Taylor Swift Dropped Her First Re-Recorded Single, and is Already Teasing Fans with More Coming Soon
Last Thursday, February 11th, the country star turned pop queen Taylor Swift released the finished version of her very first re-recorded single. “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” sounds almost identical to the 2008 original that we all know and love, aside from a few minor differences. After over 10 years in the industry, Taylor’s vocals have only gotten stronger. She has also officially stepped out of her country boots and become more comfortable in the pop genre by adapting her voice to fit as such. Overall, the song feels like a breath of fresh air hearing Taylor’s matured voice on an old favorite, and Swifties are able to fall in love with the romantic Shakespearen tale that the singer alludes to in ‘Love Story’.
Taylor Swift’s undertaking of re-recording all of her old tracks came about after the singer left her contract with Big Machine Records. Afterwards, the label -along Swift’s entire music catalogue- was acquired by Scooter Braun in a $300 million deal. Swift expressed the difficulty in her decision to leave Big Machine Records by saying in a post back in 2019,
“For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in...I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums.”
Braun and Swift have been known to have a very sour relationship, dating back to Kanye West’s (one of Braun’s clients) music video in 2016 that included an image of Swift naked with other notable celebrities. Another incident included Kim Kardashian illegally recording a phone call snippet of Swift’s, which was then leaked and was used against the singer by Braun and two of his clients. After hearing the news about the deal, Swift stated that she was disgusted and heartbroken.
Back in late 2019, the convoluted feud between Swift and Braun was all the rage in the music industry, as Swift expressed her anger and shock in light of Braun acquiring the rights to her masters. This deal barred Swift from performing all of her original catalog. However, since she still owned the rights to the music composition, she decided the solution was to re-record and re-release all of her old music. Luckily, with COVID-19 putting more time in everyone's hands, Swift took the opportunity to begin the process and we are now seeing her efforts come to fruition.
In an Instagram post published the same day as the new ‘Love Story’ release, Swift captioned it, “I’m thrilled to tell you that my new version of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is done and will be with you soon. It has 26 songs including 6 never before released songs from the vault.” The first slide is the album cover to the single featuring Taylor’s signature hair flip -which is reminiscent of the original Fearless a lbum cover- and on the second slide is a long letter to her fans. Throughout the message there are some capitalized letters, which isolated from the rest of the letters, spell APRIL NINTH. Many fans have caught on to the hidden message and assume that the album will release on that date this year, and some even went as far as to pick up that the numbers of the date (4/9) add up to 13, which is commonly known as Swift’s lucky number.
We are thrilled to see Taylor Swift reclaiming her music and seeing how she has grown as an artist over the years. If you have not listened to “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)”, feel free to stream it on your preferred platform. And be sure to keep an eye out in the upcoming months for Fearless (Taylor’s Version) as well!
