Highlights
- Taylor Swift is rerecording her albums out of order to prioritize her most popular releases.
- Fearless and 1989 were chosen as the first rereleases due to their massive success and Diamond certification.
- Swift’s debut album will be rereleased last, completing the full-circle narrative of the “Taylor’s Version” series.
Taylor Swift has been spoiling her fans. Not only did the musician drop a record-breaking album of new material, Midnights, in 2022, but she’s been recording and rereleasing her old albums with previously unreleased songs. It’s more than any Swiftie could have asked for, but some have noticed an inconsistency with regard to the “Taylor’s Version” release schedule.
The inconsistency being, Swift has released her new versions out of order. She’s kept to a mostly linear rollout, but she’s skipped over two beloved albums thus far, which has led to speculation as to why. Are these albums more difficult to rerecord? Are they not getting the “Taylor’s Version” treatment? The answer is surprisingly straightforward.
Taylor Swift Is Rerecording Her Albums Out Of Order Because She Wants To Prioritize Her Most Popular Releases
Taylor Swift announced that she would rerecord her first six albums in 2019, shortly after her catalog was purchased by talent agent Scooter Braun. Swift described the acquisition as “worst-case scenario,” given the disagreements that she’d had with Braun and his clients over the years (Kanye West being the most notable offender).
Instead of re-recording her debut album first, however, Swift decided to kick off the “Taylor’s Version” series with her second album, Fearless. She explained her decision to prioritize her sophomore effort during a 2021 interview with Republic Records:
“I always gravitated towards Fearless because I think that, as an album, it was a real coming-of-age. And I look back on that album and it fills me with such pride, and it was an album about hope, and lessons learned, and the effervescence of teenage youth and all that. What more fun than to go back and explore that?”
The thing that Swift didn’t mention, and what further spurred her decision, was that Fearless is her most successful album to date. It’s the only Swift album that has been certified diamond by the RIAA, which means it has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. From a marketing POV, it made sense to lead with her most popular product, and the decision paid off. The rerecorded version of Fearless debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 charts.
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Swift has continued to prioritize her most popular albums during the “Taylor’s Version” rollout. 1989 is Swift’s second-biggest album, so it seemed like the obvious choice to rerecord next, but a copyright lawsuit over the single “Shake It Off” meant the album was, for a time, legally off limits. Swift moved down the pecking order and chose Red and Speak Now, her third and fourth most successful albums, as the next releases in the series.
|
T. Swift Rerecordings |
Release Date (According To Genius) |
|
Fearless (Taylor’s Version) |
April 9, 2021 |
|
Red (Taylor’s Version) |
November 12, 2021 |
|
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) |
July 7, 2023 |
|
1989 (Taylor’s Version) |
October 27, 2023 |
|
Reputation (Taylor’s Version) |
TDB |
|
Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version) |
TDB |
By the time Swift released Speak Now, the lawsuit involving 1989 had been dropped, so the singer could double back and fill in the gap. NBC News confirmed the lawsuit ruling in 2022, and chief among the outlet’s takeaways was the fact that Swift could begin rerecording the album. Sure enough, 1989 was the fourth “Taylor’s Version” to hit stores.
Taylor Swift Will Rerelease Her Debut Album Last To Bring The ‘Taylor’s Version’ Series Full Circle
Taylor Swift’s debut album does seem like it’s been dealt a bad hand in the “Taylor’s Version” rollout. The album was a smash success upon its release in 2006, and eventually went seven times platinum in the United States. The decision to repeatedly skip over the album is two-fold.
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Firstly, the album has the lowest streaming numbers of Swift’s first six albums. It’s still wildly popular, but it pales in comparison to the gigantic numbers that Fearless and 1989 put up, so there’s less incentive to push it to the front of the “Taylor’s Version” schedule. Its ranking on Spotify’s most-streamed albums of all time list, relative to the other five, speaks for itself:
|
T. Swift Albums |
Spotify’s Most-Streamed Albums Of All Time Ranking As Of December 8th, 2023 |
|
Taylor Swift (2006) |
1,011 |
|
Fearless (2008) |
420 |
|
Speak Now (2010) |
237 |
|
Red (2012) |
207 |
|
1989 (2014) |
30 |
|
Reputation (2017) |
40 |
Ironically, this has allowed the album to take on greater significance in the “Taylor’s Version” story. According to the Taylor Swift Fanon Wiki, the self-titled album is scheduled to be the last of the six albums to be rerecorded, which means it will provide a full-circle narrative for both the singer and her fans. The final “Taylor’s Version” that fans will hear is the album literally named after her.
The word “narrative” is an important one for Swift, who discussed the rerecording process during a 2023 profile with Time Magazine. “It’s got such a narrative, there’s a reason for it,” she noted, before pointing that her main response to adversity has always been to create:
“[I] keep making art… If you look at what I’ve put out since then, it’s more albums in the last few years than I did in the first 15 years of my career.”
Taylor Swift Had To Wait 5 Years To Rerecord Reputation Because Of Her Previous Record Contract
Taylor Swift confirmed that Reputation would be the fifth album she recorded during her Time Magazine profile. She admitted that the album had a polarizing reception from fans and critics when it was released in 2017, but that it holds a unique place in her catalog for that very same reason.
“[It was a] goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure,” she told the outlet. I think a lot of people see it and they’re just like, ‘Sick snakes and strobe lights.’” The more interesting quote, however, came when Swift was asked about the “Taylor’s Version” process as a whole. She drew a comparison between her musical journey and the journies of characters from The Avengers, Harry Potter, and The Lord Of The Rings:
“I’m collecting horcruxes. I’m collecting infinity stones. Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now.”
If we are to assume that the albums are infinity stones, then Reputation was the trickiest one to reclaim. It was the most recent of Swift’s original six albums, and as such, she had to wait the longest time before she could legally rerecord it.
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According to Rolling Stone, most record contracts prohibit the rerecording of music in the aftermath of its initial release. There are two conditions in which it is eventually acceptable:
- The artist waits two years after their contract has expired
- The artist waits five to seven years after the release date of the original
Reputation turned five years old on November 10, 2022, which means Swift has already been hard at work on its rerecording. She didn’t offer too much in terms of musical insight, but she did tell Time Magazine that the new songs on “Taylor’s Version” of Reputation will be “dope.”
Source: NewsFinale
