On March 29, 2024, Beyoncé released her album “Cowboy Carter,” which featured contributions from singers including Dolly Parton, Linda Martell, Willie Nelson, Miley Cyrus and more. Many fans speculated that singer Taylor Swift sang background vocals on one song in the album, and that her distinctive voice could be heard in key sections.
The section in question can be heard on this TikTok:
A number of posts on X claimed Swift was credited as providing backing vocals on the track, “Bodyguard.”
We found no evidence that Swift is in the background vocals of the track, as she is not mentioned in the official list of collaborators or in the official track credits. In early April Beyoncé released the full list of credits, and Swift was not mentioned. While we originally rated this claim as “Unproven” we have since updated it to “False.”
The song “Bodyguard” can be heard here:
The above screensH๏τ appears to have been taken from Genius, which describes itself as a “music encyclopedia” with millions of contributors. It is not an official source for information about the album. The page for “Bodyguard” on Genius had no mention of Swift as of this writing, crediting only Beyoncé and Ryan Beatty as the songwriters and Columbia Records as the distributor.
The page’s edit history shows that one user added the Swift credit on March 29, 2024, and another user quickly deleted it.
We also looked at the credits for “Bodyguard” on the official Spotify tracklist and it stated only, “Performed by Beyoncé,” without any reference to the background vocalists. However, complete credits were not available on Beyoncé’s official website or Spotify at the time of this writing.
There was no mention of Swift in the list.
Jaon Lipshultz, executive director of music at Billboard, the international music and entertainment magazine that publishes charts tracking the most popular music, posted “Nope” in response to a question about whether Swift was on the track.
Billboard reported that despite the vocals sounding remarkably like Swift, “No, Swift’s voice is not included in ‘Bodyguard’” without specifying its source for this information. Entertainment news outlet E! News also published the following without referencing how it obtained the information: “E! News has learned that the ‘Karma’ singer is actually not featured on the project’s eighth track.”
We should note that Swift has participated secretly on other tracks using a pseudonym. In 2016, she wrote the song “This Is What You Came For” for her then-boyfriend, Calvin Harris, under the name Nils Sjoburg. Harris later admitted that Swift sang on a “little bit” of the track too. Swift’s representatives confirmed this news months after the track’s release.
While official sources including Beyonce’s own website, Spotify and press releases do not mention Swift, the official list of credits was still unavailable upon release. On April 5, 2024, Beyoncé released the full official credits for the album. Swift is not mentioned anywhere, including in the credits for “Bodyguard.”
