by Enrique Viveros
On the evening of April 9th Swifties were excited to relieve their middle or high school memories with a re-recorded album named Fearless (Taylor’s Version).
Swift is re-recording Fearless and five more albums with her team. Her previous music label Big Machine Records, and music manager Scooter Braun bought the master recordings without Taylor’s acknowledgment. Master recordings are the original recordings of a song or album.
Fans were quick to find out which of the six albums Swift was re-recording first through easter eggs she left throughout social media and her television appearances. The first of these easter eggs were released in a commercial for the popular dating website Match.com, where Satan found his forever wife, 2020. Then she released snippets of her songs throughout ABC’s Good Morning American. With the help of fellow artists Conan Gray and Olivia Rodrigo, they made tik-tok videos promoting You Belong with Me (Taylor’s Version) and White Horse (Taylor’s Version).
This hour and forty-six-minute album consist of twenty-six songs. Nineteen songs are from Swift’s platinum Fearless album released seventeen years earlier. One song is from the film Valentine’s Day, in which she was cast as a teen-heartthrob dating Taylor Luther, and six songs are never before heard songs from her vault.
The album opens with the album titled song Fearless (Taylor’s Version). The rush of nostalgia hits the listener as the first note is played.
In an interview with People Magazine, her process for this album was to “stay very loyal to the initial melodies that I had thought of this song, but if there was any way that we could improve upon the sonic quality of it, we did.”
Throughout the album, you can tell the maturity in Swift’s voice throughout the re-recorded album. In addition, the refined instrumentals and beats add to this. This album felt like a rehashing memory of meeting your best friend, having your first love, window shopping with your mom when things are tough at school, or experience your first heartbreak.
The Vault tracks start with a somber county feeling collaboration with artist Maren Morris called You All Over Me (Taylor’s Version), which talks about a love leaving its mark on someone. Then the beats pick up with the next track, Mr. Perfectly Fine (Taylor’s Version), and talks about a man who seems perfect on paper; however, once you meet him, he’s a mess. This wave of happiness is mellowed down by the acoustic instrumental of We Were Happy(Taylor’s Version) track reminisce about the honeymoon stage of a relationship that isn’t going too well. The Vault tracks end with Bye Bye Baby (Taylor’s Version), which tells of someone seeing the reality of the relationship and saying goodbye to that love.
Overall, this album was a great introduction to what Taylor Swift has instore to reclaim her master recordings and give fans a new outlook on these nostalgic songs.
