Taylor Swift Has an Original Song on the Cats Soundtrack

Kanye West might need to be on decks at next year's Academy Awards ceremony, because it looks like Taylor Swift is trying to come for Beyonce's Oscar. The country pop queen, who is starring in the upcoming big screen adaptation of Cats, has co-written a new song for the film with Broadway legend Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The pair never intended to write an original song for the film, but when Swift popped by Lloyd Webber's home one afternoon to rehearse her song "Macavity the Mystery Cat," he mentioned that he had the base of a new song written and played it for her. "Beautiful Ghosts" was born. "We wrote 90 percent of it pretty much over an afternoon," Lloyd Weber told Variety.

The song appears three times in the film: it's first sung by Victoria (Francesca Hayward), the white cat who has become the film's star in the adaptation. Later, Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench) sings a reprise, and then the studio version sung by Swift plays over the end credits. Lloyd Weber felt it was important to give the white cat, who is mainly a ballerina in the stage version, a song "to have some kind of reaction to what's going on around her. We felt there had to be a major statement for her, something that had the spirit of (T.S.) Eliot but also was specific to the story."

Swift "got to the essence of what the piece is about. It's not an ordinary lyric," Lloyd Webber explained. He added that director Tom Hooper called her songwriting "absolutely extraordinary, because it's as if she really has understood the central message of the piece."

Having an original song also means that Cats now enters the musical Oscars race, which at this point is Beyonce's to lose -- her Lion King anthem "Spirit" is largely considered the frontrunner in the musical category. But to be honest, "Spirit" is still at the head of the pack, no matter how good "Beautiful Ghosts" is. Sorry, Taylor!

Catsis in theaters Christmas Day.

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