Taylor Swift has done it again. She has released another beautifully composed album of some new songs and old songs redone her way. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is the first re-release of an album that Swift has previously done. The original album is thirteen years old and now belongs to a manipulative company, Ithaca Holdings, owned by Scooter Braun. Swift moved to a new record label in 2018 to avoid the bullying she was receiving from Braun and some of his other clients.
When she left for a new record label, she left behind all her master tracks for her first six albums, including Fearless. So, in August 2019 she announced that she would be re-recording all of the first six albums in order to keep them from making Braun richer through royalties and licensing for ads or movies. To make that possible and make sure her fans would still love it as much as they do already, she had to make the rerecordings as similar to the original as she could.
The most avid fans of Swift will be able to tell the difference between the new recordings of the old songs and the new ones, but to some just beginning to listen to her, the songs sound almost the same. However, Swift told People in an interview about the release how the re-recording process went.
She told them, “We kept all the same parts that I initially dreamed up for these songs, but if there was any way that we could improve upon the sonic quality, we did,” she said. “We just kind of took all the knowledge that we’ve acquired over decades of playing this music and applied that to it.”
Through the new recordings listeners can tell that Swift’s voice has matured in the thirteen years since she sang the songs originally. She has also grown as a musician. According to Buzzfeed News she went line by line in each song to see what she had done with inflections and notes and what she could do to improve them. The new recordings of the old songs are crisper instrumentally as well.
However, Swift did not leave Fearless (Taylor’s Version) to simply be re-recordings of old beloved songs, but she also included thirteen new songs on the album, making it twenty-six songs in total. The thirteen new songs came from Swift’s vault of songs that her former producers would not let her release on previous albums. These new songs reflect a lot of what she wanted to convey in her first album: romance and a wonderful tone of woe to those who cross her.
The New Yorker wrote, “She was a hopeless romantic trying to write her own fairy tale, but she was also developing a serious hunger for vengeance against anyone who dared to disappoint her.”
Some of the old collaborators for the original album, who came back for the project, have grown, giving the songs a familiar feel. However, Swift also had new collaborators like Maren Morris and Keith Urban.
All of the songs on the album are infused with the feel of the easy country lilt in her voice and acoustic guitar. There are a couple songs with a faster beat, but most have a sweet and pleasant rhythm, reminiscent of sitting on a porch swing talking with family, sipping on iced tea in the cool breeze, as a summer day comes to a close.
All fans were ecstatic when Swift announced the re-recording of her first six albums, looking forward to hearing some of the most beloved songs remade. Yet, the novelty wore off quickly due to fans getting re-recordings of old songs instead of something totally new. However, the new additions saved the album’s popularity, Swift’s fans falling in love with her all over again with new fervor.
