Awards, 41 iHeartRadio Music Awards, multiple Country Music Association Awards, Academy of Country Music Awards, and Brit Awards among others. With 710 wins from 1,674 nominations, her list of awards and accolades is so extensive that it has its own dedicated Wikipedia page.

As a songwriter, she has been honored by the Nashville Songwriters Association, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the National Music Publishers’ Association. In 2015, she became the youngest person on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. The following year, at the 2016 64th BMI Awards, Swift was the first woman to be honored with an award named after its recipient. In 2023, she became the first entertainer to receive the honor of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. Her 11th album, which was released in 2024, made her the first woman to earn 7 Grammy nominations for Album of the Year. And just this year, she was inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. They had a beautiful display of Taylor Swift memorabilia at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum that we just visited on our summer road trip.

On July 3, 2026, she married American football player Travis Kelce after a 3 year courtship that held the public’s interest for the duration. The couple has no children yet, but they do share a dog. Love her or hate her, you have to admire her. She is definitely a badass among the titans of her industry!

Now onto the song…

“Carolina” was written, recorded, and produced by Taylor Swift for the 2022 soundtrack for Where the Crawdads Sing. Released by Republic Records on June 24, 2026, the song title came from the Carolinas region of the United States where the film is set and is sung from the perspective of the movie’s protagonist Kya. Music critics praised the song for its return to Swift’s 2020 indie folk sound which helped to match the song’s ambience to the atmosphere of the film. Swift has been commended for her vocals, songwriting style, and the overall haunting mood of “Carolina.”

The song fits into the Americana genre as a ballad written in the Appalachian folk style with inflections of country and bluegrass. The song charted in Australia, Canada, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam. It won a MTV Movie & TV Award, was nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Grammy Award, and a Satellite Award as well as receiving other accolades.

I’m a fan of Taylor Swift but I don’t really listen to her music so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this beautifully haunting and ethereal song. It has a completely different sound and mood compared to the more mainstream Swift songs that I’ve heard. I do prefer bluegrass music over pop music so it makes sense that I like this song more than others. And the movie was definitely worth watching if you’re into a good murder mystery!

About My Outfit

Lyrically, the song doesn’t offer very many sartorial references except for the third verse which mentions a dress, the color blue, and robes. Kya Clark, the main character of Where the Crawdads Sing, wears two different blue-ish floral dresses in the film and the music video so my outfit inspiration is a combination of the lyrics and the character’s clothes.

At first, I had considered styling this turquoise floral robe because the color better matches Kya’s floral dress on the left. But I was feeling like I wanted to keep my outfit simpler than a layered look with a dramatic topper. Then I thought about styling this long blue floral shirt dress because the colors and the print very closely resemble Kya’s floral dress on the right. But the maxi length didn’t seem to hit the mark for me. Kya is a young girl living in the Carolina marshes in the 1950s and 1960s and the shorter length of her dresses reflects her youth. In the end, I opted for this vintage knee length periwinkle floral shirt dress that I thrifted years ago. It’s from April Cornell’s secondary line, April, Too!, that offered bohemian cottage core style dresses in the 1990s. (I also have this vintage blue floral April, Too! dress that is just a little too purple for my vision.)

Two years back, I styled the same dress as a jacket over a white maxi dress for a Style Imitating Art challenge. I much prefer wearing my shirt dresses as dusters or jackets because the buttons tend to pull across my bust. That’s the great thing about the versatility of shirt dresses that button all the way down the front, they can be worn so many different ways. But sometimes a dress can be just a dress!

So I wore this lovely vintage April, Too! dress in the way that April Cornell originally designed it to be worn…as a dress…buttoned from neck to hem. It’s completely out of character for me to wear just one layer but after spending 10 days driving through the very hot and humid American Southeast, I’ve temporarily grown accustomed to wearing less layers. Plus, keeping it simple seemed more in tune with Kya Clark’s style.

A pair of cowgirl boots was an obvious choice since the song is about and the movie is set in the Carolinas. Anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line puts cowboy boots on my mind and my lilac boots with the pink stitching perfectly matched the ditsy floral print on my dress. I kept my accessories fairly simple as well with three strands of thrifted beads in blue, teal, and purple and a pair of thrifted turquoise feather earrings. I’m really pleased that my new blue sun hat that I just bought in Savannah has so easily coordinated with and adapted to my wardrobe.

I don’t absolutely love this outfit, but I don’t hate it either. I do think it successfully satisfied the assignment, though. And my husband really liked it so that would make it a win, I guess!

I hope you have enjoyed this round of Songful Style dress up. Won’t you check out how my musically inspired friends have interpreted this song into an outfit. Just click the links to their blogs below for more fashion inspiration. 

Marsha of Marsha in the Middle
Suzy of Suzy Turner, The Grey Brunette

Featured Favorite from Songful Style Link Party #51: “Mondnacht” (Moonlight Night) by Robert Schumann

If you enjoyed this musical dress up game, remember to stop by again on September 28, 2026, when we will be sharing our outfits inspired by Marsha’s next choice…any song from Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s Phantom of the Opera! I’m not sure which song I’ll choose as it’s been decades since I saw it on Broadway so I’ll have to revisit the songs from this musical. I’m excited to see what Marsha and Suzy do with this challenge. Until then, happy styling!

Keeping it on the edge,

Shelbee