"Soon You'll Get Better" is a song recorded by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift for her seventh studio album, Lover (2019), which was released on August 23, 2019, through Republic Records. Featuring background vocals from The Chicks, the song is the twelfth track on the album, and was written and produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff. "Soon You'll Get Better" has been described as a husky country ballad and has been compared to "The Best Day", a song from Swift's second studio album Fearless (2008), in both style and in subject matter; both focus on Swift's relationship with her mother.
"Soon You'll Get Better" received widespread acclaim from music critics, who praised the vulnerable songwriting and Swift's emotional vocal performance. The tone of the song has been compared to prayers and lullabies. Upon the album's release, "Soon You'll Get Better" debuted at number 63 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and became a top-10 entry on the Hot Country Songs chart; it became the Chicks' first entry on the latter chart in thirteen years. On April 18, 2020, Swift performed a solo piano rendition of the song as part of the One World: Together at Home livestream charity event; the performance received universal acclaim from music and television critics.
Background and composition
The song is about the battles Swift's parents have had with cancer, and specifically on her mother's latest diagnosis. In a live video broadcast on YouTube the day before the album's release, Swift told fans that the song was the hardest on the album to write, adding that the choice to publish it was made in a family discussion because of how personal it is. Fans who were invited to Swift's Secret Sessions have reported that she left the room when the song played. "Soon You'll Get Better" is a country ballad. Rolling Stone call it "stripped-down", noting that the only music in the acoustic song is provided by sparse strings, with Time favorably describing the track as a "tilt back to [Swift's] country roots" and USA Today saying it has a "Nashville feel". The song features the American country trio The Chicks; a picture of the band was featured as an easter egg in the music video for the album's lead single, "Me!". Swift previously performed with the Chicks shortly after her mother's first cancer diagnosis, and has cited the band's fifth studio album, Fly (1999), as an influence on the aesthetic of Lover.
In a July 2020 interview with Billboard, the Chicks admitted that collaborating with Swift "felt like a lot of pressure", wondering "what if we don't like this song? How are we going to say no to Taylor Swift?"; however the trio liked the song and recorded their backing vocals. Natalie Maines stated that Swift is showing "that vulnerable place of figuring this shit out for herself", while Emily Strayer added that "the power she [Swift] has right now to change things is way beyond any power we [the Chicks] ever had. She's in a different position than we ever were."
Time's Raisa Bruner has described "Soon You'll Get Better" as a "sweet country lullaby" and an "acoustic ballad about illness and hoping for health", and added that "ultimately the song is a kind of prayer". Bruner expanded that Swift's repetition of the song title "functions more as a plea than a proclamation, an uncertainty that the song's delicacy echoes". Vulture's Jewly Height noted that Swift's vocal delivery, in the song, is "hushed as she steers the perspective like a cinematographer — first the focus on a tiny detail ("coat buttons tangled in her hair"), then a zoomed-out shot of the settings where the trouble's playing out ("doctors’ offices and hospital rooms")".
Critical reception
"Soon You'll Get Better" received widespread critical acclaim, often being noted as a highlight from Lover, with critics praising Swift's "sincere" vocal performance, the "vulnerable" songwriting and the acoustic instrumentation of the song.