They said it couldn’t be done. But like so often in Taylor Swift’s career, people underestimated her talents. April this year saw the American singer-songwriter attempt what had never been successfully done before: re-recording an entire album, 2008’s Fearless, note for note, with the aim of making the original recordings redundant and, crucially, worthless.
The reason for it? A bitter dispute about the ownership of the master recordings of her first six albums which, in 2019, passed into the hands of US executive Scooter Braun — a man described as a bully by Swift who, on the eve of the deal, stated: “Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.”
Fearless (Taylor’s Version), bolstered by six new “from the vault” bonus tracks written at the time of the original but receiving a release for the first time, became the first re-recorded album to hit No 1 on the Billboard chart and was the bestselling album released in 2021. It introduced her international breakthrough album to a new generation of fans, while allowing her old ones to rediscover the multiple Grammy-winning original. What’s more, the album achieved its unusual aim: it was a nigh-on exact replica of the original that retained its charm and magic. Now, she’s back for round two, with the upcoming release of Red (Taylor’s Version) on November 12, the new-but-the-same version of her 2012 fourth album — and it could be even bigger than Fearless.
At first Swift bided her time after the sale of her masters to Braun – who has since sold them on to private equity firm Shamrock Holdings (but is believed to continue to benefit financially from the work). She released three critically acclaimed new albums (2019’s Lover and her lockdown double folklore and evermore), before deciding to get both mad and even by beginning the Herculean task of re-recording all of her first six albums.
Previous examples of other stars who have tried to plagiarise their own songs — including Def Leppard and Prince — suggested that the enterprise would fail. How could someone possibly replicate the sound, feelings and emotion — capturing the lightning-in-a-bottle moment — of that first recording a decade later? Once the listening public fall in love with one original version of a song, that’s what they want for ever, warts and all. Paul McCartney may have tried to make the world adore his Let It Be once he stripped away Phil Spector’s orchestration on Let It Be . . . Naked, but there’s only one version of The Long and Winding Road that Beatles fans listen to — and that’s the one on the original album.
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Yet sceptics underestimated Swift, who is an artist at the peak of her powers, as well as one of the smartest business minds around. By astutely employing the musicians who played on the originals, and utilising her own musical skill to study the vocal inflections of the originals, then performing them with all the passion of someone singing them for the first time, she pulled it off.
Don’t take my word for it. For example, just overlay the original and the re-recorded version of Love Story. There’s no difference, save for the most subtly enriched production. The New York Times wryly commented that “it’s hard to imagine any other star engaging in an act of business retribution while also making it seem so joyful and so participatory for her fans”.
Now comes Red — and it’s the one the fans have been waiting for. Red is Swift’s magnum opus, marking the moment when she started to move beyond the country-rock sound which made her name and pushed forward into the pop and electronica she’d move firmly towards in her subsequent hit albums 1989 and reputation. Lyrically, Swift describes it best in a statement she released when announcing the release: “Happy, free, confused, lonely, devastated, euphoric, wild, and tortured by memories past.”
It seems ridiculous to describe an album that sold more than eight million copies worldwide as a hidden gem, but in the UK at least, Swift was then perhaps known more for her celebrity boyfriends than for her music. You may well know the trio of irresistible upbeat pop hits from the album: 22, I Knew You Were Trouble and We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Swift’s first co-writes with Swedish pop genius Max Martin.
What you may not be aware of is the rest of the record, on which she displayed a mastery of her traditional sound, displaying such confidence that she opened the record with the Springsteen-esque stadium rock blast of State of Grace and the ultimate break-up song on All Too Well — both tracks not bothering with the inconvenience of choruses, instead displaying her control of dynamic and drama as they rise and fall and rise again over repeating chord patterns. The latter — a lyrical tour-de-force — contains the devastating couplet, “You call me up again just to break me like a promise/So casually cruel in the name of being honest”. It was never released as a single, yet remains probably her fans’ most-loved song, justifying its No 69 spot in the 2021 update of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of all time. On Red (Taylor’s Version), a ten-minute version of the song will finally see the light of the day; Swifties are understandably beside themselves with excitement.
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The delicate, haunting Sad, Beautiful, Tragic and Treacherous will also feature, while other fan favourites Holy Ground and Starlight would have been career-defining tracks in most other artists’ discography — they’re merely album tracks on Red.
As if Swift didn’t contribute enough star power alone, Ed Sheeran and Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody also reprise their original guest spots on Everything Has Changed and The Last Time respectively; with Sheeran also appearing on new vault track Run and indie darling Phoebe Bridgers on Nothing New. If you only discovered Swift via her more recent albums, suffice to say you’re in for a treat.
Will Swift really have the energy to continue to reclaim all six of her original albums? Will Shamrock Holdings and Braun really tough it out and not offer to sell Swift back her masters before she makes them all worthless? Time will tell. But given what she’s achieved so far — and after one listen through Red (Taylor’s Version) on November 12 — they’ll surely be tempted (and well-advised) to get on their hands and knees and ask her to name her price for the other four.
