How Aaron Dessner Found His Voice (With an Assist From Taylor Swift)

The “shy” producer and musician from the long-running indie-rock band the National emerges via his own project with Justin Vernon, Big Red Machine.

COLUMBIA COUNTY, N.Y. — Aaron Dessner sat down at the black upright piano in his Long Pond Studio, pressed the soft pedal and played a four-note phrase that had changed his life. It was the first notes — G F E-flat F — of a music file he sent to Taylor Swift in March 2020. Swift had been a fan of Dessner’s long-running indie-rock band, the National, and she contacted him out of the blue as the pandemic shutdown was beginning. “One night I was just sitting at dinner,” Dessner recalled, “and I got a text saying, ‘This is Taylor. Would you ever be up for collaborating remotely with me?’ “I was flattered and said, ‘Sure,’” he continued. “She said, ‘Just send anything, even the weirdest random sketch that you have,’ and I sent her a folder of stuff I’d been working on. And then a few hours later, she sent that song, ‘Cardigan.’”