When Taylor Swift announced, in August 2019, her “absolute” intention to re-record her first six albums immediately raised questions for fans.
Would she choose to make significant changes to the songs – their instrumentation or even their lyrics – or would each re-recording just be a copy of the original? Which album would she decide to record first? Would they go in chronological order of their releases? Or could she even re-release her biggest singles as sort of the greatest hits collection? Would there be acoustic versions? Piano versions? Remixes? Could we finally hear the legendary 10 minute version of “All Too Well”?
Some – but not all – of those questions were finally answered on Thursday, when Taylor announced in a post on her social media accounts that her re-recorded version of 2008’s Undaunted – appropriately subtitled Taylor’s version – would come soon. To mark its release, the album’s lead single, “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” was due out at midnight.
For those familiar with Taylor and her tendency towards routine, it was perhaps somewhat surprising that she chose not to embark on the journey of re-recording and releasing her catalog with her self-titled debut album. It was probably what the majority of fans expected, but if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that some of Taylor’s best career switches are also some of her least predictable. The Old Taylor may have been murdered in 2017, after the most tumultuous year of her career – but with “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” the pop superstar provides a symbolic foundation for the imminent resurrection of her previous iterations.
The new version of “Love Story”, it turns out, is almost indistinguishable from the original. There is a very slight variation in the tone of Taylor’s voice, not surprisingly more mature at 31 than when he was 18. more crunchy. However, the difference is probably only noticeable to those who have studied Taylor’s music in excruciating detail for the past 13 years, and that’s the point, of course: when re-recording her first six albums, Taylor wants to diminish the value of their music. original master recordings.
The story of her fight with Big Machine Records over the rights to her masters is well documented. Taylor originally signed with the label when she was only 15, but when it came time to renew her contract, she declined, announcing that she had signed a brand new deal with Universal Music Group instead. Six months later, in an explosive post on her Tumblr account, she revealed why she left.
In the post, Taylor alleged that Scott Borchetta – the founder and CEO of Big Machine – declined when she asked to buy the rights to her master recordings. Instead, he offered Taylor the chance to “ recoup ” them on the condition that she signs a new 10-year contract and produces six more albums under the label. She declined the offer, aware that Borchetta intended to sell the label, and chose to put the certainty of her future work ahead of her past. And then, in a move that Taylor called her “ worst nightmare, ” Borchetta sold Big Machine for $ 300 million to Scooter Braun’s company, Ithaca Holdings.
“Every time Scott Borchetta had heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I cried or tried not to,” Taylor wrote on Tumblr, referring to the years of “incessant, manipulative bullying” that she experienced during Braun and its celebrity clients, including Kanye West and Justin Bieber. He knew what he was doing; they did both. Driving a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. “
Braun’s takeover of the company not only meant that he and Big Machine had the option of blocking the license of Taylor’s music – it also meant that they took advantage of every time a song in her catalog was bought, used, or streamed. In an interview with Billboard in December 2019, Taylor announced that she would categorically decline any request for licenses to her early music until she was able to re-record and re-release it, in order to avoid Big Machine or Scooter Braun benefit from her work.
“Every week we get a dozen sync requests to use ‘Shake It Off’ in an ad or ‘Blank Space’ in a movie trailer, and we say no to all of them,” she said at the time. “The reason I’m going to re-record my music next year is because I want my music to live on. I want it to be in movies, I want it to be in commercials. But I only want it if I own it.”
From a business perspective, it makes sense that Taylor has re-recorded one of her best-known and best-loved songs. While her debut album may have been the beginning, “Love Story” may well mark the birth of Taylor Swift, the superstar; After its release in 2008, it became number one of the best-selling digital singles in US history. After its most recent certification by RIAA in 2015, it was awarded 8x platinum.
“Love Story” paved the way for Taylor’s journey from being a small country singer to the living pop legend she is today – the one whose music is so valuable that someone might think paying $ 300 million for it. It’s one of those songs that everyone know it, and as a result, it will no doubt be endlessly streamed and played on the radio and licensed for use in movie trailers and TV shows and ads to infinity. But if all Taylor was chasing with this re-uptake process was profit, she could have started it 1989, the album with “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space”, perhaps her most commercially successful hits.
Instead, Taylor decided to take us back to the song that started this journey for many of her longest-serving fans. She wrote ‘Love Story’ on her own on the floor of her nursery in ‘about 20 minutes’, filled with 18-year-old anxiety over her parents’ disapproval of a boy she wanted to date (but ultimately never did). It was written in late Undauntedalbum production process and a last-minute addition to the track listing, but the song continued to soundtrack the trials and tribulations of countless fans’ teenage years.
“When I think back to the Undaunted album and everything you’ve made of it, a completely involuntary smile creeps across my face, ”Taylor wrote in her statement announcing that the re-recorded album was complete. “This was the musical era in which so many internal jokes were made between us, so many hugs were exchanged and hands were touched, so many unbreakable bonds were formed.”
For fans who have stayed with Taylor for years, the announcement felt like a familiar hug from an old friend. It revived a previously defunct Taylor Swift tradition, a message hidden in seemingly random capital letters with the words ‘April 9’ – the release date of Fearless (Taylor’s Version)She revealed that the rerecorded version of the album will feature six never-before-heard songs written during the creation of the original, ensuring the same level of excitement that comes before brand new Taylor Swift music, even when we get most of the songs. have heard. numerous times before. Even the two-month wait between the single and the album recalls a familiar pattern of anticipation that we never experienced with the 2020s Folklore and Evermore
In short with Fearless (Taylor’s Version), it feels like Taylor is re-creating the journey of releasing the original, not just for herself, but for fans – and, at a time when everything feels insecure, the nostalgia that comes with it couldn’t be more of a welcome consolation.
It has not escaped fans that “love story” begins and ends with the words “we were both young when I first saw you”. It’s a poignant feeling for the countless fans who discovered Taylor through the song in 2008 and have remained by her side ever since. The text video for the re-recorded version pays tribute to that cherished relationship between the fan and the artist – a slideshow of photos from Undaunted-era Taylor signs autographs and poses for photos with fans taken during a comically dated moment in time. (Borchetta’s face is blurry one of the photosAfter it was released, Taylor liked some juxtaposed photos from fans in tweets showing how much they’ve grown alongside her. The video ends with a simple message, “With love to all my fans.”
“I think it’s important for the people who keep you going and supporting you and standing with your back in the world to know that you think about them all the time,” an 18-year-old Taylor told the Los Angeles Times in 2008.
With “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” she proves she still is.